To curb  quackery and rising cases of fake news in  journalism practice, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has given its nod to a proposed partnership sought by the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ).
Director-General of NITDA, Kashifu  Inuwa, who stated this during a recent courtesy visit by members of the Union, led by its National President,  Chris Isiguzo, at the Commission’s Headquarters, emphasized on the relevance of emerging technologies in journalism.
He decried the adverse effect of fake news which he described as “unimaginable” and a huge threat to the profession.
“Today, anybody can be a journalist without knowing the journalistic ethics. So, how can we address that?
“We can only do that through this kind of engagement, by training and retraining, because journalists need to understand that it is now about digital journalism.
“For you to engage in that, one needs to understand the technology and be able to verify the information and its source before publishing or broadcasting”, he said.
Although saddled with the mandate of regulating the use of Information Technology (IT) in the country, Inuwa,  noted that in recent times, the responsibility has gone beyond establishing the DOs and DON’Ts due to the dynamic nature of technology, which, he said, has further necessitated the need for journwith requisite skills and ‘technology know-how’.
“We need to always reskill, update our knowledge and understand how the technology works in order to harness the potentials therein and use it for better things”, he said.
He continued that this is “because technology can be used as either a tool or a weapon. So, it is left for the user to decide what should drive the purpose.
“Everyone has a part to play in ensuring that unscrupulous elements don’t misuse the tech to mislead people”, he said.
Nothing that journalism is a major tool to close the gap between the Federal Government and the people, he said the partnership would greatly be beneficial to both parties.
“As a government, we have an ambitious target of achieving ninety five per cent digital literacy by 2030. It is not possible for us to train ninety five percent of the population on one-on-one basis.
“So, we need to be innovative; We need to find a way of leveraging on organizations like yours to achieve that because if we can have people writing about digital literacy, the reach would  be far more wider than what we can do as a government.
“That’s why we had already started engaging your members in some states of the federation;  training and letting them know they have a responsibility of helping the government in sanitizing the system so that we can address the challenge of fake news misinformation and disinformation”, he said.
He also assured NITDA’s support for the forthcoming National Executive Council Workshop on Digital Journalism organized by the Union, and called for modalities for the interventions/trainings as requested, in order for NITDA to know the number of members and make adequate provisions toward kick-starting the process.
Earlier, the NUJ President  thanked the NITDA for sponsoring journalists to different trainings in parts of the country, including  Jigawa, Kano, Gombe, and Kebbi States.
Isiguzo also appealed to NITDA to provide necessary equipment and facilities for the Union’s National Secretariat and  International Insute of Journalism (IIJ) in order to aid optimal operations.