Misinformation risks worsening ethnic and religious tensions in Nigeria, media commentators and researchers have said, at a time of heightened concern about internal security and fragile community relations.
The months and weeks running up to elections in February saw a slew of false claims about politicians and their parties, as part of deliberate attempts to shape the narrative before polling.
Africa’s most populous nation is often characterized as teetering on the brink.
Security threats include Boko Haram militants in the northeast, and violence between nomadic cattle herders and farmers in central states.
The latter is primarily a battle for water and land, but those involved have been polarized along ethnic, sectarian and religious lines, in a country with more than 250 ethnic groups and where identity is rarely far from the surface.
Simon Kolawole, a former editor with Nigeria’s This Day newspaper and founder of The Cable news site, said that manufactured lies in the guise of news was “further endangering the delicate ethno-religious fabric of Nigeria.”
It was also “hampering the credibility of news outlets in the country,” he said.
Nigerian Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed said that misinformation and hate speech “threatens the peace, unity, security and corporate existence of Nigerians.”
Of particular concern was the fabrication of stories pitting the country’s mainly Muslim north against the predominantly Christian south — a traditional fault line often used by proponents of restructuring the federal system and even breaking it up.
“When you go by social media, the impression you get is as if Nigeria is at war and as if Muslims are killing Christians,” Mohammed said.
Misinformation — deliberate or not — is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria.
In November 1989, the official Nigerian Television Authority announced the death of Nnamdi Azikwe, the country’s first governor-general and president after independence in 1960.
By morning, most of the newspapers were running the story, but Azikwe was very much alive and would live for another seven years.
Thirty years later, rumors circulated that Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari had died during one of his lengthy absences from Nigeria in 2017 on medical grounds, and that he had been replaced by a lookalike called Jubril from Sudan.
It took nearly two days before Azikwe was to clear the air about the state of his health and inform the world he was still alive — and the false claim was relatively contained.
The supposed death of Buhari in contrast spread like wildfire on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, so much so that he had to address the claim at a news conference.
“It’s the real me,” he told supporters on a trip to Poland in December last year.
That Buhari, 76, had to even devote time to debunking the claim is extraordinary, but that it still circulates is a sign of the scale of problem — and the task facing the media and fact-checking organizations.
Fredrick Nwabufo, a political analyst and columnist, said that it was “an open secret” that Nigeria’s two main political parties ran “media centers” to pump out misinformation during the election.
He agreed that there was a risk the practice could escalate ethnic and religious tensions.
The lookalike rumor can be traced to Biafran supporters, who want a separate state for the ethnic Igbo people who dominate southeast Nigeria.
Another claim, that Peoples Democratic Party candidate Atiku Abubakar was being supported by the LGBT community, was designed to discredit him in the religious and socially conservative north.
A recurrent claim against Buhari, who is also a Muslim from the north, is that he wants to Islamize all of Nigeria and extend Shariah law across the country.
To what extent “fake news” influenced the result of the election is so far inconclusive. Buhari was re-elected by almost 4 million votes.
However, Sam Ejiwunmi, a doctoral student at the University of Lagos researching the possibility, said misinformation affects rural areas more than urban centers.
“My fear is majorly with the impact it has on the credibility of the media. The media houses are no longer perceived as the custodian of credible news,” he said.
“We should all worry about how fake news especially during election can lead to increase in hate speech and alter the voting pattern,” he added.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was