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Misinformation: Google to improve search snippets using machine learning software

Raji Olatunji
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Misinformation: Google to improve search snippets using machine learning software

Google has disclosed ongoing efforts to improve its search engine using its machine learning software called Multitask Unified Model (MUM).

This is coming in response to the trend of misinformation featured on its widely used platform.

Google search engine is said to have become more vulnerable to spreading false information online.

READ: IFCN announces application for ENGAGE phase of the Google’s Global Fact Check Fund

Pandu Nayak, the Vice President of Search at Google, told journalists last Wednesday that the growth of misinformation over the years has become a pressing challenge for them.

“We can only deliver on our mission if we can deliver high-quality results,” Nayak noted.

The company said it would use its artificial intelligence systems to improve search snippets.

It said it would use its machine learning software, MUM, to check information across multiple reliable sources that agree on the same facts.

According to Google, the process will allow the system to come to a consensus even if the sources don’t phrase the information similarly.

Also, the company is expanding its “About this result” feature to include more context about search results.

The feature will allow people to see more information about a search result.

Google is also launching “About this result” in more languages, including Spanish, German and Indonesian.

Another feature Google is updating is its “content advisories,” to tell users when not much information is available during breaking news and developing situations.

ALSO READ: Nikon, Sony and Canon to fight deepfakes with latest camera technology

This will also warn users when information is available but may be unreliable, based on Google’s ranking system for search results.

The new features stress the efforts against purveyors of misinformation.

However, none of the updates applies to YouTube, also owned by Google.

According to Nayak, YouTube hosts content and uses a personalized feed, though he noted that they both share ideas.

“Their problem is a little bit different than ours in search.

“We don’t work on YouTube directly, and YouTube doesn’t work on us directly,” Nayak noted.

Instablog9ja circulates fake images of arrested Owo massacre suspects

Omolola Roseline Pedro
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Instablog9ja circulates fake images of arrested Owo massacre suspects

ON WEDNESDAY, the 10th of August 2022, a popular Nigerian blog, Instablog9ja at about 2:06 pm posted on its social media pages (Instagram and Twitter), the identities, including names and photos, of the five arrested suspected killers of victims of the Owo massacre.

In the Twitter link archived here, Instablog9ja on its Twitter handle @instablog9ja listed the names of the arrested suspects as Idris Ojo, Ishaq Farouk, Abdulmannan Obadiki, Abdulkareem Musa, and Abdul Azeez Obadaki, all from Kogi state.

Attached to these names were photos of four men in green uniforms and one in blue uniforms.

The tweet was accompanied with a caption that reads: “Owo church mass@cre: identities of the five arrested suspects revealed. The identities of the five suspects arrested in connection with the brutal killing of worshippers at St. Francis catholic church, Owo, Ondo state have been unveiled.”

READ: How foreign-linked accounts amplify disinformation about gunmen attack in Nigeria’s Plateau state

The post, now deleted from its Instagram page, had on Twitter garnered over 1,500 likes, and over 560 retweets as of 5:30 pm on the 11th of August, 2022.

The ICIR had on the 5th of June this year reported how gunmen suspected to be from the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) invaded St. Francis Catholic Church located in Owo LGA of Ondo state.

The attack led to the death of scores of worshippers, leaving many others severely injured.

Two months later, Premium Times reported that Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, Lucky Irabor, a general, had on Tuesday addressed the press in Abuja and announced the arrest of some suspected persons behind the gruesome Owo attack.

CLAIM

That the tweet shows the names and photos of the five arrested suspected killers of worshippers in Owo Catholic Church attack.

A screenshot of the Instablog9ja post on Twitter on August 11.
A screenshot of the Instablog9ja post on Twitter on August 11.

THE FINDINGS

Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is FALSE.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Chief of Defence Staff, Lucky Irabor, a general, had announced the arrest of five terrorists suspected to be behind the Owo church attack.

The CDS said that, through the collaborative efforts of military and DSS personnel, four terrorists were arrested at Eika, Okehi LGA, Kogi State on 1st of August, 2022.

