Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has claimed that fake news will be the cause of World War III.
Mohammed stated this while making an appearance before the House of Representatives Committee on Information, National Orientation, Ethics, and Values to defend his ministry’s 2022 budget allocation on Monday.
According to him, the means of receiving the information has changed over the decades, as 30 years ago it was through television and radio sets.
But now, the Minister noted that people prefer to patronize social media where fake news is easily spread.
“The people today, they don’t read newspapers and don’t watch television — it’s social media. And it is most expensive; the most unseen enemy, they are there every moment. I have always said here that the next world war will be caused by fake news.
You can see even the US that use to pride itself on the freedom of the press is now questioning the role of the social media,” Mohammed said.