From James Ogunnaike, Abeokuta
The Governor of Osun State, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola has called on Nigerians to explore and protect the use of social media for the betterment of the nation’s electoral process and political life.
According to the governor, who made the called in a lecture titled, ‘Role of Journalism in a Free and Fair Election: the Social Media Advantage’, at the opening of the 2014 Press Week of the Ogun State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), opined that the use of social media should be constitutionally made a part of the nation’s electoral process.
Aregbesola who was represented by the State Commissioner for Information and Orientastion, Sunday Akere said “A new frontier in press freedom has been opened with the advent of the internet and the social media.
“The internet offers new opportunity for freedom beyond the traditional reach of government clampdown. The internet, it has been rightly observed, breaches and bridges the physical barriers once constituted by state borders. The internet, indeed, brings the world to a borderless state”.
“The internet platform provides a virtual space of virtually unlimited access in which everybody can disseminate and share information and news to unlimited number of audience. What’s more, such information and news are made available at the click of a button.
“It is a platform of information dissemination in which the barriers of time and space collapses. So the social media form is a powerful tool that can enhance press freedom in many ways. It thus offers a valuable advantage in that it can be used to improve our political life as well. And I dare say it has been proving useful in this regard.