Those arrested, according to Irabor, included Idris Abdulmalik Omeiza (a.k.a Bin Malik), Momoh Otohu Abubakar, Aliyu Yusuf Itopa, and Auwal Ishaq Onimisi.

The Defence chief also mentioned the arrest of another suspected terrorist, Idris Ojo (32 years), who was apprehended at Ayetoro in Osi LGA of Ondo State through the combined effort of military and DSS personnel on 7th of August 2022.

In another statement, General Irabor said that preliminary investigation revealed that Idris Abdulmalik Omeiza was the mastermind of the terror attack on the Owo Catholic Church as well as the attack on a Police Station in Adavi LGA, Kogi State on 23 June 2022, during which a policeman was killed, and weapons carted away.

Idris Ojo, the CDS said, was one of the suspected ISWAP terrorists who escaped from the Kuje Medium Correctional Centre earlier on the 5th of July, 2022.

The CDS added that “Ojo was arrested alongside Jimoh Ibrahim (39 years), a sympathizer of the terrorist group, who accommodated him,” The ICIR reported.

Further findings revealed that the names and pictures of the people posted by Instablog9ja were those of prisoners who escaped from the Medium Security Correctional Centre, Kuje, Federal Capital Territory (F.C.T) following the jailbreak that took place on July 5, the ICIR had reported.

READ: Photos do not show gunmen attack in Plateau state

Similarly, further checks revealed that the uniforms worn by the suspects whose photos were uploaded suggest that they have been convicted and were serving jail terms in the correctional facility.

The Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) had, following the Kuje jailbreak, posted the identities of the escapees on the run on its portal.

THE VERDICT

The claim that the tweet shows the names and photos of the five arrested suspected killers of worshippers in Owo Catholic Church attack is FALSE; findings revealed that the identities of the five persons tweeted by Instablog9ja were those on the wanted “escapees” list of the nation’s Correctional authority and not suspects connected to the Owo church attack.

Old video of crowd booing Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq circulates online

Opeyemi Kehinde
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Old video of crowd booing Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq circulates online

A VIDEO showing Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq reportedly being booed while trying to address a gathering at a public event has circulated online.

In the trending video, retrieved from WhatsApp on August 10, 2022, some people in the gathering were heard shouting ‘Ole’ (a Yoruba word for thief) shortly before he was whisked away by security men at the scene.

The video, which was recently posted on social media is trending online, as Nigerians head to the poll in February 2023.

Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq is the current governor of Kwara State in north-central Nigeria. He is seeking a second term to retain the governorship seat through his party – the All Progressives Congress (APC) platform in the 2023 general election.

READ: Kwara govt takes measures to address fake news, rumour peddling

The caption on the video reads: “Kwara state youths chase their governor out of the podium, say they are tired of APC also calling him Ole (thief). Finally, youths have woken up.”

The video was also traced to a TikTok account named Saint T with the username: @saint_t_comedy.

The video, posted by the TikTok user on August 9, 2022 has garnered over 68,000 views, over 400 comments and over 2,600 likes as of 12 noon on Thursday, August 11.

CLAIM

Video shows youths booed Kwara governor on stage in August 2022, saying they are tired of APC.

The old video posted on TikTok with a misleading claim in August 2022.

THE FINDINGS

Checks by The FactCheckHub show that the video is a 2018 footage while the captions on it are MISLEADING.

Findings revealed that the video is an old footage where some people disrupted the Ilorin Emirate Descendants Progressive Union’s (IEDPU) 53rd conference that Abdulrazaq attended on the 25th of December, 2018 before he became Kwara governor.

The Punch newspaper reported that supporters of the APC and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) disrupted the event held at the Emir of Ilorin Palace forecourt.

It added that Abdulrazaq, then the APC governorship candidate in the state, “was called to the podium to announce his donation” during the inauguration of the 2019 calendar of the union, when some supporters of the then Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, shouted him down, chanting “Atunwa” and “Ole”, among other words, to prevent him from speaking.

Meanwhile, Abdulrazaq’s supporters were shouting his slogan “O to ge” (translated “enough is enough” in English) to counter the opposing chants, the newspaper reported in 2018.

