Everyone relies on information to make meaningful electoral decisions in politics and electioneering. But when some of the information we get is fake, it turns out to be our meanest opposition. How detrimental could fake news be to the 2023 election in Nigeria?
The tailless Tenrec of Madagascar can deliver up to 32 babies (litres) at once. This can be likened to fake news, which has offspring such as disinformation, misinformation, mal-information, lies, hate speech conspiracies, and many others.
Fake news and its agents can negatively affect the outcome of the forthcoming elections unless it is effectively curbed.
It should be stated that for fake news not to count as Nigeria's biggest opposition, media houses need to uphold the professional ethics of the business and set up fact-checking desks.
A broadcast station, Arise TV, reported that INEC had commenced an investigation into a case of criminal forfeiture against Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, in the 2023 election.
The platform acted by a press release purported to have been issued by the Commission, which filtered into the media space on Friday.
A day after, INEC, in a statement by its National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, in Abuja, described the report as the handiwork of mischief makers.
The media space became agog afterwards as the singular story unsettled both the online and traditional spaces.
Though the station's management ate their words and apologised to the candidate involved, it is worth stating that the damage done by the report by the outfit had not stopped even after the public apology.
So, it is safe to say that the biggest opposition to Nigeria as we march to the polls next year is the spread of fake news.
A phone call to the INEC office by the station or anyone who saw the story would have saved the day and prevented Nigerians from forming irredeemable biases against the said candidate.
It is dangerous because the rebuttal has yet to go viral as the initial report publicised by the broadcast station.
Professor Umar Pate, the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Kashere, Gombe state, who spoke at the Disinformation Conference held in Abuja recently, said the election is an exciting societal event contributing to peaceful coexistence and system endurance.
Therefore, if Nigerians do not see the spread of fake news as an opposition, Nigeria's democracy may fail to progress.
The erudite scholar, speaking on the theme, "Nigeria's 2023 Elections: Curbing information disorder added that information could be used to undermine the quality of the election, and once the process is poisoned, the consequences will not be favourable to us all.
To get out of this, political actors need to forgo the politics of calumny.
The first set of individuals to spread the Arise TV story was the opposition of the APC presidential candidate, with none sharing the apology tendered by the station's management.
Irrespective of existing guidelines, ethical codes and professional roadmap about election coverage and reportage, one can expect breaches and violations from multiple sources for many reasons.
In that case, we should all shun reporting for social media trends and enmity as some opposition still did not believe that INEC did not state it would chare the candidate to court in the first place.
As discussed by some attendants of a Twitter space monitored by our correspondent held on Sunday by some supporters of the PDP and LP presidential candidate, they still did not believe that the previous story was fake despite the rebutals by all the bodies involved.
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