The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has lamented the spate at which critics of the Buhari-led Federal Government are distorting messages of the government using the social media.
The minister expressed the concerns at a Colloquium organized by the National Coalition of Apostolic Leaders in Lagos on Friday.
”Everyday, this group of people deliberately distort our messages while also suffusing the atmosphere with their own version of information”, Segun Adeyemi, a special assistant to the minister quoted Mohammed as saying in a statement.
Recall that Mohammed was the National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC before he was appointed minister after his party won the 2015 Presidential elections. As spokesman of the then opposition party, Mohammed was a torn in the flesh of the PDP-led Goodluck Jonathan administration.
In a bid to thwart the alleged ‘cyber misinformation’, the minister disclosed the government adopted the Town Hall strategy to ensure that Nigerians get undiluted and correct information”,
His words, ”What we have done is to counter them using what we call Town Hall Meetings that allow us to speak with Nigerians directly, while also getting the necessary feedback. We have held such Town Hall Meetings here in Lagos, Kaduna, Kano, Uyo, Enugu and Abuja, during which Ministers interacted directly with a cross section of Nigerians. Having realized its effectiveness, we have lined up more Town Hall Meetings across the country,”
”We are aware that it is not just enough to do something, you must be seen to be doing it. In other words, the activities of government are as important as communicating them. That is why this Administration places much premium on communicating with the people.
”Mixing the traditional means of communication with the modern ones, we are reaching out to the people through radio, television,
newspapers and the all-powerful Social Media to keep them abreast of developments in these three broad areas”.
Mohammed thanked the Nigeria Coalition of Apostolic Leaders for organizing the State of the Nation Colloquium, but urged them to sustain it.
”It is impressive, and indeed highly commendable, that rather than sit back and complain endlessly, thus becoming a part of the problem, the Nigeria Coalition of Apostolic Leaders has opted to be a part of the solution. It is however important that this Colloquium be sustained,” he said.
