Fake News: NOA To Train 37,000 Nigerians On Information Fact-checking

National Orientation Agency (NOA) plans to train 37,000 Nigerians across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on how to verify information.

The agency said 1,000 Nigerians who would be randomly selected from each state, would cut across gender, occupation and religion.

The assistant director, media and communication of NOA, Paul Odenyi, disclosed this yesterday at a one-day capacity building workshop on promoting social cohesion through media and information literacy and inter- religious and intercultural dialogue in Abuja.

He said, “Fake news is killing our country and it’s doing damage already. So, this training will help in fact checking the way information flies about.

“This training is technologically-driven and can easily be used to fact check any type of information. If someone puts a picture or voice on social media out there, you can easily check whether it is manipulated or not,” Odenyi said.

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Also, the director of research and institutional strengthening, African Polling Institute (API), Dr Olugbenga Ogunmefen, described the 2022 Nigeria Social Cohesion Index (NSCI) recently released by API as 39.6 percent, as worrisome.

According to him, the score represents a 4.6 percent decline from the 2021 index of 44.2 percent and falls short of the 50 percent average and signifies a weakening of the state of social cohesion.

He said the index score was derived from the computation of 13 key indicators, sub-indices of identity, trust, social justice, participation and patriotism, worth, future, and gender equity.

The coordinator of African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), Dr Chido Onumah, said factors such as inadequate information and lack of proper communication about cultures, religion, diversity and individual rights have become major challenges in the quest for progress as a nation.

“Political and religious actors and mischief makers who thrive on conflicts have continued to exploit the lack of MIL knowledge among a great majority of the citizens to deepen the fault lines by propagating messages of hate, extremism, misinformation and fake news,” he said.