In the last five years, Nigeria has witnessed phenomenal growth of a new market driven and sustained by evil merchants whose stock in trade is disinformation or falsehood otherwise call ‘fake news’.
Fake news has a senior uncle known as ‘hate speech’ and both of them, which initially co-habited in a very narrow enclave, have grown enormously in character, size, capacity and stature, spreading their influence and impact across ethnic and religious divides in the country.
Fake news, which has become a ready tool in the hands of politicians, religious bigots and ethnic jingoists, range from the elevated and sublime to the ludicrous, all aimed to score cheap political or religious goals at the expense of another interested party.
Some observers say that at no time in Nigeria had fake news and hate speech been so voluminously employed as they were during the 2015 general elections when the main opposition party at the time- All Progressives Congress (APC)-spared no words in condemning actions and assassinating characters in the then ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which had Goodluck Jonathan as president.
It should be noted however, that fake news is not new in Nigeria. As far back as 1967 to 1970, the period when Nigeria was embroiled in a civil war with the secessionist Republic of Biafra, fake news (war propaganda) was used to condemn activities of enemy forces and also to attract sympathy and support from the international community.
Sometime in 2014, when Nigeria reported an outbreak of Ebola disease in the country, there was a major fake news that claimed the lives of some citizens who over-reacted to the disinformation. All the way from Kogi State, a story, which turned out to be disinformation or fake news, made the round, saying that the leader of a local community in the state had called on his people to bathe in salt water to avoid infection.
The fake news, which was first disseminated on Whatsapp went haywire when, from all over the country, people started calling their relations on phone. It did not stop there as that piece of information was picked up by radio and television stations. With this, the notion that bathing in salt water protected people against Ebola spread like wild fire, well beyond Kogi State.
That was how many people in Lagos were hospitalised for complying with the fake news while hundreds of miles away in Plateau State, at least, two people died and another two were hospitalised after excessively consuming salt and bitter kola, believing they would protect them against Ebola.
“From the 2015 electoral campaigns through the 2019 elections to the present insecurity situation in the country, fake news has grown and spread like wild fire and it is amazing how extensively both traditional and social media have been deployed to propagate it,” Ephraim Ekwueme, a social commentator, noted.
Ekwueme noted further that what social media platforms, especially Whatsapp, have fed and continues to feed the public in the name of information dissemination are mind-boggling and what they have succeeded in achieving is creating fear in people, sowing seeds of discord and dividing the country.
Maxwell Oguejiofor, a political scientist and also a social commentator, shares Ekwueme’s views, stressing, “We are at a point today in Nigeria where one is happier in his ignorance because the more you hear and read these stories off your cell phone, the more you are annoyed and even enraged.”
“I wonder sometimes what the media has come to be in Nigeria. This reminds me of the ageless observation about the media and journalism by Thomas Jefferson, the third American President,” Oguejiofor added.
Jefferson was quoted to have said in January 1787, “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the later.’’
But the euphoria that came with that observation had hardly died down when Jefferson countered with another observation that was seen to be a very devastating remark on the media: “The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; in as much as he knows nothing, he is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors.”
“That aptly captures the situation in Nigeria as it relates to the media, traditional and social, and the myriad of falsehood that is fed into the mind through them.
“Though there is an entertainment angle to it, over 90 percent of the fake news talk about serious issues that assault our sensibilities and enrage our minds. Some of such news inexonerably consign us as people and also as a nation to the theatre of the absurd,” Ekwueme fumed.
During the 2019 electioneering campaigns, as the politicians schemed to outdo and outwit one another, a major fake news was released about President Muhammadu Buhari who was in the race for a second term in office because Buhari was in and out of the country on account of his ill health.
The news came that President Buhari had been replaced with a Sudanese clone-named Jubril. The fake news was first presented in a YouTube video in September 2017. The news was widely repeated over the following months. Though most observers dismissed it as a joke, it remained stubbornly in the airwaves.
As the election approached, the presidency had to gird its loins as it became apparent that several segments of the society genuinely believe the fake news. It became so serious that President Buhari felt the need to confront it directly in December 2018 through a press release and by publicly insisting, in far away Poland, “it’s the real me, I assure you”. The impression this fake news created was that the President was dead. And it was as serious as that.
In recent times, with the vicious and ferocious activities of Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen who government prefers to call bandits, kidnappers and sundry criminals, fake news has taken over the airwaves, creating all sorts of ill-feeling among the people.
Recently, a story was told of Two Fulani men that attacked an Anglican church in a sleepy community in Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State. They robbed the church and the neighbourhood watch (Vigilante) operating in the community was quickly alerted.
When the Vigilante got to the scene, the two Fulani men took to their heels, after shooting in the direction of the security men. They were chased by the vigilante group and one of the Fulani ‘robbers’, while attempting to scale the fence of the church, broke his leg. The two men were eventually caught and the vigilante handed them over to the Nigerian Police.
The fake news peddlers added that Miyetti Allah sent a delegation of Fulanis to the traditional ruler of the community, warning that if the injured Fulani man died, they would return with venom, wipe out the entire community and set it ablaze. The Divisional Police Officer (DPO) in the area was reported to have gone to the traditional ruler and advised that the community should do everything possible to treat the wounded Fulani man because the Federal Government was very upset about the condition of the Fulani ‘thief’.
It has since been established authoritatively that there was no such incident in the said community and one can only imagine what could have been in the minds of people from that community, more so as it was reported further that the community had to take the injured ‘thief’ to the best hospital in town where the Fulanis were dictating the kind of treatment and food that should be given to the ‘thief’.
This kind of fake news breeds ill-feeling strong enough to lead people to civil strife. It can also lead to people fighting the government for protecting and siding one ethnic group against another.
The fake news about an Igbo man who was reported to have been burnt alive after having his eyes gorged out for urinating near a mosque in the Northern part of Nigeria is also capable of engendering ethnic genocide as the relations of such a man would stop at nothing to avenge the gruesome death of their own.
Like any other trade, fake news vendors usually have ulterior motives to achieve with what they put out and, according to Oguejiofor, “most times, they exploit prevailing situations such elections, bad governance, disease outbreak, etc when they know that people hunger for news and information. In an election season, for instance, fake news is typically geared towards garnering more votes, dividing the electorate, or suppressing votes for one’s rivals.”
As fake news grows and thrives in Nigeria, many Nigerians are being misled into rash actions and avoidable deaths. To guard against all these, readers, listeners or viewers are advised to check multiple sources, and try to establish trusted brands over time.
They are also advised to employ various verification tools, while news content managers are encouraged to check and think before broadcasting or publishing. Added to these, people should be educated on what is trustworthy as against what is fake, so that they can draw a line between the two.
CHUKA UROKO
