Independent National Electoral Commission said on Friday 20th of February 2023 that the commission is in talks with the management of Meta in order to find ways to combat fake news. INEC’s Director of Voter Education and Publicity. Victor Aluko, said this at the launch event of “Run Am”, an artificial intelligence application, designed by Rise Networks, to serve as a fake news verification app, for the 2023 elections.
Aluko also stated that the commission had sought ways to fight the spread of fake publications and he is grateful for the organisation’s initiative to join the fight against the spread of fake news.
He said: “There was a time when a whole press release sheet of INEC was cloned. When I read that press release myself, I thought it was true. It carried the signature of my commissioner, who normally signs releases. And he himself, looked at the signature, he said ‘This is my signature, but I didn’t release this’. And we had to issue a rebuttal immediately. We are going to what we call, possibly, let me just use that term, the mother of elections, a very serious election, that will be contested seriously by very powerful parties and individuals, more than anytime in the history of our country. And now, you will see a situation where the electoral process will be pulled in different directions and when you have that, there will be a combination of both fake news, a lot of misinformation and a lot of disinformation and we are looking at how we are going to manage our results, to make sure that people don’t misinform Nigerians. So when we have this type of app from a reputable organisation like Rise Networks, we tend to identify with them.”
