By James Orji
The Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed said peddlers of fake news are at the verge of throwing the world into World War III. The last global war was fought between 1939 and 1945, ending with the Allied Forces bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing the surrender of Japanese and German forces.
Mohammed said another war is imminent except something drastic is done by global information managers to stop fake news.
The minister spoke on Monday when he appeared before the house of representatives committee on information, national orientation, ethics and values to defend his ministry’s 2022 budget, where he also pleaded with the lawmakers not to slash the yearly budget of his ministry.
Mohammed said, “the danger (of underfunding the ministry) is that, if I need N1 million to digitise and you give me N200,000, what can I do? Year in, year out, we roll it over. Meanwhile, we are losing these documents by the day.
“There are some pictures that we need to preserve for our grandchildren. If we are unlucky to have flood or rains or fire disaster or termites eat up some of these valuable records, it will not be good for us. If we get timely release of money that we need for the project, it will save us of all these.
“Very soon, we will be going to the UK to get information pertaining to us,” he said.
Speaking on the negative impacts of fake news on global politics, the minister said social media has become a veritable platform of spreading fake news, adding that the traditional news platforms such as newspapers have been relegated to the background.
According to him, “the people today, they don’t read newspapers, they don’t watch television — it’s social media. And it is most expensive; the most unseen enemy, they are there every moment.
“With fake news today and misinformation — I have always said here that the next world war will be caused by fake news.
“You can see even the US that use to pride itself on the freedom of the press is now questioning the role of the social media.”
This is not the first time that the minister will speak against fake news. Last month, Mohammed, while speaking at the Sal Island 64th Conference of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation – Conference for Africa and second edition of UNWTO Global Tourism Investment Forum, lamented how “deep” fake news was being used to attack government officials in the country.
Mohammed said “As a matter of fact, Nigerians should know that we have graduated from ordinary fake news to ”deep” fake news. The danger of deep fake news is that it is difficult to differentiate the fake news from real news.
“This is because purveyors of deep fake news would take a story, be it a video or a photograph and make it look real. They will take videos of what is happening in other lands, doctor them and freely circulate them as what is really happening in Nigeria. Ditto photographs.
“News stories are even worse, because they embellish such fake stories with quotes and videos and even quote government officials, as if they are real. This becomes more difficult for unsuspecting Nigerians to know the difference between the fake news and real information,” the minister said.
He described as unfortunate the manner some known traditional news platforms have joined the bandwagon of purveying fake news, noting that such news has been used to destroy a lot of people, noting that “these people have no shame because they know from the beginning that they are telling deep fake news, they have no credibility and can destroy anybody at will with their weapon”.
