Concerned about the volume of hate messages in the social media and the level of crime in the Nigerian cyberspace, the National Orientation Agency (NOA) is synergizing with the National Communications Commission (NCC) to discourage the trend.
This was the fall-out of a working visit by the NOA Director General, Garba Abari to the NCC Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Danbata where Abari canvassed a more systematic deployment of social media for character molding and youth guidance.
Describing communication media as character molders, Abari said Nigeria was paying a costly prize for the erosion of its values over the years, largely by the irresponsible use of communication media and the infiltration of wrong values into the new media. He said the role of social media in an information-driven age was very critical to the values reorientation drive of Nigeria, calling for a change to positive use of social media.
Similarly, Prof. Umar Danbata urged Nigerian cyber space users to be more responsible and sensitive to the protection of the nation’s core values. He also urged NOA to x-ray the Cyber Crimes Act to discover possible windows for sensitization of cyberspace users on the avoidance of cybercrimes and the need to deploy cyberspace for positive, productive and patriotic purposes.
A six-man joint committee was set up to work out areas of collaboration between NOA and NCC toward promoting healthier, more patriotic content in social media messaging in the country.