We must fight misinformation to achieve our goals in 2024.

It has been said that the idle mind is the devil’s workshop. What then is an idle mind with a mobile communications device and cheap internet data? The answer to this question can be found in the repeated setbacks being suffered by our programme due to misinformation being passed around social media about vaccination by faceless, malicious and unscrupulous persons especially in the past few months.
These folks have targeted known fault lines in our populace at a time of huge political and ethnic tensions to disseminate conjectures and outright falsehood under the guise of “warnings.” These “warnings have led to panic and mass hysteria which have, in the past few months, led to some of the most significant numbers of cases of vaccine rejection and noncompliance that we have seen in our programme in recent times. An idle mind with a mobile communications device and a cheap internet can be a devastating weapon against our polio eradication efforts, if we let them.
To older persons who have been involved in the struggle to achieve the elimination of wild polio from Nigeria, the recent events must give a feeling of de ja vu. It must feel like we have been here before ….. Read more