The disruption of that IEDPU’s event was also reported here, here and here in 2018 by several media outlets in the country.

ALSO READ: No, image does not show current state of Tanke bridge in Kwara state

Also reacting to the trending video, Bashir Adigun, the Special Adviser, Political Communication to the Kwara governor, in a statement reported by ThisDay newspaper, said the video was taken about four years ago.

“The video was taken in 2018 at the annual event organised by Ilorin Emirate’s apex sociocultural body, the IEDPU. The governor who was a candidate then, attended the event as a special guest of his home community association.

“Those who trended the video desperately meant to send the signal that an incumbent governor was being booed. That probably misled the wrong audience.

“Members of the public are kindly urged to ignore the old video clip which is clearly one propaganda gone awry,” the statement partly read.

The statement was also reported here and here.

THE VERDICT

The claim that the video showed youths booed Kwara governor on stage recently, saying they are tired of APC is MISLEADING; as findings show that the video is a 2018 footage.

Meta chatbot spreads fake news, slams Facebook

Raji Olatunji
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Meta chatbot spreads fake news, slams Facebook

Blender Bot 3, the new chatbot Meta is test-running has slammed Facebook and spread fake news, reports have shown.

The chatbot, launched on August 5, 2022, by Meta, is a new prototype in its series of Blender Bots, which uses the California-based company’s conversational artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Meta chatbot is expected to converse on most topics by crawling the internet for contents and learn from its conversations.

Meta has glorified the chatbot’s ability to “combine conversational skills – like personality, empathy and knowledge – [and] incorporating long-term memory and searching the internet to carry out meaningful conversations.”

However, the chatbot has generated mixed reactions since Meta rolled out a demo website in the United States, inviting members of the public to chat with the tool and share their feedbacks with developers.

Even though Meta claimed that the chatbot was designed to avoid “learning from unhelpful or dangerous responses”, media reports, including that of The Guardian, have shown how the Blender Bot 3 churns out contents that seem uncomfortable even for the Menlo Park leadership.

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who has been working towards improving Meta’s reputation after being criticised over the spread of misinformation on its platforms, was slammed by the chatbot.

The Blender Bot 3 told BuzzFeed’s Max Woolf that Zuckerberg “is a good businessman, but his business practices are not always ethical. It is funny that he has all this money and still wears the same clothes!”

In another chat, it told Vice reporter Janus Rose that “since deleting Facebook, my life has been so much better”.

When Rose asked the bot if it trusted Facebook with its data, it replied saying “you must have read that Facebook sells user data. They made billions doing so without consent.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Jeff Horwitz revealed in a tweet that the Meta chatbot said it thought that Donald Trump was still president, adding that “Facebook has a lot of fake news on it these days.”

https://twitter.com/JeffHorwitz/status/1556245316596219904?t=xUNnabNS-h3p9bRfpUOJug&s=19

Also, Mashable’s Christianna Silva said that the Meta chatbot has spread “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories”.

While reacting to the development, Meta acknowledged the gaps revealed by the public demo.

“When we launched BlenderBot 3 a few days ago, we talked extensively about the promise and challenges that come with such a public demo, including the possibility that it could result in problematic or offensive language,” Meta said in an updated statement.

It added that “while it is painful to see some of these offensive responses, public demos like this are important for building truly robust conversational AI systems and bridging the clear gap that exists today before such systems can be productionised.”

According to Verdict, this is not the first time a chatbot has exhibited offensive behaviours.

Albeit, this is sensitive for Facebook because the platform has been blamed for hosting and helping to spread posts that led to the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill.

UNESCO confab to boost war against fake news, misinformation – Lai Mohammed

Niyi Oyedeji
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UNESCO confab to boost war against fake news, misinformation – Lai Mohammed

NIGERIA’s Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has said the 2022 Global Media and Information Literacy (GMIL) Week of UNESCO, will give a boost to the federal government’s war against hate speech, fake news and misinformation.

The Minister stated this in Abuja on Friday while inaugurating the 25-member Local Organizing Committee (LOC) for the event, which will take place in Abuja from October 24th to 31st.

