- As FRSC cautions on safety and safe driving during Ember months
The Nigeria Communications Commission is super proud of the assembly of professionals who are occupying the social media space and ensuring they wrestle the country from quarks who are purveyors of fake news.
Director of Corporate Communications Chief Mrs Nnena Ukoha who made this known on Wednesday while delivering a goodwill message at the session of GOCOP’s meeting with corporate partners as part of its seven annual conference at Sheraton Hotels, Lagos, said NCC is proud that through the efforts of members of the association across the country, sanity is being restored to the social media industry as professional journalists are populating the space.
Mrs Ukoha, who described her presence at the conference as home coming, therefore urged members of the group to always err on the side of caution in rushing to publish any news, but to rather call their colleagues at the NCC for clarifications.
Mrs Ukoha said the commission will continue to place high premium on GOCOP and will continue to partner with it knowing that within it are credible medium which have paid the dues in transforming the country.
According to her, part of the contribution of the media, particularly to the NCC was the liberalization of communication, which saw the success of the privatization exercise, paving the way for the robust technology that has been deployed over the years.
She however identified as part of her challenges to include multiply taxation by all layers of government to securing the right of way for the laying of fibre optic cables, across the country.
“We have been battling with several state governments coming up with various tax regimes thereby frustrating our efforts at ensuring that we secure the right of way for the layng of fibre optic cables across the country.
“This is even compounded with the fact that where we have even paid to secure the right of way, criminals would still go and vandalise them and steal the cables. What we want is for people to own these infrastructure. Our people should know that any acts of vandalisation of our base stations or fibre optics affects the optimal operations and networks. When this happens, networks would be disrupted, those POS operators, would not be able to operate, those selling recharge cards would not be able to sell because people would not buy cards because they would not be able to make calls, everything would be on the standstill, just because of the indiscretion of a few.
She urged the media to partner in the fight against vandalisation of infrastructure supporting telephone and internet penetration in the country, so that the criminals would not jeopardise the hard won gains of liberalization of the communications sector.
Also speaking the Public Education Officer of the Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC) Commander Bisi Kazeem, sought GOCOP’s continued partnership with lead road safety agency to ensure that fatalities are brought to the barest minimum in the country.
Kazeem observed that the ember month is always characterized by increase in vehicular traffic said the FRSC will always partner with credible media partners like GOCOP to preach safety to all travellers, especially motorists to drive safely, avoid drunk driving and prevent fatigue and kill over-speeding and reckless driving before it kills them.
Sunrise News recalls that GOCOP which was established in 2014, as a peer review association of seasoned journalists in the internet space has evolved into a credible platform that has continued to set the pace for online/digital journalism in the country.
This year’s conference by GOCOP is the seventh in the series and has become a veritable force to reckon with in the industry.