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There was a time when information traveled by word of mouth, printed pages, and evening news bulletins. Now it moves at the speed of a thumb, jumping from one chat group to another, from a stranger’s post to a family thread, from a casual screenshot to a breaking-news alert. For young people, this constant flood of content is not just background noise—it is the air they breathe, the way they understand politics, culture, and each other. But with that ease comes danger. A single false post can distort an election, destroy a reputation, or set communities against one another. It is precisely this challenge that The Naija Collective, a Nigerian group focused on civic education and social change, decided to take on. In late November, they brought together students, media enthusiasts, and young journalists at the University of Lagos for a three-day training workshop, held in the university’s guest house conference hall, centered on digital, media, and information literacy. The goal was not simply to teach people how to spot a bad link or a suspicious quote, but to build something deeper: resilience against the psychological tricks and coordinated manipulations that shape so much of what we see online. The workshop ran from Tuesday to Thursday, and from the very first session, it was clear that this was not going to be a dry academic lecture. It was an urgent, practical conversation about how young Nigerians can protect their minds and their democracy from the quiet machinery of misinformation.
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The first day of the training focused on the mechanics of deception—how misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda actually spread, and why they are so effective. Abdulkarimu Oare, a media communications trainer and one of the workshop’s lead facilitators, set the tone with a simple but sobering observation: we now live in a world where information moves faster than it ever has before, and we consume enormous amounts of it every single day. The problem, as Oare explained, is that not all information is shared with honest intentions. Some content is created to mislead, some to provoke outrage, and some to push a particular political agenda. The training was designed to help young people see through this fog, to recognize that the content they scroll past is rarely neutral. Oare walked participants through the way propaganda operates, explaining how coordinated messaging and networks of social media accounts can make a fringe opinion seem mainstream, or a falsehood seem like common sense. He also showed how information often starts in obscure, unreliable spaces and then gets picked up by larger platforms, eventually reaching mainstream media and becoming impossible to trace back to its origin. By the time a claim reaches your screen, its source may have been laundered so thoroughly that it feels trustworthy, even when it is not. One of the most important lessons he offered was that recognizing propaganda is not the same as agreeing or disagreeing with the political position behind it. The goal is not to tell people what to think, but to help them see the agenda at work—and then, crucially, to demand evidence before accepting a claim as truth.
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To make those ideas stick, the training included an interactive simulation that allowed participants to see exactly how false information travels and how their own choices can accelerate or stop its spread. It was one of those moments when theory becomes visceral: people watched as a piece of unverified content jumped from one account to another, multiplied through likes and reposts, and took on a life of its own. The simulation showed that every time a user shares without checking, they become part of the problem—not out of malice, but out of habit. This resonated deeply with the participants, many of whom shared their own stories of encountering misinformation among friends, family members, and acquaintances. Oluwafemi Morakinyo, a Creative Arts student at the University of Lagos and a visual artist, said the training had changed the way he looks at the content he consumes. He now understands that verification is not an optional extra step; it is a responsibility. Another participant, Ayobami Atanda from Oduduwa University, said the sessions helped him understand the psychological factors that make people believe and share information without pausing to check it. Olajumoke, a final-year Sociology student, came to the workshop because friends and family often ask her about things they see online, and she wanted to be able to give them honest, careful answers. She left with the tools to do exactly that, and with a reinforced commitment to checking sources before pressing share. Their stories reflect a larger truth: the fight against misinformation will not be won by algorithms alone. It will be won by ordinary people making more thoughtful choices in their everyday digital lives.
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The training took on added significance because of timing. With elections on the horizon in Nigeria, the danger of online manipulation is not theoretical—it is a lived reality that shapes public discourse, stirs ethnic and religious tensions, and undermines trust in democratic institutions. Nosike Nwigene, a strategic communications expert and coordinator of the training, emphasized this point throughout the workshop. Young people, he said, are full of energy and enthusiasm, but that very passion can be exploited by actors who want to heat up the polity for their own gain. Many young Nigerians simply do not know how to respond to coordinated disinformation campaigns designed to inflame divisions during election seasons. Nwigene stressed that resilience must be built before the crisis arrives, not after. He encouraged participants to slow down, take a breath, and ask themselves basic questions before believing or sharing anything: “Why don’t I see a source? Why does this affect me? Who benefits from my outrage?” These questions, simple as they sound, are powerful tools. They force a moment of reflection in the middle of the scroll, a pause that can prevent a lie from becoming a movement. The message was not that young people should stop being passionate or stop engaging with politics. Rather, it was that their passion should be informed by evidence, not manipulated by emotional triggers. In a digital ecosystem built to reward speed and shock, the most radical act may be thinking twice.
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What made the workshop feel genuinely human was the way it acknowledged the emotional nature of sharing. People do not spread misinformation because they are stupid or evil. They spread it because it makes them feel something—anger, fear, hope, belonging—and they want others to feel it too. Oare and the other facilitators did not shame participants for being fooled in the past. Instead, they normalized the experience of being misled and gave people practical steps to regain control. There is a difference, they explained, between skepticism and cynicism. Skepticism asks questions; cynicism dismisses everything. The goal is to be more skeptical without becoming bitter, to question sources without losing the ability to trust entirely. Participants were encouraged to double-check claims, look for primary sources, and be willing to admit when they had shared something that turned out to be false. That kind of humility is rare in online spaces, where people often double down rather than correct themselves. But the environment created by The Naija Collective made it safe to be vulnerable. The participants were not just passive listeners; they were active contributors, asking sharp questions, challenging each other, and reflecting on their own behaviors. By the end of the training, there was a sense that something important had shifted. It was not just about learning new fact-checking techniques. It was about realizing that every person has a role to play in the information ecosystem, and that silence and thoughtfulness can be just as powerful as sharing and shouting.
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In the end, the training was a reminder that media literacy is not a luxury—it is a survival skill for democracy. The Naija Collective’s work is part of a broader movement to ensure that young Nigerians are not just passive consumers of content but active, discerning citizens who understand how information is made, who makes it, and what it is designed to do. The scale of the problem is enormous: falsehoods spread faster than truths, algorithms reward outrage, and foreign and domestic actors both have learned how to weaponize social media. But the workshop offered a hopeful counterpoint. When young people are equipped with the right tools, they can become the most effective defense against manipulation. They can catch lies before they go viral, correct their peers with patience and evidence, and refuse to be tools in someone else’s political game. The participants who walked out of that conference hall in Lagos were not the same people who walked in. They had been given a new lens, and more importantly, they had been reminded of their own power. The fight against misinformation will never be completely won—new techniques will emerge, new platforms will rise, and new temptations will appear. But as long as there are people willing to pause, ask questions, and verify before they share, the seeds of a more honest public conversation will keep growing. For that reason, the work of The Naija Collective matters far beyond one workshop in Lagos. It is part of a global effort to remind us all that information is not just something we consume, but something we are responsible for.