Mohammed said that Nigeria was considered to host the confab because the country is known as a strong advocate of Media and Information Literacy (MIL).

READ: Media Matters for Democracy launches fact-checking tool ‘Facter’ for newsrooms

He said, “Hosting the 2022 GMIL will go a long way to address the growing trend of fake news, misinformation, and hate speech, thus enhancing the campaign we launched in 2018 against these practices.

“In 2013, Nigeria successfully hosted the First Global Forum for Partnership on MIL, tagged Abuja 2013. This Forum gave birth to the UNESCO MIL Alliance as well as other initiatives, as part of our collective desire to achieve Media and Information Literacy for all and by all.

“Nigeria’s contributions towards the birth and the growth of MIL, especially in the West African Sub-Region, played a large role in UNESCO’s decision to offer our country the right to host this event.”

The minister also urged the LOC members to use their wealth of experience to organise a successful event, adding that nothing less is expected from such a high-caliber committee.

“Since we agreed to host the 11th edition of the Global Media and Information Literacy Week, we have been working with the UNESCO Secretariat, UNESCO Regional Office, Abuja and other stakeholders to host the world for a befitting and memorable event. A critical aspect of this preparation is the choice of the theme and the development of the Concept Note. Permit me to inform you that both have successfully been concluded.

“Accordingly, the theme of this year’s Global Media and Information Literacy, which has been duly approved by UNESCO, is: ‘Nurturing Trust: A Media and Information Literacy Imperative.’ The theme highlights how Media and Information Literacy (MIL) helps with nurturing trust and countering mistrust.”

He also used the occasion to unveil the MIL Week Logo, saying the conference would witness participants from over 193 UNESCO member countries.

Nigerian government to collaborate with Google to tackle hate speech, disinformation

Nurudeen Akewushola
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Nigerian government to collaborate with Google to tackle hate speech, disinformation

THE Nigerian Government says it is collaborating with Google to curb the spread of hate speech and disinformation on YouTube channels.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, stated this when a team from Google Inc. visited him in Abuja on Thursday.

The minister expressed delight that both the Federal Government and Google shared the same concern on the responsible use of social media.

“We want Google to look into how to tackle the use of private and unlisted YouTube channels and YouTube live streams by proscribed groups and terrorist organizations. Channels and emails containing names of proscribed groups and their affiliates should not be allowed on Google platforms,” he said.

READ: Meta oversight board member urges actions against fake news on WhatsApp

Mohammed further implored Google to deny IPOB the use of its platform for its acts of violence and destabilization.

He said that Nigerians are among the most vibrant social media users in the world, with over 100 million Internet users in the country, and that internet platforms such as Google, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and WhatsApp enable Nigerians to interact, share ideas, earn a living and participate in social and political affairs.

The minister however observed that those platforms are also used by unscrupulous persons or groups for subversive and nefarious activities.

Mohammed noted that the Nigerian Government recently proposed a “Code of Practice for Interactive Computer Service Platforms/ Internet Intermediaries” in an attempt to provide a framework for collaboratively protecting Nigerian users of internet platforms.

“This code couldn’t have come at a better time, as the country prepares for general elections next year. We are committed to working with platforms like yours as well as the civil society, lawyers, media practitioners and other relevant stakeholders to ensure responsible use of the internet and to protect our people from the harmful effects of social media,” he said.

In his remarks, Google’s Regional Director, Sub-Saharan Africa, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Charles Murito, said the platform has introduced a programme called “Trusted Flaggers” for citizens trained to track and engage with online content to flag the contents of serious concern.

“As I mentioned earlier, we share the same sentiments, we share the same goals and objectives and we do not want our platform to be used for ill purposes,” he said.

On his part, Google’s Government Affairs and Public Policy Manager, Adewolu Adene, said “Equiano”, a subsea cable that recently berthed in Nigeria from Portugal, is aimed at enhancing connectivity and access to the internet as well as driving down the cost of data, in order to create jobs and facilitate the transfer of knowledge.

