The recent order issued by the House of Representatives for the total shutdown of porn websites nationwide was a popular development received by Nigerians. The lawmakers directed the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to enforce the immediate shutdown of the websites in the country. The house noted that cyber pornography is fast becoming a global problem, and no concrete steps have been taken to cut its phenomenon in Nigeria.
The motion which was sponsored by the member representing the Faskari/Kankara/Sabuwa Federal Constituency, Dalhatu Tafoki, was meant to “protect societal values”. He said the motion was moved to block internet websites hosting pornographic contents and sanction the internet service providers responsible for the posting. After due deliberations, the house adopted the motion and mandated its committees on Communications and Legislative Compliance to ensure its implementation and report within four weeks for further legislative actions. The house also urged the NCC to apply the full rigours of the Nigerian Communications Act and the National Information Technology Development Act against defaulting Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Tafoki said Nigeria is a country where religion plays a prominent role in the social, economic and political life of its population, and therefore, nudity and obscenity in any form should remain forbidden. Many countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, he said, have passed legislation that prohibits pornography in their domains. Besides religion, pornographic contents have negative implications on the life of users. The notorious effects of pornography, he explained, include the promotion of adultery, prostitution, and other promiscuous behaviours, especially among youths. Owing to the scale of its direct impact on young adults, pornography is today described by social scientists and researchers as the “New Drug.”
Reacting to lawmakers’ ban on pornographic sites, the Executive Director at Paradigm Initiative, a telecom industry firm, Gbenga Sesan, criticised what he described as misplaced priorities by lawmakers; arguing that the ban should rather be directed at Nigeria’s bigger problems, including cyber terrorism and cyber fraud.
“The telecommunications industry might have the power to shut down sites, but it needs to be balanced with citizens’ rights,” he also said.
Aside from the negative effects mentioned by Honourable Tafoki, there are several other harmful impacts on users of porn materials. Repeated use of pornographic materials causes serious consequences to users’ physical, mental, social, and/or financial well-being. Worst still, cyber pornography destroys societal values and, by extension, the marriage institution.
Prolonged and excessive porn use can lead to decline in physical health caused by desensitisation of sex. Pornography consumption could also lead to sexual risk-taking including the normalisation of unprotected and promiscuous sex. While pornography could expose users to learning harmful sexual behaviour, psychologists have identified it to be a factor for increased sexual assault behaviour; suggesting that there is a link between consumption of violent pornography and rape-supportive attitudes in certain populations of men. Incest is not also ruled out from the weird behaviour of persons addicted to porn.
In addition, porn influences men’s perspective of women and other potential partners. Instead of viewing women as peers, a man who has become desensitised to intimacy because of heavy porn use may begin to view women solely as sex objects. Sex trafficking has also been found to share a variety of symbiotic connections with pornography. Pornography becomes more problematic when it grows and leads the user into addiction, which usually has severe consequences on the individual’s health. All these concerns collectively constitute serious threats to the future of the country’s population of “Gen Z” youths who have already been taken hostage by the “New Drug” menace.
In the past, porn materials were restricted to designated sites. But nowadays, they are posted and live-streamed on nearly all cyberspace resources including X (formerly Twitter), and Tik-Tok. Porn materials are also sandwiched between Google adverts on websites, which appear unsolicited to internet users. While Daily Trust supports lawmakers’ directive to NCC to block access to porn sites, it calls on the NCC as the regulatory agency to strictly sanction erring internet resources that allow the posting of porn materials by its users.
However, while it is possible for the NCC to compel ISPs to block access to porn contents, controlling individuals’ access to such materials remains a complex matter. Even when the ISPs block their subscribers’ access to porn in Nigeria, the Virtual Private Network (VPN) allows the internet user to tweak their location to a country other than Nigeria. With the VPN facility, the user could still access porn. This technical gap explains why dealing with the ‘New Drug” requires going beyond blocking access to porn sites.
There is a need for a strategic inclusive reorientation and moral rebirth agenda for the youths in Nigeria. The National Orientation Agency (NOA) has a critical role to play in the design, implementation, and monitoring of the proposed re-orientation agenda. We call on the government to provide necessary support and funding to the NOA to deploy a national reorientation programme to meet. A country’s future rests with its decent population of youths. Go beyond blocking porn sites.
