PJTVNews

Mr Emenike Iroegbue, the founder of Abia Facts Newspaper and Abia Facts Newspaper Award Nite during his speech yesterday at the award nite stated that AFN will be introducing AFN Social Media Academy in the state come 2019.

His Speech:

I would like to start by appreciating everyone for showing up for this award event. Let me specially congratulate the awardees and thank God almighty for the grace he has given to my team and I to organize this event.

The Abia Facts Newspaper Annual Awards is a Special Projects initiative of Abia Facts Newspaper which established in 2014, and is now rated as the most influential online medium in Abia State.

The AFN Awards, a corporate brand in its own right, was initiated in 2017 in line with the objectives of Abia Facts Newspaper to create a premium reward system aimed at recognizing and celebrating outstanding individuals and organizations who have significantly contributed to human and socio-economic development of Abia State.

Everyone that would receive an award today did not just emerge out of the blues. We researched every individual and we made sure that they were pre-qualified before being nominated for the awards. After the nominations, we followed very transparent and credible online voting processes leading to the final emergence of the Awardees. We are therefore very proud to say that the awards are being bestowed on recipients strictly on the merit of their pedigrees and footprints.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is an indisputable fact that the evolution of society is premised upon the emergence of new ideas, inventions, standards, values and traditions. In this regard, the journalism profession has witnessed a revolution which has certainly incorporated all of humanity, changing the way we interact and communicate on daily basis. This revolution, residing in the phenomenon we have come to know as Social Media, is in many ways influencing our thought patterns and activities. It is impacting on our lives both positively and negatively. In response to the effects of the negative side of Social Media, and with a view to boosting knowledge and finding lasting solutions, Abia Facts Newspaper is setting up the very first Social Media Academy in Nigeria, in the overall interest of Abians and Nigerians.

We shall be using the platform of the Academy to evolve and transmit creative solutions to the challenges we experience today as a result of online activism. These negative experiences include cyber stalking, cyber bullying, hate speech, blackmail and so many other vices affecting our socio-political well being and in some instances threatening the security of lives and property.

After our research as a team, we discovered that bulk of the problem is that most people operating as online journalists and bloggers are usually not trained media practitioners. So, they are not aware of the risk associated with the job, the ethics of the job and the multiple effects of their actions. They have no knowledge of the rules of conflict-sensitive journalism, neither are they aware of laws guiding the use of social media, and the consequences of breaking such laws.

After this study, we arrived at a conclusion that the way forward is actually to create a platform where people can go through basic training and be equipped with the necessary knowledge to ply their trade.

Let me tell the truth, the day I discovered that I can actually be jailed for my actions online, I became more conscious and careful about what I put out for the public to read. So, I can assure you that when the bulk of these untrained online activists get to know what I know today, the social media blackmails would reduce while Abia State and Nigeria would have a more sanitized social media space.

In the light of the foregoing, we are today unveiling the ABIA FACTS NEWSPAPER SOCIAL MEDIA ACADEMY or AFN SOCIAL MEDIA ACADEMY, which is part of our Special Projects and Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. However, its success will depend so much on your assistance from today onward.

Our objective is to develop an Academy with functional faculties, where people who want to engage in social media journalism, online marketing, Online PR practice and other credible professions online can be trained and thought how to practice within the ambit of the law.

This is an innovation that is proudly born in Abia State and is sure to move to other states in Nigeria and possibly Africa.
This concept is fresh. It is new. It is progressive. It is revolutionary. It serves an essential public need. It is a concept that you will be proud to be part of. It is a concept that will help clean up our social media space. It is a concept that has the capacity to protect you in the future from cyber bullying and blackmail. This is a concept you cannot afford not to be part of because it is in the best interests of Abia State and Nigeria.

An assessment of the needs for such a training facility, including the necessary infrastructure, equipment, special internet facility, personnel and resource persons including my humble self, has revealed that we need the modest sum of N7, 000, 000 (seven million naira) for the Academy to take off here in Umuahia.

This is one of our major projects for the year 2019, and on behalf of my colleagues, I am honoured to invite each one of us present here today, especially the Awardees, to support this unique concept by donating whatever sum we can towards its smooth take-off. Sincerely, we need your help to achieve this objective and we assure that you would be proud of what we shall establish in the next few weeks.

Ladies and gentlemen, once again I thank you for identifying with the 2018 Abia Facts Newspaper Awards, and I pray that God will continue to bless and protect you.

With my very best regards, I thank you very much for your attention.

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