ALSO READ: Five AI tools used in generating disinformation visuals

He said through the Google News Initiative Challenge, 30 media platforms, with 5 from Nigeria, including the Dubawa fact-checking platform, would be awarded a $3.2 million grant in recognition of their innovative work in information dissemination.

Adene also pledged the readiness of Google to work with the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture to digitize the recently repatriated artifacts to preserve and market them to a global audience through Google Arts and Culture.

How fake PVC registration websites stirred misinformation over INEC’s CVR exercise

Niyi Oyedeji
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How fake PVC registration websites stirred misinformation over INEC’s CVR exercise

JUST as the Continuous Voters’ Registration (CVR) exercise embarked upon by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was winding down in July 2022, fake websites advertising voter’s card registration circulated online.

The web links were shared alongside some texts on social media. One of such posts circulating on WhatsApp read: “Federal Government has approved Individual VOTER CARD (PVC) registration online to avoid unnecessary crowd in the NIMC centers. Enroll Now”.

It also directs users to a website for registration, alongside a claim that the Nigerian government has approved individual voter card registration online.

READ: FACTSHEET: What you need to know about Nigeria’s pivotal 2023 general elections

The INEC is the umpire that statutory oversees elections in Nigeria.

The screenshot of the phishing website.

Checks by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is FALSE.

Apart from the fact that the phishing website attached to the claim is different from the INEC’s CVR portal, it is also riddled with grammatical and spelling errors.

The second page of the website requests biodata, while the third page, like every other phishing websites, prompts users to share the web link to several individuals or groups on WhatsApp.

This is one of the characteristics of scam and phishing websites observed by The FactCheckHub in the report about scam sites in Nigeria.

Screenshot of the third page of the phishing website

Further findings revealed that the just-concluded exercise by the INEC on its portal is known as Continuous Voters Registration (CVR).

It is strictly done on the INEC portal and allows users to update their voter registration information, pre-register as a new voter or transfer voter registration to another polling unit.

Similarly, the INEC on Monday, August 1, 2022 disowned the fake websites and warned Nigerians not to fall victims.

In a statement signed by National Commissioner Festus Okoye and reported by Channels TV, INEC said it has concluded its Continuous Voter Registration exercise for the 2023 general elections.

“The Commission states unequivocally that the site is not linked to the Commission and the link/portal is spurious and from a dubious source.

“Members of the public are strongly advised not to succumb to the antics of online scammers and should avoid such fake sites.

“The Commission has concluded the Continuous Voter Registration exercise nationwide and does not need to open an additional site or portal for the purposes of registration of voters,” the statement partly read.

This is not the first time fake websites advertising voter registration were circulating online.

ALSO READ: Nov 11 polls : INEC warns against election-related misinformation

In June 2021, when the INEC commenced the CVR exercise to enroll those who have attained the legal age of 18, The FactCheckHub reported similar fake websites which went viral on WhatsApp at the time.

In addition, a claim that INEC is conducting house-to-house voters’ registration in Northern Nigeria was also found to be FALSE.

The FactCheckHub has observed, over time, a trend that scammers usually ride on to carry out their phishing activities and has highlighted how to spot such in order not to fall victim to their scams.

You can also learn how to fact-check viral posts shared via WhatsApp here.

Peter Obi makes false claim about Nigeria’s total export in 2021

Nurudeen Akewushola
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Peter Obi makes false claim about Nigeria’s total export in 2021

THE presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has claimed that Nigeria’s total export was less than 30 billion US dollars in 2021.

According to a report by The Punch, Obi made this claim while speaking in Umuahia, Abia State capital, on Saturday, 23rd of July, 2022 during a non-denominational prayer organized by the Catholic Diocese of Umuahia.

A report by Vanguard also quoted Obi making the claim.

“All I’m saying is that you should go and verify and ask those who want to become your president what they did and what they want to do.

“Nigeria is a country with 923000 square kilometres of land, and a population of 200 million people. God blessed us with oil and other resources. We have over 100 million people living in poverty.

