Immediate past Director of Defence Information, Gen. Chris Olukolade (retd) has urged information managers of defence, security and response agencies to leverage on the use of social media to mitigate the current wave of crisis across the country.

Olukolade gave the admonition recently in Abuja at the three-day seminar organised by the Centre for Crisis Communication (CCC) in partnership with the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) and support from the Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Programme (NSRP) for information officers of Defence, Security and Response agencies.

Delivering a paper titled, Strategies and Techniques for Engaging the Media in a Crisis Situation, the former defence spokesperson said the use of communication technologies helps to broaden news of crisis and possibly mitigate the effects of failure to plan.

He was however, quick to concede that for maximum effect, the social media should be used in conjunction with the traditional media during crisis situations.

In order to guard against inaccuracies and speculative reports, Olukolade said it is the task of the information manager to ensure that regular briefing is a core aspect of his strategy.

“The information manager must also take into cognizance the impact of the social media in developing his media strategy. This is because the social. Media presents new complication that was hitherto non-existent. Any forward-thinking organization should as a matter of priority have a strong social media presence as a way of engaging its stakeholders especially the media”, he advised.

In his remarks at the occasion, the Chairman Forum of Spokespersons of Security and Response Agencies (FOSSRA) and Director, Defence Information, Brigadier General Abubakar Rabe said the armed forces and other security agencies are really facing the menace of not just the Boko Haram sect but series of other crisis across the nation that need proper information dissemination.

He said “So far, a seminar of this nature would provide some added knowledge for those of us who are still practising especially in crisis situation towards ensuring that the citizens are adequately educated and informed, especially on the need for security consciousness at all time,” he said.

According to him, a lot needs to be done in crisis situation and that handling such situation should involve input from other stakeholders including the political class.

Brigadier Rabe urged the media to be patriotic and strive to mitigate crisis through their reports, and by also cutting off the oxygen of sensationalised publicity that it often tends to give to terrorists and other miscreants.

The theme of the three-day seminar was ‘Enhancing the Capacity of Public Relations and Information Officers of Military, Security and Response Agencies in Nigeria in Addressing Crisis Situations.

Its main objective was to partner with key stakeholders in the military, security and response agencies in the country to develop effective, efficient and responsive cadre of public relations and information officers to be better equipped to carry out the onerous responsibility of managing information during crisis situations in a most professional manner.

Declaring the seminar open, Minister of Defence, Mansur Muhammad Dan-Ali called on all security agencies to crush and deter the threats of crisis and conflicts that have potential to breach the peace and security of Nigeria. He further acknowledged the thoughtfulness of the CCC and her technical partners “for initiating this very laudable programme and situating the imperative of continuous enhancement of capacity of the information officers of these critical institutions to be able to effectively manage sensitive crisis information at their disposal”

The seminar had resource persons drawn from the academia, the media/public relations, the paramilitary services, as well as retired top-military brass covered several topics relating to crisis communication, crisis management, gender and conflict sensitivity, imperatives of inter-agency collaboration and media partnership.

The participants observed that the over-centralization of information at the headquarters of most of the agencies often hampers the need to give timely response to the media in crisis situations, noting that information officers and public relations personnel of most of the agencies are often reactive because they are not part of management meetings where they can build a PR component into most public policies.

“Hence, they often only react to the wave of public backlash generated by such policies. That some agencies give inaccurate account of events to the media, while the media on their part do not utilize the appropriate and formal channels to request sensitive information from security and response agencies.”