Minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has again taken a swipe at Twitter, saying the microblogging site is a platform of choice for separatist campaigners, especially those residing outside the country.
Mohammed who disclosed this in his keynote address at a meeting with information managers of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Government in Lagos yesterday, said the separatist campaigners use Twitter to issue directives to their followers in Nigeria to attack security forces as well as to burn police stations and INEC offices.
He, however, described social media as a double-edged sword, providing opportunities and challenges perhaps in equal measure.
The minister said, “For the information and communication manager, the so-called new media provides the ultimate test. As you all know, we recently had to suspend the operations of Twitter in Nigeria because of the threat posed by the gross abuse of the platform to the nation’s peace and unity.”
He said there is a painful lack of synergy among managers of information and communication in all strata of government.
He said clear demarcation of responsibilities is breached at will by information managers as they tend to be competing against each other.
According to him, “Then, and this is avoidable, there is the painful lack of synergy among managers of information and communication in all strata of our government. The clear demarcation of responsibilities is breached at will, as we seem to be competing against ourselves.
“Information managers rarely compare notes, thus duplicating efforts while the myriad of information being generated from the various programmes, I have listed above do not percolate enough to the grassroots, because the managers at lower levels do not utilize them well, or perhaps are not even aware of them!”
Alhaji Mohammed added that the democratization of the technology of information dissemination is posing new challenges to the nation.
