 2014 Nigeria had Nigeria along with another with a lot of African countries faced an Ebola outbreak And one of the first things we heard about Ebola was that it could be cured by bathing insult And I remember that that morning around four o'clock in the morning One of my aunties in the village called my sister who's a medical doctor and told us she got on WhatsApp a message That she needed to bathe insult and my sister was saying I'm a medical doctor You cannot cure Ebola with salt, but my aunt said I'm your aunt. I love you I don't want you and my you know my grandkids to die You need to bathe insult because that's what was spread on WhatsApp in the same way a lot of misinformation is spread via these channels on WhatsApp in Nigeria is particularly It's particularly Prevalent because it's cheaper to use And you know and it's almost transcends illiteracy because people will send videos You know people actually create videos and send and so people don't need to be literate These are some of the metrics that sit had gathered in In its research, you know studying hate speech and into dissemination in Nigeria From broadcast to media talking about you know How You have broadcast media in Nigeria so like radio television But then how it spreads to you know other forms of media whether it's online whether it's print And the the platforms that people have to propagate this on wholesome messaging Talking about a couple a number of political programming You know with fan pages created not just by the radio stations, but people who are listeners For instance Kawane Gauta on freedom radio in Kanu these fan pages generate large volumes of speech I think it's also important to say here that a number of a Number of fans of these radio stations or fans of political programming Listen to this listen to these programs because they have they are following a leader So for instance the current president of Nigeria president Muhammad Uphari has a large following in the north and so people who Sorry, I made a mistake has a large almost cult following in the north for some people. He's seen as a god And so people when when young people or people who really believe in him listen to these stations They're not listening to them to Take on any alternative information, but they're listening to protect The person they consider to be a god or the person, you know, who they follow really closely So it's really important to keep that at the back of your mind Who are the hate speech makers? They're predominantly males No surprises there educated Since they communicate mainly in English and presumably young people because age falsification is common in social media Over 60% are identifiable commentators. They're partisan various political parties Politicians come only second as a category that for audience but result as the results show audience Audiences tend to be more receptive to messages by the politicians again. This is because of the patronage system That largely functions in Nigeria So here are some examples of you know of incidents that have happened And I think the one I'm going to you know, just briefly talk about was It all is going to be president Jonathan's Speech when he conceded defeats to the now president and Muhammad Abu Hari There was a lot of I think that the 24 hours between when the results were announced and between mr. President You know between when we knew for sure that mr. President was going to concede and to when he actually did We must have been one of the most tense periods in Nigeria This is because anyone who remembers the 2011 elections will remember that when the current president Then aspirants when he ran and he lost violence broke out in a lot of places in Nigeria And so the fear for a number of us, especially people monitoring elections and roving was if he loses again violence is going to break out and he He and a number of his supporters had made a few inciting comments And so the air was really tense and you could see you know as you look at this you can see like really sharp spikes in You know in the amount of hate speech that was you know transmitted during that period So how does citad know that their campaign is succeeding? As you can see one of the things that citad does is they try to counter the these communications And I think that even citizens by themselves have created Mechanisms where they counter this where they counter hate speech, but not just hate speech where they counter false information With truth. I know that during the 2015 campaigns a group set up a platform simply to fact check what either you know What either presidential aspirant was saying From offline to online a large number of the items of hate speech our reaction to criticism of specific persons Like I mentioned that earlier while the criticism itself is not necessarily dangerous speech The reaction tends to qualify as dangerous speech quick example Somebody says something about the politician you like That information might be true or might be false. It's not inciting but the response to that is almost always inciting We've also I think and I can speak as someone who works within the you know civic CSO slash media space a lot of the times The responses you get to criticism of a particular candidate of a party Tend to be personal they move away from the issue or as a matter of fact They move totally away from the issue and they focus on the person if you're female the response tends to revolve around a few things one You know Wardham or prostitution or go and marry or you know some threat of physical harm A number of male friends of mine had their offices their workplaces Contacted to say this person is speaking against you know this politician or that person you should fire this person So beyond hate speech sometimes it actually goes into actions that could really threaten the lives or careers You know of the people who are offering this criticism And so tackling or combating online dangerous speech has to take on board more campaign on getting people to not be provoked I'm smiling because I'm Nigerian and you know provocation How are results shared and how are results shared and used so citad Organizes meetings at the end of every month a press conference in which in which they shared the analysis of results They also share a brief with you know the relevant security agencies including the National Human Rights Commission Appropriate responses to certain hate speech items have been counted using the same channels. I've mentioned that What have they learned a better understanding of the nature of hate speech the clear understanding of its channels of propagation? And they've been able to identify key moments that generated hate speech from which they've been able to identify key triggers and drivers What to do with the results? Allow us to develop more effective strategies for countering hate speech in the country I think I should stop there and mention the work of another organization called the Northeast Regional Initiative It's OTA. It's OTI funded and what they do is counter violent extremism in the Northeast by using Other young people who live in the Northeast so they have a fellows program and these fellows Hold a lot of tweets chats hold town hall meetings hold community engagement meetings to speak to their pairs because it's more effective than having you know donors or Politicians gather young people in a room and tell them don't fight with each other. Don't get it not treated Etc. It's a lot more effective when your pair or your friend is speaking to you and telling you about these things What else is stad using with using this result force used to raise awareness and to drive advocacy for both government and to develop Appropriate responses to drivers of hate speech and for citizens to not only be engaged in hate speech But also to not be provoked by it. Okay This is the end of the slide again, just to apologize on behalf of YZ Yao who was supposed to be here but couldn't be here because of this because of visa issues I think this also raises the question about you know reciprocity between countries and how The Schengen area can facilitate easier and more effective movement between Africa and Europe. Thank you