Nigeria battles fake news epidemic
IN NIGERIA fake news can be so outlandish, yet widely believed, that the president recently felt compelled to declare that he had not died and been replaced by a Sudanese body double.
“It’s (the) real me, I assure you,” President Muhammadu Buhari said late last year, to dispel the story that was viewed more than 500000 times on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Nigeria’s fake news can also be lethal.
The stakes are high in Nigeria before Saturday’s presidential vote marked by widespread discontent over unemployment, poverty and insecurity in some parts of the country. Officials warn that fake or outdated pictures depicting communal violence trigger retaliatory killings.
Many were killed in reprisal killings sparked by horrific, but false, photos purporting to depict deaths in the conflict between herdsmen and farmers in central Nigeria last year, said Tolu Ogunlesi, a spokesperson for Buhari.
“Fake news kills people. We have seen a lot of things like that,” he said. “Some of the deadly clashes in Nigeria were sparked by fake news.”
He suggested that “the naming and shaming of members who peddle fake news” could stem the problem.
Africa’s most populous country is so awash in falsehoods posted on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube that 16 media outlets have been collaborating on a fact-checking initiative, CrossCheck Nigeria, to research suspect election claims circulating online.
Some of the stories CrossCheck Nigeria recently discredited include allegations that the first lady wants Nigerians to vote against her husband, as well as a suggestion that US President Donald Trump endorsed opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar.
Such allegations almost always AP African News appear on social media and are sometimes published by news websites.
The project is similar to Africa Check, which calls itself the continent’s first fact-checking organisation.
False reports spread on social media so fast and frequently that some people who are the subjects of it simply have to laugh.
Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka said that he enjoyed reading the regular obituaries of his death. However, Soyinka warned that “If we are not careful, World War III will be started by fake news, and that fake news will probably be generated by a Nigerian.” | THE Middle East conference in Poland, which started yesterday, offers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an opportunity to flaunt his country’s improved relations with some Gulf Arab nations. Several Gulf dignitaries were expected to attend in a potential show of force against uninvited Iran.
But the Palestinians urged a boycott of the conference and Arab officials were not likely to make any public overtures to Netanyahu without a major concession to the Palestinian cause.
The US and Poland are sponsoring the conference in Warsaw, which they say is aimed at promoting peace and security in the region, but appears to be mainly focused on isolating Iran.
Iran denounced the conference as an American anti-Iran “circus”. Russia said it would not attend and the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, also skipped the event.
Netanyahu said that the focus of the conference would be Iran, an issue he said “unites Israel, the US and many countries in the world”.
He said Israel enjoyed “very good relations” with every country in the region “except Syria” where it has carried out several air strikes on Iranian targets in recent months. Israel has signed peace accords with Egypt and Jordan, but other Arab nations have refused to publicly improve relations without significant progress being made towards ending Israel’s halfcentury occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state.
But ties that have long lingered in the shadows have begun to emerge.
Saudi Arabia lifted a decades-long ban on the use of its airspace for flights to Israel last year. Gulf Arab states have given less voice to their traditional antipathy toward Israel as they have grown increasingly fearful of Iran over its involvement in Syria.
Netanyahu recently visited the Muslim-majority African nation of Chad to restore relations after 50 years.
Trump’s senior Mideast adviser, son-in-law Jared Kushner, has been working on an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, but has not yet released details.
US officials say Kushner is expected to make some comments about the conflict in Warsaw, but Netanyahu said he didn’t expect any discussion of the peace plan. The Palestinians have pre-emptively rejected the plan.
President Mahmoud Abbas met Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Tuesday, who is in favour of a Palestinian state.