17102019 - FG cuts travels, estacodes for ministers, other officials

Core agenda for Diaspora
Commission
18 — Vanguard, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2019
With the recent turn of events
around the world, the relevance of the
Nigerian Diaspora Commission, NID-
COM, Establishment Bill signed into
law on June 30, 2017 by Prof. Yemi
Osinbajo as the Acting President, has
continued to be justified.
As expected of any sample population,
these Nigerians are showing
their true colours – the good, the bad
and ugly. It is estimated that over 15
million Nigerians live outside the
country’s boundaries, particularly in
the Western world (Europe and
America). On the good side, Nigerians
have been cited as the most educated
immigrant group in the West,
having signed their golden signatures
across the professions due to their
high education quotient.
It is also established that Nigerians
remit at least $23 billion (N8.3 trillion)
into our local economy annually,
which is at least 80 per cent of the 2020
Federal budget presented to the National
Assembly last week Tuesday by
President Muhammadu Buhari. Besides,
our students and professionals
are breaking old records and setting
new ones in all fields of knowledge
and human endeavour. If we can find
a way to link up productively with this
group as the Indians do, Nigeria’s
development will be greatly boosted.
On the other side are those who are
giving Nigeria a bad name; those who
have made the Nigerian passport
highly suspect. These are the fraudsters,
crooks, drug dealers, human
traffickers and gangsters. They are
also giving their foreign counterparts
a big run for their money, to the detriment
of our national image.
Thousands of Nigerians are languishing
in foreign jail houses, and
many are on death row. In many African
countries (especially South Africa)
Nigerians are regularly targeted
for xenophobic violence and hostile
attitudes by indigenes and law enforcement
agencies.
The failure of our numerous embassies
and high commissions to connect
with the needs of both segments of
our Diaspora communities makes the
establishment of NIDCOM a welcome
idea.
By its core mandate, NIDCOM is to
connect directly with the Nigerian
Diaspora Organisations, NIDOs,
worldwide and advise governments
at all levels on the best ways to get
the best out of Nigerians living abroad
while proffering solutions that will
minimise the impacts of the bad eggs.
In doing its work, the NIDCOM
must see all Nigerians living abroad
– the good and bad ones – as Nigerians
first and foremost. The blunder
of ethnic profiling committed by
some top officials of NIDCOM when
some Nigerian criminals were apprehended
by the Federal Bureau of Statistics,
FBI, must not be repeated because
it widened our ethnic divisions.
The Nigerian Diaspora communities
are more united than their homebased
counterparts and this must be
encouraged and emulated.
The blunder notwithstanding, NID-
COM must ramp up efforts to build a
productive bridge to our Diaspora
communities.
OPINION
Social media, fake news and a botched presidential wedding
BY TAYO OGUNBIYI
IT is no longer news that the muchhyped
social media-induced ‘wedding
of the year’ between President Muhammadu
Buhari and Hajia Sadia Umar
Farouq, the current Minister for
Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster
Management is nothing but a hoax.
Recall that social media promoters of
the said event had made elaborate plans
for the nuptial. Colorful invites had been
produced and carefully distributed via the
social media to selected guests. In order
to give the event a presidential touch, the
Aso Rock Villa mosque was chosen as the
preferred setting for the ‘wedding’. Notable
Imams and other charismatic clerics
were placed on the red alert to officiate at
the ‘wedding’.
However, as near perfect and elaborate
as the plans for the ‘wedding’ were, its
social media sponsors committed a major
blunder that made a mess of all the
efforts they have put into the whole venture.
They failed to secure the consent
of the groom and the bride. How awful!
No event planner that worth his salt does
that.
So, the wedding turned out to be yet
another social media scam. From the outset,
the President’s men had clearly denied
knowledge of any such event. Also,
the would-be bride, Hajia Farouq, had
vehemently disclaimed the whole arrangement.
