A former National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Attahiru
The former INEC Boss noted that it was important that WhatsApp
Jega spoke on Monday at the launch of a report titled, “WhatsApp and Nigeria’s 2019 Elections: Mobilising the People, Protecting the Vote”. The research was carried out by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) in partnership with the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom (UK).
He stated: “This research basically tried as I said earlier exploratory basis to help us understand how Nigerians are using WhatsApp as a platform for either electioneering campaigns or for general political activities. I think it is good that we begin to pay greater attention to that, I believe they are pace setters, they have started something good and many researchers now can go into that.”
On what reform he would like to see going forward, he said, “definitely, I will like to see a situation in which increasingly credible news is used on the platform rather than fake news. “Obviously political parties and candidate can use this platform to inform voters and to inform the public about their policies, about their programmes, about what they can do rather than use it in a manner in which they are abusing opponents or casting aspersions and using fake postings.
” It is very important that we use it for the good in terms of how it can add value to our political development and how it can add value to the integrity of our elections.
“Some of the contributors were raising issues about how small the samples of the study is because they focus primarily on Kano and Oyo States, other researchers can come in and look at other areas and the more we are able to do the research the better we will be informed both the good uses and the bad uses of social media and how best we can improve the old uses and mitigate the bad uses.”
On his assessment of the usage of the WhatsApp platform, Jega noted: “I did not study the research but from what the researchers have said, you can see that some used it for the good, but many other used it negatively in terms of fake news or disinformation. The challenge is how can political parties or candidates continue to use this platform positively, and I think that is what can add value to our process.”