CJID, EU launch initiative to fight disinformation, strengthen democratic resilience in north-west Nigeria

CJID Executive Director Akintunde Babatunde said the initiative would deploy a coordinated package of interventions, combining media literacy education, journalism capacity building, open-source intelligence (OSINT), artificial intelligence-assisted verification, local-language engagement, and grassroots community mobilisation.

The European Union (EU) and the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) have launched an 18-month project to counter disinformation and strengthen democratic resilience across five northwestern Nigerian states.

The initiative, titled Countering Disinformation and Empowering Democracy in Northwestern Nigeria, targets Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, and Kebbi State in the North-west, and Niger State in the North-central, with officials describing the North-west region as sitting at a dangerous convergence of insecurity, poverty, low literacy, and rapidly spreading online falsehoods.

The project was launched on Tuesday in Sokoto.

Speaking at the launch, Xenia Stoll, political officer at the EU Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS, said disinformation had evolved well beyond a media challenge into an active instrument of destabilisation.

“Disinformation and information manipulation are not only communications issues. They are used as tactics for destabilising societies and inciting violence and conflict,” she said.

Ms Stoll said the initiative would build media literacy and resilience across the region.

In his remarks, the Board Chairman of CJID and immediate past Vice Chancellor of the Federal University Kashere, Umaru Pate, painted a stark picture of the information environment in the North-west, warning that the region’s structural vulnerabilities, displacement, economic hardship, youth frustration, and porous borders made it a fertile ground for manipulation.

He noted that while radio remains deeply influential across the region, WhatsApp increasingly drives local discourse at scale, enabling manipulated narratives to cross rapidly between the digital and physical worlds.

“Rumours, inflammatory content, fabricated security alerts, and hate-driven misinformation often spread faster than facts can follow,” Mr Pate, a professor of media and society, said. “In fragile and polarised contexts, disinformation no longer functions merely as a communication problem. It increasingly contributes to fear, mistrust, communal tensions, democratic erosion, and insecurity.”

What the initiative will do

CJID Executive Director Akintunde Babatunde said the initiative would deploy a coordinated package of interventions, combining media literacy education, journalism capacity building, open-source intelligence (OSINT), artificial intelligence-assisted verification, local-language engagement, and grassroots community mobilisation.

Specifically, the programme will train teachers as frontline media literacy educators, strengthen the verification and conflict-sensitive reporting skills of journalists and broadcasters, establish campus fact-checking networks, and expand community outreach through radio and WhatsApp-based campaigns.

Earlier, Mr Pate said the programme represented a deliberate shift away from reactive, case-by-case responses to misinformation, towards building durable information and democratic resilience infrastructure.

“Its goal is not simply to respond to individual instances of misinformation, but to help communities become more resilient, more informed, less vulnerable to manipulation, and better equipped to respond peacefully during moments of tension and uncertainty,” he said.

Building on existing regional work

Mr Babatunde said the initiative builds on CJID’s existing work on information integrity across West Africa, delivered through its fact-checking, media literacy, OSINT, AI governance, and digital investigations programmes.

Through DUBAWA, one of West Africa’s leading indigenous fact-checking and verification platforms, CJID has trained thousands of journalists, researchers, educators, and civic actors across multiple African countries in verification, conflict-sensitive reporting, digital investigations, and open-source intelligence.

The organisation’s Kwame Karikari Fact-Checking and OSINT Fellowship has also expanded verification capacity across Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire.

Under the new project, journalists, fact-checkers, and OSINT practitioners across Northern Nigeria will receive training, mentorship, verification support, and access to collaborative monitoring initiatives.

Sultan’s council backs the project.

The Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Abubakar, expressed support for the initiative through his representative, Muhammad Kilgori, the Sa’in Daula Usmaniyya of the Sultanate Council.

Mr Kilgori stressed the need for sustained collaboration beyond the project’s 18-month lifespan, saying the Sultanate Council remained committed to working with partners to strengthen information integrity and promote peaceful coexistence in Northern Nigeria.

The initiative brings together journalists, civil society organisations, security agencies, community leaders, educators, and digital influencers to address the spread of harmful narratives across the region.