In order to really demonstrate that her
husband was not part of the entire phoney
affairs, wife of the President, Aisha
Buhari, who was on vacation outside the
country, is back at the villa. Her return to
the rocky lodge has, at least for now, signified
that there is no vacancy in the ‘oth-
er room’.
But then, the fact that Hajia Buhari had
to hurriedly find her way back home to
protect her grip on the ‘other room’ is a
proof of the far-reaching damage that fake
news engenders. What if the First Lady was
yet to fully complete her business abroad?
Without a doubt, the social media accelerates
conversations in a more interactive
way that makes communication
more effective and worthwhile. It takes
communication beyond the limitations
of the traditional media, which most often
delivers content but doesn’t permit
readers, or as the case may be, viewers or
listeners, to participate in the formation
or development of the content.
In short, social media offers an opportunity
to be seen and be heard without any
restriction, which the traditional media
does not give. Today, our world has been
radically transformed courtesy of the social
media. Information dissemination is
now faster and easier while genuine business
transactions can be promoted through
the medium for a vast global market. Certainly,
the social media has made our
world more exciting.
But then, that is where it all stops. The
social media has unfortunately become
an avenue for the display of unconcealed
acts of boundless social madness. In the
social media, there is little or no regard
for the truth. Indeed, the advent of the social
media has given rise to the incidence
of fake news.
A few years back, fake news was not a
familiar term, but globally it is now seen
as one of the greatest threats to democracy,
security, free debate and unity. Aside
being a favourite term of President Donald
Trump of the United States of America,
fake news was also named 2017’s Word
of the Year.
Fake news is as wicked as terrorism. It
divides the people. It poisons the mind of
an unsuspecting public. It promotes falsehood
and celebrates deception.
Unfortunately, fake news spreads like
wildfire on the social media; getting
quicker and longer-lasting attention than
the truth. For instance, a deep dive into
Twitter shows that fake news was re-tweeted
more often than true news was, and carried
further.
The outcome of a research led by Sinan
Aral of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
has shown that fake news diffused
significantly farther, faster, deeper
and more broadly than the truth in all categories
of information, and the effects
were more pronounced for false political
news than for false news about terrorism,
At the end of the day, the
victims of such misleading
information are faced with
the task of responding to
issues that never really
existed
natural disasters, science, urban legends,
or financial information. According to the
research, it took the real news about six
times as long as fake news to reach 1,500
people.
On many occasions, the genuineness of
information posted on the social media is
suspicious. While the conventional media
processes and scrutinises news gathering
and dissemination and, thus, exer-
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cises control in addition to operating a
feedback mechanism which gives room
for refutation when practitioners erred, the
social media affords faceless individuals
the space to send conniving and spurious
information. Sadly, promoters of fake
news usually get away with it, since there
is no compelling process or law to insist
on confutation.
The result is unlimited madness on the
social media space. Someone with no concrete
substantiation comes up with a carefully
crafted fake story or video, puts it on
the social space and before you could say
Jack the whole space becomes animated,
discussing and sometimes freely passing
judgements based on the ‘strength’ of an
unsubstantiated story.
At the end of the day, the victims of such
misleading information are faced with the
task of responding to issues that never really
existed.
Sadly, some youth have become so addicted
to social networking sites that
you wonder if they do any other productive
thing throughout the day. They spend
hours using these sites, thereby harming
their performance in other fields. Some
of them have made a mess of their lives on
the account of this uninhibited addiction
to social networking sites.
Thus, as valuable as the social media is,
its abuse can be menacing. The use of a
tool largely depends on the users. For instance,
a doctor operates with a knife
while a murderer could also kill with a
knife. For users of the social media, especially
the youth, the watchword, therefore,
is caution.
Though, it might not be feasible to impose
barriers on the cyberspace, the fact
that, unlike the traditional media, the social
media have no gatekeeper should be
of great concern to all well-meaning individuals.
*Ogunbiyi is of the Ministry of Information
& Strategy, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos