A chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Abdullahi Enilobo, has urged the media to always verify facts and publish the truth. He stated this in Lagos, Southwest Nigeria, during a media briefing held against the background of fake news prevalence in the Media space.
“Before you people fly any information, you must ensure that they are things that have substance that can be backed up with facts and evidences”, he said.
Nigeria is currently battling to contain the scourge of fake news, with the government proposing a regulation of the social media where most of the misinformation take place.
Enilobo explained that the media is one the professions that is surrounded by intelligent individuals, and as such, must help sanitise the information space through proper fact-checking and evidence-based reporting of issues and events.
“It’s not just helping and assisting to disseminate information, I encourage you to also fine-tune and do proper research and fact-checking before publishing. Whatever cannot be substantiated should be dropped.
“Unfortunately, what I discovered now is that the Media too is assisting in disseminating false information, and this spreads very fast. We must put correction to this or else our country will continue to degenerate, and the consequences will still bounce back to the Media,” he said.
He advised Media professionals to distinct themselves from the issues and events they cover in order to maintain and sustain their integrity.
Enilobo is the organising Secretary of the APC in Lagos State and the party leader in the Alimosho Federal Constituency.
