By Muhammad Salim
As Nigeria’s 2023 General elections is fast approaching, stakeholders from the media, academia among others have called for the need to arrest the menace of hate speech, misinformation and fake news in the context of elections on the country.
The Director of the MacArthur Foundation, Kole Shettima, while delivering a goodwill message at the Third Annual Kano Social Influencers Summit (KANSIS2022) stress the need for individual contributions in the fight against misinformation.
He said, “while the role of the media is critical and very important,” we have about 121 days to the 2023 general elections. This meeting is like others we have been holding around how do we ensure that the challenges of fake news, misinformation can be reduced in our society and how can we ensure more objective, fair, balanced information is sent out to the public.
“There are so many things that all of us can do to ensure we minimise the danger of this menace.”
“We don’t just take information as a fact, we look for evidence, source to ascertain the truth of particular information.”
“We talk to people in communities whenever something is alleges to have happened by placing calls to find out.”
“There are various steps all of us should take whenever we see misinformation on the media.”
“If everyone of us should do their own part, I think it is about individual responsibility which means taking a deep breath to ascertain the real truth. By doing this, there is likely to minimise the danger and the problems of fake news,” he concluded.
Earlier, the Executive Director, Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), Yunusa Zakari Ya’u, while highlighting the basis of the summit, stressed the need to implore advocacy campaign across all quarters in other to achieve hitch free elections.
“We know that more than any other elections before, social media will play very important role in this election and we thought it is important we share experiences to make effective use of social media in terms of voter education, enlightenment of citizens and politicians also in going about political campaigns so they will not deploy hate speech and fake news.”
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“We hope that we use the occasion to get young people to understand that it is important to connect people on the basis of programmes.”
Important dignitaries who graced and spoke at the summit include the Vice Chancellor, Federal University, Kashere, Professor Umaru Pate, Kano state Independent Electoral commission, Chairman, Prof. Garba Ibrahim Sheka.
Others are the Secretary-general, WRAPA, Saudatu Mahdi, Technical Adviser to the INEC Chairman, Professor Muhammad J. Kuna and the state team lead for the Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL).
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