Why We Need More Funds To Fight Fake News – Lai Mohammed

Lai Mohammed, the minister of information and culture, stated on Tuesday that his department requires additional funding to combat the problem of fake news.

When defending the budget for 2023 before the Senate Committee on Information, which is chaired by Senator Danladi Sankara of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Jigawa North-West, the Minister made these remarks in Abuja.

He highlighted to the Senate that his Ministry urgently needs more funding to combat the epidemic of hate speech and fake news as well as to publicize the accomplishments of the administration over the past seven and a half years.

Mohammed referred to the situation as “extremely unfortunate” while bemoaning the lack of funding and how it has affected the Ministry’s operations.

READ ALSO:  NDLEA Declares Suspected Owner Of Adekaz Hotels Wanted For Drug Trafficking

He emphasized that just a pitiful N1.7 billion, representing 41%, of the entire N2.5 billion allotted to the Ministry and all of its agencies for capital projects in 2022, had been made available to carry out 22 separate projects.

The Minister stated that just N525 million, representing 58% of the Ministry’s allocation, was made available for overhead expenses in 2022 while lamenting the prospect of having the capital budget for the Ministry and all of its agencies reduced to N869 million in 2023.

The Minister was informed by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information, Sankara, that his Ministry’s budget was not the only one being cut.

The Chairman emphasized that the amount of capital votes decreased from N2.5 trillion to N1 trillion in the budget for 2022.

The Minister of Information responded by stating that his Ministry was not an exception to the lack of funding.

But he made a plea to the Senate Committee and the Federal Government to enhance the Ministry’s budget by giving it special treatment at a time when the government is dealing with significant difficulties.

He said, “If there is any ministry that should adequately funded and not suffer from yearly budget cut is the Information Ministry. “We’re going to have a very difficult year and I don’t know how we are going to do it.

“Yes, while it is true that paucity of funds has affected all government ministries and agencies it is important for government to at a time it is going through challenges rely on its media to put the people’s mind at rest and ask them not to panic and at a time the government is now swimming of fake news misinformation”.

The US Security Alert on Abuja, according to the Minister, has damaged the nation’s reputation and economy and is the most recent example of such disinformation that requires quick correction.

He said, “Even if the government stops operating, it should keep making public what it has accomplished.”