Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Public Affairs and Assiatant Principal Spokesperson of the APC-PCC, Chief Ajuri Ngelale, says at a time when autocratic rule is resurgent and de-democratization is spreading globally, world democracies must actively defend one another against the twin evils of fake news and coordinated attacks on their shared systems of government by falsely empathetic demagogues who disguise themselves in the toga of populism.
Addressing the press at the Voice of America Headquarters in Washington D.C., the Presidential spokesperson noted that the unprecedented disintermediation of news dissemination via western-based social media companies had sacrificed truth and informed voter decision-making on the altar of profit for western tech companies in a manner that cyclically fuelled the erosion of liberal democracy with the resurgence of totalitarian appeal and hostile takeovers by power-hungry militaries in less developed nations.
The SSA to the President further explained that with three military coups supplanting democracies in West Africa in the last three years alone, advanced democracies must be mindful not to play into the hands of global faux-populists by advancing evidence-bereft claims of electoral malfeasance and abstract suggestions of human rights abuses against strong democracies like Nigeria which operate in democratically-challenged regions.
The Tinubu Campaign Spokesperson concluded that in democracies like Nigeria, big tech-backed movements around personality cults “grow as strongman rule becomes more appealing in times of perceived danger and chaos” which, he averred, “is why the time is now for big tech accountability in order to check the fake news-for-clicks business model that is actively fueling confrontational divisions within nations and a pervasive breakdown of public trust in systems-based democratic governance.”
Stay ahead with the latest updates! Join The ConclaveNG on WhatsApp and Telegram for real-time news alerts, breaking stories, and exclusive content delivered straight to your phone. Don’t miss a headline — subscribe now!
