Nigeria’s Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, says the Federal Government is ready to support youths to influence the passage of the hate speech bill presently before the National Assembly.
Osinbajo gave the assurance on Monday in Abuja while engaging the All Progressives Congress, APC, social media operators and influencers at a virtual meeting held at the party’s national secretariat.
The Vice President also assured that the government would not relent in expanding and sustaining youth-friendly projects, including media platforms that would add value to the society.
Also speaking at the virtual meeting, Alhaji Ahmed Ismaeel, National Youth Leader of the APC, described the meeting as the first of its kind and very engaging, adding that the party would continue to organise such meetings from time to time.
He said the meeting was organised to particularly recognise the party’s online soldiers and media influencers, who had over the years, helped to shape public opinion on it.
Speaking on the party’s defeat at the just concluded Edo governorship election, Ismaeel said the party would do a post-mortem on the outcome of the election to know why it lost.
“We thought we had covered the grounds very well, but there was a blindside we didn’t see, the party intends to do a post-mortem on the election this week.
“We will conduct a post-mortem this week, to know how far and how we found ourselves in this kind of situation,” he said.
Ismaeel, who is also a member of the APC Caretaker and Reconciliation Committee, noted that knowing that the party did not win the last presidential election in Ondo state, would make the election to be dicey.
He hinted that the state Governor had, however, done what he needed to do in terms of reconciling aggrieved party members, there was more to be done.
Ismaeel stressed that the party would not take anything for granted again, but would rather go out and fight to ensure that it retained Ondo State.
He said it was disheartening to note that for the first time since 2015, the APC doesn’t have a representative in the South-South geopolitical zone again, adding that this was worrisome.
Ismaeel said while the party may have lost the Edo state governorship election, it had to work hard, especially to ensure that it won the forthcoming Ondo State governorship election slated for October 10.
About 100 APC media influencers participated at the event.
Nigeria like other developing nations has varieties of media technology through which information gets to the people.
Apart from the conventional media like Television, Radio, and Newspapers, Digital media services such as email, social media sites, websites are among others playing the role of information dissemination.
The interface with the APC media influencers and its leadership was an opportunity to review performances and renew commitment, according to its organisers.
