lexy2014:
I didn't tell u anyone is telling d truth so feel free to ask what u want to ask. U are d one making allegations as seen below:
"Media Bill is necessary since Nigeria’s information space is bloated with lies".
So who is telling d lies? You're funny. What about the Leki massacre for starters ? Nigeria's popular ThisDay newspaper recently published a story headlined: "Drama as US Embassy Denies Bishop Oyedepo Visa".
It described how David Oyedepo, founder of Winners' Chapel, and one of Nigeria's revered and influential religious leaders, allegedly threw a tantrum at the US consulate in Lagos after he was refused a visa.
According to the story, the bishop was "obviously flustered". It quoted an unnamed source as saying that the religious figure had "immediately sent for his bodyguards to get his phones so he could make some calls".
In a country where religious leaders are celebrities, and their every action or inaction scrutinised, the detailed story quickly went viral.
Comments on, and criticisms of, Bishop Oyedepo's alleged behaviour poured out. Back in 2014, when the Ebola virus hit Lagos State, the city’s healthcare team had to contend with the spread of misinformation regarding its prevention and treatment. A piece of fake news claiming Ebola could be prevented by drinking and bathing with salt water went viral. According to Symplur, a company that tracks health misinformation on Twitter, Nigerians began using the words “Ebola,” “salt,” “water” and “drinking” together in tweets from 2014 on August 4. Four days later, two persons were reported dead in Jos, the capital city of Plateau State. They had consumed an excessive amount of saltwater.
That experience may have been useful for Nigeria’s health authorities when the first coronavirus case was announced in Lagos this year, as it was apparent that outside of providing care for affected persons, it was necessary to provide factual information to the public while countering fake news.
Still, along with the government in neighbouring Ogun state, Lagos state’s authorities had to fend off a barrage of fake news. Mayowa Tijani, a fact-checker with AFP, says, “Fake news and long-standing trust issues affected the country’s response” to the coronavirus in the first few months of the pandemic.
Where six years ago, a misleading regimen for prevention went viral, this time, one of the first coronavirus-related fake news pieces was focused on the index case. On Facebook, a post claimed that the man who drove Nigeria’s first confirmed victim of the virus from Lagos to Ogun escaped from a hospital where he was receiving treatment after he, too, tested positive. In June 2018, images of a baby’s bloodied corpse, a man’s cracked skull and bodies in mass graves quickly spread across Facebook feeds in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation.
The Facebook users circulating these images accused Fulani Muslims in the Plateau state — an area of tremendous ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity — of perpetrating atrocities against Berom Christians. In what the authorities described as an act of vigilante retribution, several Berom youths then dragged Fulani men out of their cars and killed them. At least 10 people died.
A crisis of disinformation is beleaguering nations around the world, sowing discord in established democracies such as the United States, Germany and Britain and rattling fragile ones such as India, Taiwan and Nigeria. With just a laptop and a login, it is so easy to create inflammatory material, rapidly disseminate it and draw strong — even violent — reactions that some experts fear that the very foundations of society are threatened.
Last year, a BBC investigation exposed the bloodshed in Plateau state, linking it to the viral disinformation spread by Facebook.
False information, hoaxes, urban rumors and “deep fakes” — digitally altered video and photos that purport to show actions or speech that did not, in fact, happen — are a rising threat worldwide, but they are especially dangerous to emerging economies such as Nigeria, where internet use is rising far more rapidly than education levels. In the last seven years, the number of internet users in Nigeria has tripled, to 100 million.
Adamkolo Mohammed Ibrahim, a scholar at the University of Maiduguri who studies fake news, says that bots and propagandists who use social media and spread false news are threatening to render democratic rights — including freedom of speech — meaningless. He fears that Nigeria is teetering on the edge of “post-truth” — a time when falsehoods, mild and extreme, permeate society so intensely that the truth becomes meaningless.
With more than 200 ethnic groups and 500 languages, Nigeria, a former British colony, is one of the largest multicultural societies on earth. Since independence from Britain in 1960, it has also grappled with separatist movements, sectarian and ethnic discord and struggles over natural resources, including minerals and oil.
Not until the late 1990s, scholars say, did Nigeria become a genuine multiparty democracy, with competitive, free and fair elections. Now, even those fragile advances are being threatened by fake news.
