All The News Unfit To Print

"Essentially what we do is we identify claims and posts that we suppose are fake, and then we investigate them, then we go ahead and publish what the truth is."

"There are some handles and some pages on Facebook that are really notorious.One of them puts out a story, the same story is replicated in like three or four other pages, and that's how they just widen their reach."

"She's [Lauretta Onochie, close aide to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari], notorious. It's the same format for all of them: half lies, half-truths. We debunk it, and she just doesn't care and moves onto the next one. She's quite consistent."

Lolade Nwanze, journalist, head, digital operations, Guardian Nigeria newspaper

 

"Fake news kills people. We have seen a lot of things like that. Some of the deadly clashes in Nigeria were sparked off by fake news."

"[It might be a good idea to begin] the naming and shaming of members [of the news media] that peddle fake news [to stem the problem]."

Tolu Ogunlesi, media assistant, President Muhammadu Buhari

 

"If we are not careful, World War III will be started by fake news, and that fake news will probably be generated by a Nigerian."

Wole Soyinka, Nigerian writer, Nobel laureate

There are some things that Wole Soyinka laughs off, and others he doesn't think so amusing in the Nigerian/African phenomenon of runaway fake news proliferation. When he reads the many and regular death obituaries dedicated to his unfortunate passing, he thinks they're amusing, and states they're an enjoyable reading pastime. However, when he considers how dangerous a weapon some types of fake news is, contributing to the viral tribal and sectarian hostility rampant in Nigeria, he feels great concern.

The Nigerian public is preparing to vote in Saturday's presidential election in an atmosphere of widespread unhappiness over high unemployment rates, endemic poverty and the insecurity of Islamist terrorism in some parts of the country. This is Africa's largest, most populous country, a country whose natural resources in petroleum resources should mean that the government has ample funds to do credit to an emerging economy with a responsibility to improving the lives of its people.

Yet the country is riven with distrust, in a nation that is about half Christian and half Muslim and wholly impoverished and dysfunctional. Nigerian corruption and money-making schemes are notorious, its practitioners reach worldwide in an effort to relieve the gullible of money they are clearly incapable of holding on to, enriching Nigerian crooks who find their outreaches personally satisfactorily beneficial to their own rising standard of living.

Even while government officials warn of the dangers of promulgating fake news and outdated photographs that depict communal violence, they continue to occur and as they do, trigger retaliatory killings among tribal populations. Photos purporting to depict deaths in the conflict between herdsmen and farmers in central Nigeria have succeeded in spurring vicious revenge killings.

With over 24 percent of the population now online, using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube posting falsehoods non-stop, 16 media outlets have been collaborating on an initiative to fact-check through CrossCheck Nigeria, for the purpose of researching suspect election claims that circulate endlessly online. 

Stories recently discredited include allegations that Nigeria's first lady is actively persuading Nigerians not to vote for her husband; others that U.S. President Donald Trump has endorsed Atiku Abubakar, the opposition candidate, appearing on social media and from there often published as news on news websites. Africa Check, the continent's first fact-checking organization operating since 2012, inspired CrossChek Nigeria.

 

Africa has long had the problem of fake news circulating harmfully to persuade people in a direction clearly inimical to their own long-term well-being, fuelled by illiteracy and in no small part by government secrecy keeping the continent's 1.2 billion people in thrall to news sources that publish only the government line. 

After Kenya's disputed 2017 presidential election where misinformation circulated online raised political tensions in a country whose deadly post-vote violence along ethnic lines represents a timeless tradition, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta signed a cybercrimes bill calling for fines and prison sentences for those convicted of spreading fake news. The devil is always in the details; corruption and fake news helped elect the man.

In Uganda, people posting news viewed as fake by the government where the government is negatively portrayed, are coming under pressure with authorities warning that perpetrators will face charges under a law enacted in 2011 where criminal penalties will be imposed for the misuse of computers. Where once it was possible for governments to keep their populations in the dark, the growing power and ubiquity of social media now delivers news, true and false.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has opposed Kenya's law, concerned it could stifle freedom of the press. The courts in Kenya have resisted upholding the government position, releasing an activist for posting false news accusing the government of plotting murder, by ruling that the mere publication of false news does not represent a crime.

If it was, many of the government hierarchies in Africa who have been accused of spreading misinformation or maligning reports that were true, should be criminally prosecuted. Nigerian authorities claim reports of abuses by the military during campaigns against militants to be false, and disagree when human rights watchdogs, informed by on-the-ground witnesses report higher death tolls than those cited by official government statistics.

Behind a street seller on the outskirts of the capital Abuja, Nigeria, on Tuesday, a billboard promotes Atiku Abubakar, who is competing with incumbent Muhammadu Buhari for the presidency. Photo: Ben Curtis/Associated Press