Jega to politicians: Use social media to educate voters, not misinform them
Aformer Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, has urged political parties to use the social media to create awareness on their policies and programmes rather than misinform the electorate.
Jega made the appeal on Monday in Abuja at the formal launch of a 39-page report, titled “WhatsApp and Nigeria’s 2019 Elections: Mobilising the People, Protecting the Vote” co-authored by Jamie Hitchen (independent); Idayat Hassan Director, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD); Dr. Jonathan Fisher, University of Birmingham; and Prof. Nic Cheeseman, University of Birmingham.
According to him, social media could be used as agent of growth and development,
adding “lots of people abuse and misuse it. This research basically tried to help us understand how Nigerians are using WhatsApp as a platform for either electioneering campaigns or for general political activities.
“It is good to begin to pay greater attention to WhatsApp and do more research on the bad uses and good uses of social media and how we can improve on the good ones. I will like to see a situation where credible news are used on the platform rather than fake news and political parties and candidates can use these platforms to publicize their policies and programmes and what they can do rather than use it in a manner in which they abuse opponents,” Jega said.
On her part, the Director, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Idayat Hassan, said the most important thing for the government to counter fake news and misinformation is to be open.
Hassan said that when government leverage on the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and make information available to all, there would be less fake news because information would be readily available for people to access.
“This is a major challenge that must be tackled because most times what happens is that when there is fake news, people can’t even reach out to government officials for clarity so it spreads wider. Fake news spreads like wild fire, because you are dealing with information that one person has created and within few hours it’s all over the country. So the solution is ready information on issues,” she said.