To combat the spread of fake news in the Ekiti Governorship race, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) has introduced a contemporary information management system.
During a pre-election press conference in Ado Ekiti, the CDD Director, Idayat Hassan, expressed displeasure with the high degree of fake news in the last few days aimed at devaluing and discrediting significant players in the race.
Hassan, who was represented by Austin Aigbe, a Senior Programme Officer, highlighted the propagation of bogus and unverified news as the biggest threat to the success of Saturday’s governorship election in Ekiti.
He went on to say that false news was the most apparent and mind-boggling evil threatening the Saturday election, adding that it had the potential to destabilize the political process.
“Some of these news are meant to divide the polls, mislead the voters , affect turnout and incite electoral violence. In the last one week, the CDD had heard about a news saying that Segun Oni had sealed a deal with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to step down and work for APC to win. Another news that we got was that, the SDP Mega rally billed for Thursday was canceled, this also surfaced,” He said.
The civil society organization urged the federal government, particularly the Independent National Democratic Commission and security agencies, to crack down on purveyors of fake news in order to defend the integrity of the country’s electoral process.
The director urged Ekiti citizens to vote their consciences in the election and to reject the lure of vote buying, which is slowly destroying the electoral system.
| ReplyForward |
