The Lagos State Resilience Office in partnership with an advisory firm, Anderson Nigeria, is collaborating to tackle misinformation in the state

The Chief Resilience Officer, LASRO, Dr Folayinka Dania, made this known in Ikeja, at the opening ceremony of a workshop on the development of the Lagos Resilience Intelligence System, with focus on the risk of misinformation and disinformation.

Misinformation can be described as an unintentionally shared false content, while disinformation is the deliberate fabrication of false narratives.

Ms Dania, who was represented by the Head, Urban Planning and Design, LASRO, Femi Dada, described misinformation and disinformation as threat to livelihoods in Lagos State, hence, needed to be identified and tackled.

She said that with the increasing number of social media applications and usage, people indiscriminately share information without cross checking the accuracy of such information.

According to her, misinformation and disinformation are priority risk to be focused on by the government, so as to be proactive about resilience.

She said, “It is important to remind ourselves that building resilience is germane to our existence. The Lagos State Resilience Office was established to strengthen the capacity of individuals, communities; businesses; institutions and systems within the state to survive; adapt and grow in the face of risks (chronic stresses and acute shocks), associated with urbanisation. In Y2019, the preliminary resilience assessment for Lagos revealed the economic downturn, flooding, disease outbreak; urban fires; major road accidents, unemployment, inadequate physical and social infrastructure, inadequate health system and over-crowding, among others as some of the chronic stresses and acute shocks experienced by Lagos. By Y2020, the Lagos Resilience Strategy was released with a vision, three pillars, 10 goals and 31 resilience-building initiatives to address the shocks and stresses. However, it was discovered that while the Lagos Resilience Strategy was addressing the shocks and stresses the state experiences, it is necessary to constantly identify; assess; track and control these risks, through a multi-hazard risk management and resilience apparatus. These will allow for proper identification of the root causes, triggers; amplifiers; effect; impacts and solutions.’’

Ms Dania said that LASRO, therefore, intended to ensure that these risks were properly identified, tracked and mitigated through the development of the Lagos Resilience Intelligence System, as a state-wide risk management and resilience tool.

She said that LRIS aimed at considering the full range of risks the state faced, their interrelationships; define the state’s risk appetite, including risk tolerance and unacceptable levels.

According to her, these will help build an early warning system and make informed decisions to predict, prepare for; prevent; respond to and mitigate the impact of risks.

Also speaking, Senior Manager, Business Advisory Services, Andersen Nigeria, Utobong Hughes, said that the workshop aimed at bringing industry experts together to understand how the risk of misinformation and disinformation in Lagos could be accurately forecast and responded to accordingly.

Hughes said that there was the need to identify the roots of misinformation and disinformation, the best ways to measure and anticipate the causes before they become detrimental.

According to her, misinformation is unintentional, disinformation is intentional, misinformation is more pervasive than disinformation, and the major root cause is a lack of literacy.

She said that most of the people that disseminated the information either do not have the wherewithal to confirm that the information was accurate or not.

He said, “They are motivated by a lot of factors that we learned today, such as emotional, the need to feel among or possibly even trying to help and disseminate this information that is inaccurate, to the detriment of the people who receive it and act on it. So the bottom line is, let’s all communicate. Let’s educate everybody in our sphere of influence about the dangers of misinformation and disinformation, and as a state, we will continue to build our work together with LASRO to build a tool to be able to proactively manage these risks.

The ultimate goal is to be able to, on an ongoing basis, monitor these risks of misinformation and disinformation. With the information we have gathered today, we are going to take it back in the tool that we are building for the Lagos State Resilience Office, to allow the state to proactively measure and monitor these risks that face Lagos, one of which is misinformation.’’

(NAN)