Last year, for example, President Muhammadu Buhari, who has suffered from various health problems, found himself compelled to deny rumors that he had died and been replaced in ceremonies by a Sudanese clone.
It is no crazier, to be sure, than the far-right claim that Hillary Clinton was behind a child sex ring housed in a Washington pizzeria. But an embryonic democracy such as Nigeria may need layers of protection to keep people safe from communal violence.
“Our democracy is only 20 years old,” said Ibrahim. “There is the fear that if fake news is allowed to continue as it is, it might get to a point where the democracy is threatened and the military might step in.”
Because Ibrahim does not want this to happen, he is supportive of some type of government action.
A federal senator, Mohammed Sani Musa, recently introduced a bill that would criminalize those who create “fake news,” with penalties that include fines and imprisonment for individuals, and financial penalties for companies.
“There is too much misinformation trending in our social media space,” Musa said.
“Is that the kind of world we should live in?”
Though the bill is still in its infancy, opposition to it has been fierce, largely because citizens fear it will only provide cover for censorship.
An online petition decried the so-called social media bill as a measure to curb critical online speech against politicians.
Toyin O. Falola, a professor of African studies at the University of Texas in Austin, said the proposed ban on “fake news” was mainly a reaction to “comments directed at political leaders reporting high level of transgressions and misdeeds.” He noted that Buhari, 77, had been highly secretive about the state of his health. He also said that the government had been incompetent in handling serious problems such as rising tensions between Muslim herders and Christian farmers.
“There is nothing special about ‘fake news’ in Nigeria,” Falola said in an interview. “It has become a global phenomenon in a post-truth age.”
Musa, the senator behind the bill, said “it is not an attempt to stifle free speech, it’s an opportunity to address growing threats that disturb the peace.”
But the legislation — like other proposals around the world to curb fake news — does not offer a very reliable definition of the problem.
Muthoki Mumo, an Africa expert at the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based group that advocates for press freedom, noted that lawmakers in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania proposed bans on “fake news,” as “part of an attempt to grapple with a public that is expressing itself more freely and frequently online.”
The problem is that authoritarian governments throughout the world have used “fake news” as a pretext to curb legitimate speech. Threats against journalists are rising, and journalists worldwide increasingly are being imprisoned on accusations — often trumped-up and bogus — of disseminating false news.
Agba Jalingo, the publisher of CrossRiverWatch, was arrested by Nigerian authorities in August after the news website reported alleged corruption involving Cross River state’s public bank and governor. Officials asserted that the outlet’s reporting was false, treasonous and an attempt to disturb the peace.
Officials’ use of existing laws to go after reporters is troubling for advocates such as Mumo, who fears this new legislation would give the government greater authority to define truth and silence critics.
“If you have a government that’s willing to implement these laws in a broad way against critics, you’re not going to have a positive outcome no matter how well-meaning it is,” she said. “We’ve seen truth being defined in a way that favors authority. That’s a problem.”
Musa contends that the definition of truth can be sorted out in court and that his proposed ban would not harm nonpartisan journalists.
But the actual outcome remains far from certain.
In October, a court permitted the prosecution to bring forward an anonymous witness, making it harder for Jalingo’s attorney to defend his client in a fair and free trial.
And, for those who cannot afford to fight charges in court, the alternative is pleading guilty and paying the fine. And in a time that is becoming increasingly financially strained for media outlets, the fine can seem lofty.
The market to peddle falsehoods exploded in Nigeria after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, said Ibrahim, the scholar. And, with greater access to the internet and a thriving social media scene, rumors spread like wildfire in the West African country.
For Ibrahim, Nigeria “is in crisis,” and clamping down on “fake news” is key. If a central body can stop false, viral posts from creating violence and confusion, the country has a chance for more peace, he said. And while purported nonpartisan fact-checking organizations are starting to pop up throughout the country, their ability to address the root of “fake news” can never carry the same weight as that of a government.
No one is above the law, Ibrahim said. “Even if the president defines what truth is, the legislature can check him. You can never change the truth. Even if you suppress it, it will emerge.”
