He said misinformation had been used to aggravate conflicts and crisis, exacerbate insecurity, distort government efforts, fuel apprehension among citizens and create distrust between the governments and the people.
Buhari, who spoke while declaring open the 2022 Global Media and Information Literacy Week, with the theme, “Nurturing Trust, a Media and Information Literacy Imperative,” yesterday, in Abuja, noted that trust is a key ingredient of democracy and good governance, adding that without trust, the avowed pledge to deliver on promises as leaders will be impeded by lack of commitment from the governed.
The President stressed the need for a common standard that balances rights with responsibilities to keep the most vulnerable from harm and help strengthen and enrich communities and most importantly strengthen trust and social cohesion by improving critical thinking competencies to adequately assess the quality of information received and shared.
He noted that technology and social media offers nearly limitless opportunities, which must be harnessed, especially by the youths, to strengthen the foundations of the society and common values.
He urged the participants to promote media and information literacy as a viable development intervention to nurture trust, social protection and solidarity as well as accelerate the pace of people’s access to media and information literacy.
Earlier, Assistant Director-General, Communication and Information of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Dr. Tawfik Jelassi, said the challenge of trust misinformation and fake news in information dissemination is truly a multi-stakeholder challenge that could be tackled in the most inclusive possible way.
In his welcome remarks, Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the event was aimed at equipping citizens with the ability to critically evaluate and wisely use information at their disposal in a digital era of information overload.
He urged the participants to take advantage of the event to equip themselves so that they could better tackle the deluge of disinformation, misinformation, fake news and hate-speech.
