By Dayo Omoogun The Federal Government has said that 500 radio licenses are currently being considered in addition to the 300 of such licences which were recently approved. Mr. Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari, made the disclosure during the APC Press Corp dinner held at the weekend. He canvassed support for the social media regulation efforts of the government, emphasising that it is meant to protect the minority and vulnerable segments of the populace and not to shrink the media space as being alleged in many quarters. He wondered how the charge of shrinking of media space or oppression of the media could stand when the space was actually being expanded with the setting up of new radio stations and online newspapers. “Social media has become a problem for many families because rights of women and children are being abused. There is a need to protect vulnerable members of the society. There is need to protect minorities whether tribal or religious in our own country. So, it makes sense that you as media stakeholders come around the Minister of Information and Culture and formulate the kind of regulations you want so that it is not that there is a top-bottom approach, so that government will not be accused of imposing a regulatory mechanism on the media. The minister is saying come, sit down with me and let us talk about it. And I was told that the day he called on the Nigeria Union of Journalist NUJ, they walked out on him. If that report is true, I think it is very unfortunate. I think we need to come around him and offer media driven solutions so that at the end of it this country will have a vibrant and effective social media communication system. At the same time, it is the one that does not drive children to addictions and that it also protects consumers of media content from harmful invasion either of our privacy or addiction of children to some mercy-less commercialism that are profit driven and are taking advantage of our own exposure to mass communication systems. “I will like to appeal that, please give serious considerations to some of these elements and see how the media in the country can work together with government to find communication solutions to purely communication problems. It is not political, the government has no reason to undermine or weaken the mass media. When you realize it, in countries where the mass media are being suppressed, where there is no freedom of expression and information, you find out that the media space tends to decline, it becomes smaller, media houses closed down but the irony of what is happening in the country is that while some civil society groups are crying here that the freedom of expression is being threatened and in any case we know why they were shouting because they are looking for donors abroad who will send in US dollars for the protection of hate speech, that basically is a selfish thing. But in a country where we are expanding the media space, the last time we did, we licensed about 300 radio stations and as I am speaking to you now, this administration is processing almost 500 requests for radio stations. The media space cannot be expanded, if it is being oppressed. A lot of our colleagues I have seen them, any editor who loses job today or senior journalist, you will see him set up a digital newspaper and they are doing well. Many of them are prospering which tells you that the media is not in any way constrained in carrying out its constitutional duties”, he added.