NAL, media and national integration

The Vice chancellor of Federal University Kashere, Gombe State, Prof. Umaru Pate, delivered the Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL) lecture of 2023 at the Bayero University Kano in a palatial complex donated and named Dangote Business School. The lecture entitled: Media, Diversity and Nigeria’s National Integration in The Digital Age”, seemed to be anchored on what could be constant for the credibility of recognised media houses vis-à-vis current digital era that has allowed uncensored, unethical and informal plethora of information dissemination in line with diversity of opinions, though not well harnessed to promote National Integration.
 
National Integration, according to Prof. Pate is not inimical to freedom of expression as freedom of expression is mother of all freedom and it behoves the formal press, print and broadcast, to penetrate also the space informal and alternative media operate like facebook, twitter, instagram and spread the facts and news that make for national integration, so as to avoid the undermining of truthfulness by the alternative media. He, also, acknowledges the fact that media in Nigeria are associated with regions and ethnic groupings and expect their positions on what make for National Integration not to be compromised, as most of them hardly acknowledge that equal access to education by all in Nigeria and what concerns education, including even NYSC that is being desecrated now, ought to remain sacrosanct in their reporting and analysis of National Integration.
 

Ariole, is Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of Lagos.