A study conducted by Centre for Information, Technology and Development, (CITAD) a Non-Governmental Organization has revealed that it monitoring team recorded a total of 820 Hate Speeches across the Country.
The survey, which was supported by MacArthur Foundation is to monitor, report, and share their findings as well as analysis to the general public every month
The disclosure was made by the Senior Program Officer of CITAD, Isah Garba, at a press conference on monitoring and countering hate and dangerous Speech in the country.
The findings reveal that the Social Media Platform, Facebook has occupied the highest number of Hate-Speech incidences while Newsletters have 30%.
The findings further revealed that English is the most used Language for Hate Speech followed by other native languages of the Country.
Breaking down the Statistics, Hate Speeches was categorized as follows: Ethnicity – 480, Religion – 249, Biafra agitation – 77, Farmers/Herders – 2 and Election Issue – 12 making a total of 820.
“The Government should stop keeping blinds eyes on issues that are clearly security threat to the country but rather come out with just and pragmatic approaches to address the issues.
“Government should also improve in its effort of addressing the social economic problems of our youth to occupy them with more positive engagements that will shun them away from engaging in conflicts stimuli.
“Religious leaders have the dual responsibility to sensitize their followers on the importance of peace and the rationale of multi ethnicity and religion in religious perspective,” the group pleads.
The Federal Government of Nigeria has already tagged Hate Speech an act of Terrorism and threat to National security.
Facebook recently stated that its platform globally deletes 288,000 post a month which are reported to include Hate Speeches.