Falola disagrees, arguing that the government should not have the power to define what is fake. “The federal government itself is not transparent, thus creating the space for various individuals to create stories to fill a vacuum,” he said. Better governance, he said, is the answer. Fake news is not new to Nigeria. In the 2015 elections, for example, a 55-minute documentary full of falsehoods entitled “The Real Buhari” aired on television before doing the rounds on social media. In 2017, Biafra separatists attempting to disrupt the Anambra governorship vote claimed the army was injecting school students with monkey pox to depopulate the South East, leading some schools to close and parents to withdraw their children in panic.
This phenomenon has reached new heights, however, ahead of Nigeria’s 2019 elections. As the campaign has heated up, fake news about both President Muhammadu Buhari and his main opponent former vice-president Atiku Abubakar has swirled on Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter. It has been shared knowingly by canny campaign officials as well as unwittingly by thousands of unsuspecting voters.
This false information covers many topics and takes different forms. On the subtler end of the scale, there are examples such as Buhari’s aide saying that Atiku only avoided arrest on his US visit because of diplomatic immunity; or the opposition official posting news that “800 companies shut down” even though the story pre-dated Buhari’s term. On the wilder end of the scale, there are the claims that President Buhari has been replaced with a Sudanese clone; or that Kim Jong Un wants to re-colonise Nigeria.
There is also much in between and, together, these stories have spread far and wide. Many have taken on lives of their own. This has created an ever-more uncertain and heightened atmosphere ahead of Nigeria’s high-stakes elections. Bloggers peddled lies about how our sister died, say brothers of late Nneka Odili
The grief-stricken family of the late National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member, Nneka Odili, who was crushed by a train have continued to express their deep sadness and pain on social media, as friends offer their condolences.
Pope Odili Chukwuemeka and Odili-Obi Albert, both elder brothers of the late Nneka expressed their heartbreak in tear-jerking Facebook messages they posted after the burial of their sister.
The two brothers are particularly agonized and incensed at reports that went viral online on the circumstances that led to their sister being killed by a train at the Ikeja-Along railway track a fortnight ago.
Several social media platform and blogs had in their reportage of the tragic incident, painted different scenarios surrounding how the incident happened. Many alluded that she committed suicide by walking along the rail track until the moving train hit her. Others alleged that she was carried away by the music she was listening to from her phone while many bloggers disclosed that Nneka was fiddling with her phone and was so engrossed in her chatting that she did not notice or hear the blaring horn of the approaching train.
“My kid sister died and bloggers started posting rubbish that broke our hearts even more. But I’ll say may Almighty God who knows best forgive them all”, cried Albert in one of his emotional Facebook posts three days after the late Nneka was buried on the 10th of March.
In another post, he said: “I won’t shed any more tears, cause I believe my Nne is ok wherever she is. Nne wasn’t even carrying a phone that plays music. She’d been robbed severally and had decided not to go out with big phones again. She was holding a torch phone.
“And the Nne we knew very well wasn’t a music type of person. Tell me about sports related stories, then I’ll agree, music wasn’t her thing at all. Please, before you believe anything you read, ask questions. Bloggers can post whatever they feel is comfortable for them, so be wise. Sites like Opera mini, and lots of them out there without names are not places to get credible answers. I pray that we don’t lose any loved one till they live old and die at the right time… Amen. God bless us all.”
Also in a bid to set the record straight, Pope, while debunking stories making rounds that Nneka had an earpiece in her ear when she was crushed, raised pertinent questions on the circumstances surrounding her death. He further posted pictures that compared the mangled bodies of persons crushed by a train and the photos of his sister’s injuries at the scene of the tragedy. According to Pope, Nneka fell near the train because she was struggling with a thief that grabbed her bag inside the train contrary to reports that she was crushed because she did not see the oncoming train.
“I have been mute because I have to bury her first, but it’s quite unfortunate that some persons in social media, online news and newspapers have been going round and flying false news about her death. The false news they have been spreading about her is that she was listening to music with her earpiece and so did not hear the sound of the train and that she was pinging with her phone and then she walked onto the rail track and got hit by the train.
“I have been waiting for the NYSC officials to comment on this whole event which they have done recently. So now, I want to let the entire public know that the three reports about my late sister are all LIES, complete lies and we have the facts and evidence to prove it.
“Firstly, with the way Nigeria railways is designed, when a train moves, it vibrates the ground, even without the noise from the train the ground vibrates so heavily that one will know something heavy is coming. |
