Our worries over Fake News: AN EDITORIAL

We wish to ventilate our frustrations about the rate at which Fake News now eats deep into the fabrics of our information management system. This does not even exclude us at The DEFENDER and the media organisations that we are connected with. It only takes the grace of Allah that we escape by the whiskers into sustaining our integrity.

For instance, when we got report of the DSS ex-DG house money and weapons recovery, we probed the media organisation that published it. Instead for us to be seen in good light, we were confronted with fight. Yet we could not push the Police to undermine its own investigations when it was yet to be through. Where we chose to be silent, serious media were seen partaking until DSS spoke out saying it was fake news and attempt by agents with intent to destabilise the nation.

Tuesday morning we woke into the news that Buhari had confirmed Osinbajo as his running mate for 2019. Presidency was said to have done the confirmation through Mallam Garba Shehu, only for us to call the President’s SSA Media and Publicity for clarification and he said “I did not confirm Buhari/Osinbajo 2019 ticket because it is not my place to do so. Anybody who needs such information should go to APC National Secretariat”.

The worry in this is that, Sahara Reporters and SUN reported it which we believed until after our verification we were told it was not true.

Our worry is that even every news we now read or here in the traditional media (newspaper, radio, television and online) must first be subjected to checks before we choose whether to believe or not. That is we, how about millions of other Nigerians who don’t check and still jump into believing anything?

Recall how many Muslims were killed in Jos because some respected media report Fake News saying MIYETTI ALLAH claimed responsibility for Barkin Ladi killings. How many of those media reported TALKLESS of hype the truth that at the Barkin Ladi incident, the goodhearted man that saved the lives of 300 Christians from the senseless killers who went to the extent of making themselves look like setting out to kill Christians was not only a Muslim but also an Imam. Imagine the nationwide anti-Buhari, anti-government protest by CAN simply because of media reports that the two priests killed in Benue were Fulani herdsmen. How many of those media have reported, deservingly, that the Police, which they make look like are doing nothing over the Benue killings, not only arrested but prosecuted and got the killers sentenced to death? How many of the media have told us that the killers now sentenced to death are Christians?

In Adamawa, did we ever read or hear in the media that one Fulani man was killed, machetted and his body thrown to a river in 2017? We only hear about it when a Yola court sitting on the matter sentenced sentenced the five  killers all Christians to death recently? The funniest? The CAN now write to President Buhari seeking amnesty for the confirmed killers saying they are Christians.

This means CAN and Nigerian media mainly domiciled in the South are not sincere about their cries against the killings in parts of the country and where they appear to be touch for real, they do not want solution to the killings. These are still the same sections of the society, who still pretend like they are not aware of what is going on around them as they keep tagging the killings on Buhari as if they lack human heart.

Thanks to the resilience of President Muhammadu Buhari and his focus not making him bother whose ox is gored. But what country can we say we are therefore? So much that they are the same people now queuing behind Obasanjo/Babangida scrip being acted currently by Saraki and they are claiming Nigeria under Buhari is drifting towards a failed state as, according to them, democracy is under trial by tge government so called dictatorial attitude that we do not see.

The consolation is that, Allah Himself is doing the job for Buhari as all of these anti-Nigeria elements are the ones exposing themselves. All these CAN/media conspirators are keeping their cool since after arrest of Bukola Saraki and Dino Melaye’s thugs killings have stopped in Kwara and Kogi. They do not talk since after Hon. Ahmed Maje exposure of leads to unraveling the sponsors of Plateau killings and arrest of the killers by the Nigerian Army and who handed them to the Police. Those killers, arrested, are not Fulani herdsmen. The Police Sergeant who supplied them weapons is not even a Muslim. Can we therefore confess to ourselves and our Lord how CAN/media, as tools of some irresponsible politicians, are the reason for our post-Boko Haram security challenges?

Here therefore is where we agree with the ongoing mobilisation of Nigerians to go for their PVCs and that doing so matters for the purpose of really correcting the wrong of inciting killings and disaffection by hate speech, fake news prevailing in their own society and doing the correction with their own hands through the use of their PVCs.