By Doyin Ojosipe
Amidst persistent bad governance in Nigeria, political apathy and lack of social cohesion among youths, experts have enjoined young people to be media and information literacy competent in order to be the change agents the country needs.
From religious to ethnic and political violence, youths have been at the centre, either as perpetrators or victims. A report by Nachana David et.al notes that Nigeria is seen as a conflict prone society as no zone is immune to unrest. “The various dimensions of conflicts witnessed ranges from ethno-religious, inter-communal, post-election violence, and so on.
The report further states that while over 187 ethno-religious conflicts were recorded between 1999 and April 2009, youths were said to have perpetrated over 90 percent of the crises
Victor Osaghae, in his report on Causes of Nigeria Unrest and Conflict Situation, states that the genesis of the unrest are injustice, unemployment, religious intolerance and extremism, illiteracy and government not fulfilling agreements reached with unions.
Although Nigerian youths make up about 70 percent of the country’s population, these scenarios remained unchallenged except for the ongoing #EndSARS worldwide protests which showed youths are beginning to navigate the social media to call for change.
This, however, does not in any way signal a period of proper use of the social media for effective communication and intercultural dialogue as the sharing of fake news and hate speech is still rampant.
Ifedolapo Ademosu, a lecturer at Caleb University and one of the speakers at a two-day webinar organised by the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), said the fact that young people who are easily influenced by friends and media trends are constantly exposed to partisan and polarised discussions on both traditional and social media, called for more education on media and information literacy.
She said this affected their sense of judgement, while challenging “the principles of equity, diversity and right to free and fair discourse and debate.”
Presenting a paper on Media and Information Literacy and Freedom of Information: Essential Tools in the Promotion of Dialogue and Participatory Democracy, Ademosu said the need for youths to be functional and critical consumers of information while producing same cannot be over-emphasised, adding that the focus of MIL was to provide such competencies.
Similarly, Dr Sarah Lwahas, a lecturer at the University of Jos, said “Understanding MIL will increase the competence level of young people to create a more accurate and subtle understanding of other people, compelling them to respect pluralism and avoid stereotypes as well as applying media content critically for citizen empowerment.”
She decried the poor literacy level in Africa, noting that it was responsible for the kind of leaders that the continent has been saddled with.
Dr. Lwahas noted that older greedy politicians who did not want the youths to make it to a position of leadership had continuously hijacked state youth councils, recruiting members as thugs to settle political scores with opponents, rigging elections, causing electoral violence and forming pseudo political parties.
She said this type of political practice was only possible simply because many of the youths were not literate and/or lacked the knowledge to access media contents and being able to analyse media messages.
“The youth seem to suffer from the inability to harmonise their thoughts and engage institutions that can assist and monitor them to achieve their outcomes… they lack mechanism to evaluate violence or discrimination against them,” she added.
A fundamental concern of MIL, Dr. Lwahas observed, is the need to enlighten and empower people with the needed competencies and critical thinking skills for accessing suitable media information sources that will help them make proper or right decisions.
In his presentation on Social Media as a Communication Strategy in the Promotion of Peace and Intercultural Dialogue, Chibuike Mgbeahuruike pointed out that the level of MIL competence of social media users could counter the ills it is being used to perpetrate.
He noted that while peaceful coexistence was under threat because of mischief makers, social media had the power to promote peaceful democratic discourse, intercultural dialogue and social cohesion, if put to proper use.
He said the functional and critical use of the social media as a change agent was needed “at a time when prejudice and hatred are all too common, when extremists seek new recruits through incitement and identity-based appeal, when politicians use divisiveness as a strategy to win elections.”
Mgbeahuruike also explained that intercultural dialogue would help address stereotyping, violence, create understanding among cultures and enable co-operation and peaceful co-existence while maintaining mutual respect for the religious differences of the two dominant religions.
In the same vein, Zubairu Atta in his paper on Social Media as a New Communication Strategy in the Promotion of Peace and Intercultural Dialogue urged the youths to grab the opportunities offered by social media as a unifying platform to create a discourse on intercultural dialogue, peaceful coexistence, and decision making.
He noted that youths had a responsibility to partake in community or national governance while also challenging social order where they felt uncomfortable.
He said they needed to find ways of understanding the dynamics of the social order while making contributions geared towards change.
“Youths and students need to understand that they cannot be different from the larger society even though a new world, the digital world, has evolved from the social media and as ‘digital natives’ with different language, culture and rules of engagement they may remove themselves from the reality of the situation in their communities,” he said.
Programme Manager for West Africa, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Angela Odah, said youths have continuously borne the brunt of bad governance, living through harsh policies and underfunded educational system which had resulted in low quality in education as well as prolonged strikes.
She noted that it was high time the youths spoke out and demanded the dividend of democracy as was done with the #EndSARS protests.
According to her, “Historically, Nigerian youths have been in the forefront of the struggle for democratization of society, and of decision making in Nigeria’s institutions of higher learning. Youths have historically played vital roles in the transformation of societies. Nigerian youths, who had hitherto been tagged “lazy youths” seem to have braced up to play the role of ensuring that our political leaders and government agencies are held accountable for the polices they produce in the governance of our country.”
Odah noted that webinar such as this which is focused on promoting peace, intercultural dialogue and democratic decision making using social media will help in addressing the division among youths, including the effects of fake news and misinformation.
She said the use of social media was strategic because of its unifying role, while providing the platform for youths to educate and engage one another.
“The #EndSARS Protests have used the power of the social media to raise awareness, build solidarity and highlight the crimes and gross violations of the rights and dignity of Nigerians by elements within the law enforcement agency,” she added.
In a welcome address, Coordinator of the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), Dr. Chido Onumah, stated that the webinar was meant to build the MIL capacity of youths to promote peace, intercultural dialogue and democratic decision making.
According to him, young people would lend their voices correctly when they are able to access and understand the right information, while developing their communication abilities
He said the aim of the MIL training was to arm youths with the knowledge of evaluating information and their sources in order to address misinformation or bias about internet messages and news on different societal issues which can lead to tension, violence and truncation of the democratic process in the country.
“This intervention is planned to provide youths the opportunity to understand and deal with contemporary issues in a responsible, informed, inclusive and effective way, to promote peace and progress in Nigeria,” he said.
The webinar, which was sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, is the third in the series of AFRICMIL’s Political Education Project (PEP). The PEP project which is supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation involves round tables for youths and students in tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The first edition was held at the University of Abuja in 2018 while the second edition was held in 2019 at the International Institute of Journalism (IIJ), Abuja. The 2020 edition was held via Zoom because of COVID-19.
Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (RLS) West Africa is a German Political Foundation present in West Africa since 2010. It organises national, regional, and international debates and supports scientific research from the perspective of a more just world. It accompanies civil society organisations to strengthen democratic participation, rule of law and the social state.
Presently RLS West Africa activities are under three themes: youth and politics; work and social justice; natural resources: vulnerabilities and alternatives. The Foundation is named after Rosa Luxemburg a Polish German revolutionary and activist who played a key role in the founding of the Polish Social Democratic Party and the Spartacus League which grew into the Communist Party of Germany.
As a political theoretician, Luxemburg developed a humanitarian theory of Marxism, stressing democracy and revolutionary mass action to achieve international socialism. In Nigeria, RLS West Africa has supported series of debates on issues of development: political, economic, social or cultural with selected higher institutions and non-governmental organisations and trade unions.
Started in 2017, the purpose of the programme is to increase youth political participation in the region to strengthen democracy and contribute towards a peaceful political culture.
Doyin Ojosipe is media and communication officer at the African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (AFRICMIL).
