CSOs Urge Media To Tackle Fake News During Elections

A group of civil society organisations, Safeguarding Online Civic Space (SOCS) has called for media support to fight fake news during the elections.
Prior to now, the group has trained fact-checkers across the country to counter election misinformation and disinformation from misleading the public.

The chairperson, SOCS, Funmi Akinyele, who stated this yesterday in Abuja said the group’s goal is to “protect Nigeria’s online civic space” before, during, and after the elections.
Akinyele said the group is a loose cluster of mostly youth-led civil society organisations and business membership organisations from diverse areas within the social sector.
She said, “As the general elections are approaching, the overarching goal of this project is to protect online civic space by combating voter misinformation and disinformation while improving access to accurate civic information inclusively.
“Unfortunately, some individuals, either by omission or commission, have distorted information, leading to misinformation, disinformation, and malformation. The misuse and repression of both offline and digital civic spaces, no doubt, have contributed to the perceptions, mostly negative, of members of the international community about Nigeria.”

To address this, Akinyele said the safeguarding digital civic space for electoral integrity (SDSEI) project is engaging critical stakeholders across government, telecommunications, civil society, and the general public, who have been united by an overarching interest in protecting the online civic space to maximise the benefits and minimise the threats for proper enlightenment and education of the populace on their civic rights regarding the general elections, irrespective of cultural, religious and political affiliations.Akinyele asked the media to support the group’s efforts to