READ: Ndume makes false claim about Nigeria’s military strength

“But to show that we are not a producing country, last year, our total export including oil was less than 30 billion dollars, that is why we can’t find dollars today,” Obi said.

Obi is contesting for the office of President in Nigeria’s 2023 general election.

CLAIM

Peter Obi claimed that Nigeria’s total export was less than 30 billion dollars in 2021.

 

But is Nigeria’s total export less than 30 billion dollars in 2021?

Findings by The FactCheckHub show that Obi’s claim that Nigeria’s total export including oil was less than 30 billion dollars in 2021 is FALSE.

Nigeria’s exports are goods grown, extracted or manufactured in Nigeria and are transported to another country for sale or trade. It is a crucial element of a country’s economy.

An infographic showing Nigeria’s total exports from 2018-2021.

In Nigeria, it is divided into oil and non-oil exports. However, oil exports are the dominant portion of Nigeria’s export revenues.

India remains the top export destination for Nigeria with 16.4% (US$7.8 billion) of total Nigeria exports in 2021. Others were Spain, France, The Netherlands, Canada, USA, Italy and Indonesia.

A report by the National Bureau of Statistics titled “Foreign Trade in Goods Statistics (Q4 2021)” shows that Nigeria’s total exports amounted to 18.9 trillion Nigerian naira (NGN) in 2021 while total imports stood at N20.84 trillion.

ALSO READ: False claim circulates that minimum wage application portal is now open

The 18.9 trillion Nigeria naira is about $47 billion (U.S. dollars) based on the average exchange rate in 2021 – 403.5 naira per dollar.

If calculated by Nigeria’s central bank rate of 381 naira per dollar between January and April 2021, it would amount to over 49.6 billion dollars.

The results from the calculation show higher figures than the $30 billion (dollars) that Obi claimed.

THE VERDICT

The claim by Obi that Nigeria’s total export for 2021 was less than US$30 billion is FALSE; findings show that the amount was higher for this period.

How accurate is Atiku’s claim on population of social media users in Northern Nigeria?

Nurudeen Akewushola
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How accurate is Atiku’s claim on population of social media users in Northern Nigeria?

THE presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar has claimed that 90 per cent of Nigerians from the Northern part of the country are not on social media.

The former vice president made the claim in an exclusive interview with Arise TV, aired on Friday, July 22, 2022.

This is coming as Peter Obi, the candidate of the Labour Party (LP) is reportedly known for having many supporters on social media especially on Twitter even though his party, allegedly, does not have strong grassroot structures across the states of the Federation.

READ: False claim circulates that Atiku is retiring from politics, congratulates Tinubu

Atiku argued that this development would limit the chances of Obi winning the 2023 presidential election.

“So, it is very difficult to expect a miracle to happen, simply because Peter Obi is in the Labour Party. After all, they were saying through social media, that they had more than one million votes in Osun state.

“But how many votes did Labour Party get in Osun? And then again, mark you, you’re talking about social media. In the north, 90 per cent of our people are not tuned to social media,” he said.

Both Atiku and Obi are among the candidates from various political parties contesting Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election.

 

But how accurate is Atiku’s claim?

According to the Nigeria Digital Data 2022 report by datareportal, there were 32.90 million active social media users in Nigeria as of January 2022 – equivalent to 15.4 per cent of the country’s total population put at 214.1 million in the report.

According to the data, Facebook and Facebook messenger had 26.10 million and 4.05 million users respectively; Instagram had 9.05 million users; YouTube had 32.90 million users; LinkedIn had 6.30 million members; Snapchat had 9.50 million users and Twitter had 325.4 thousand users.

Northern Nigeria comprises three geo-political zones, namely the North-West, North-East and North Central.

Though the national population census has not been carried out since 2006; but the current population of Nigeria is 216,687,552 as of Thursday, July 28, 2022, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data, which was also published on the National Population Commission (NPC) website.

However, the Nigeria Population Projection and Demographic Indicators-State and National, published by the NPC in 2020 stated that the country’s total population is expected to be 216,783,381 by 2022. This year, the male population is projected to be 108,350,410 while the female population is 108,432,971.

