The US Consulate General in Lagos has partnered with the West Africa Broadcast Media Academy (WABMA) and the Enugu Literacy Society (ELS) to create “Project Fact Check Nigeria,” a media literacy project focused on combating fake news.

The goal of the project is to assist 170 media professionals, including radio hosts, producers, and reporters, in developing fact-checking abilities and learning best practices for detecting false news, disinformation, and misinformation.

These abilities will in turn help participants improve their critical thinking skills, broaden their digital and media literacy, and strengthen radio journalists’ ability to combat misinformation and disinformation across the seventeen states of southern Nigeria.

Using the existing media literacy curriculum of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), the project will also teach 1,000 young Nigerians internet fact-checking and how to distinguish reality from fiction and opinion.

Stephen Ibelli, public relations officer for the U.S. Consulate in Lagos, argues that democracy, in order to be healthy, requires an informed public and responsible media that give accurate information to the public.

“By promoting media literacy, we strengthen the principles of transparency, good governance, and rule of law that serve as the essential cornerstones of our democratic system,” Mr Ibelli said.

The project will also feature the airing of programs to enhance media literacy and counter misinformation by the 17 radio stations involved in the partnership between WABMA and ELS over the next twelve months.

To aid the broadcast of the programmes, the U.S. consulate, WABMA, and ELS have donated equipment including computers, digital voice recorders, headsets, and microphones to the radio stations.