A Professor of Political Science at the University of Northerner Iowa, Cedar Falls, Pita Agbese from the United States of America, said the use of the social media has the capacity of integrating Nigerians across ethnic and political divides if it is properly used.
The University Don spoke at the faulty of Humanities, Social and Management Science lecture series with the theme: Social Media, internal security and Nigeria’s socio-economic development at the Bingham University, Karu, Nasarawa State.
According to him, “social media can be used for effective governance as government can use it disseminate their activities, income and expenditure of government to avoid speculation on government activities”. He called for caution on how gory pictures of incidents are posted on the social media with the intention to cause ethnic and religious crises.
The Benue state born professor said the distrust between government and the people has been largely responsible for fake news on the social media, hence, government functionaries must be ready at all time to reveal the true state of events in government to avoid social media journalist writing stories that are far from the actual happening.
Ace broadcaster and Co-anchor of Kakkaki on African Independent Television, Salamatu Ibrahim who presented a paper on “social media, national security and the role of women”, called on women to use their active presence on the social media to inculcate security values on their children.
According to her “The active time women spend on the social media may not be unconnected to how their children are glued to the social media.
Salamatu cautioned that as useful as the social media is in exposing crimes, tracking criminal activities and educating users, it can also be destructive sighting the disseminating of fake news, propaganda, inciting hate speeches, recruiting terrorist and propagating messages of separatists.
It was a consensus by all the speakers at the event that the social media should be a veritable tool for building peace, uniting the people, promoting national orientation and be the quickest platform for disseminating information for the socio-economic and political advancement of Nigeria.