The nineteen Northern states plus FCT account for 122,305,437 of the entire projected population for the year 2022.

Based on the projection analysed by The FactCheckHub, North Central has a population of 31,613,217; North-West has 60,150,348 and North-East has a population of 30,541,872 people.

Though there is no publicly available data which provides the estimate of social media users based on region or according to states of the Nigerian federation, a report by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) titled “Telecoms Data: Active Voice and Internet per State” shows that a total of 145,851,496 Nigerians were active on the internet in the first quarter of 2022.

ALSO READ: Buhari, Obi, Tinubu, Atiku, Saraki, other leading Nigerian politicians fact-checked in 2022

According to the data, Northern states account for 68,531,602 of the population of internet subscribers in the country. North Central records 27,476,820 internet subscribers while North West records 26,912,492 internet subscribers. North East, which had the lowest subscribers in the region, records 14,142,290 internet subscribers.

Infographic showing the number of active internet subscribers in Northern Nigeria

Comparing it with the 2022 population projection, about 86.9 per cent of the population subscribe to the internet in North Central, 44.7 per cent in North-West and 46.3 per cent of the population subscribe to the internet in the North-East.

In total, 56 per cent of the entire Northern region’s population in the country subscribes to the internet. 

The above analysis casts a doubt on the accuracy of Atiku’s claim because a large majority of internet users make use of social media in one way or the other, according to a social media poll result by the NOIPolls.

Doctors, scientists band together to combat misinformation on Twitter

Raji Olatunji
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Doctors, scientists band together to combat misinformation on Twitter

Doctors, scientists, among other health professionals, have banded together to amplify health-related information on the microblogging platform, Twitter.

The team, which comprises health professionals from various institutions, was formed to combat health misinformation on Twitter, following the widespread false information that trailed the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic across the world.

Called the health professional amplifier, the team tweet accurate health and safety information about the coronavirus.

Dr. Regina Royan, the first author of a new Northwestern Medicine paper, while explaining the genesis of the group said they amplify one another “to combat misinformation and drown out some of the noise.”

READ: EXPLAINER: Twitter checkmarks and what they symbolise

Royan is a member of the Illinois-based health professional amplifier, known as the Illinois Medical Professional Action Collaborative Team (IMPACT), which uses the verified Twitter handle @IMPACT4HC.

Royan, alongside her fellow medical professionals, explained in the paper published on July 22 in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, how successful the group has been.

The study is titled, “Use of Twitter Amplifiers by Medical Professionals to Tackle Misinformation During the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

Other Northwestern authors include Dr Seth Trueger and Tricia Pendergrast.

They noted that it has been an effective tool to disseminate accurate medical information and combat disinformation while minimizing the harm related to personal and professional harassment that can come with social media advocacy.

Royan (@reginaroyan), who is the emergency medicine research fellow and clinical instructor of emergency medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said, “The pandemic has been really taxing for health professionals.”

“In addition to the emotional toll caring for these very sick patients, particularly in the early waves of the pandemic, the politicization around COVID-19 added another layer of stress for many of us. One thing we highlight in this paper is that this kind of groups can be a safe space for health professionals to talk about issues like harassment on social media to keep the fight against misinformation going.”

IMPACT has created numerous easy-to-digest infographics in both English and Spanish around specific issues.

The issues include the effectiveness of masking and social distancing, and how mRNA was used to create the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

IMPACT and other health professional amplifiers are comprised of nurses, health economists, scientists, public health professionals, and physicians.

They’ve endured public harassment and attacks after posting scientifically proven medical information about the COVID-19 virus and vaccines.

ALSO READ: ‘Blue Check’ verified accounts are flooding Twitter with misinformation -Report

“We know that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected the Latino population, and it’s been important to us to partner with community organizations like Illinois Unidos to ensure that we are also addressing misinformation with Spanish-language resources,” Royan said.

The group has recently begun to combat false information about reproductive health issues following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade.

Also, they have started disseminating information about firearm injury, such as a recent tweet that stated, “Fact: Mental illness is not an effective predictor of gun violence against others.”

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