The Kogi State Social Media Summit summit has come and gone. However a lot of expositions were made by both government and stakeholders. The Chief of Staff to to the Governor of Kogi State, Hon Edward Onoja, while welcoming guest to the summit, advocated that social media should be used to spread positive news, devoid of acrimony at all times.
Ayobami Oyalowo, a renowned social media influencer by the name “Thegodfather” on twitter who is the lead speaker, reiterated the importance of the social media to governance. He said a government is as important and popular depending on how it gives serous importance to social media, taking advantage of its affordability, its availability and its number of subscribers.
He pointed out that Nigeria is one of the fastest social media growing nation, hence any government that wants to succeed should take social media seriously. He urged the Kogi State Government to be active partners of social media “influencers” as it was the best channels the government could use to sell its programmes to the people, adding that “social media information can travel farther than the conventional media, in matters of minutes with large hits”
The Deputy Governor who represented the Governor, while delivery his goodwill message said “We have not asked you to cover our mistakes, we are asking you to report our good works to correct the wrong impression about Kogi out there, investigate and confirm stories before broadcasting” from the above, the Governor is saying criticize us but be fair and just in doing so.
The first day of the summit was used used for project assessment by the Social Media Influencers and Journalists. and based on available facts, the Kogi State government has worked to a large extent, the more reason the summit became imperative, so that people come and have first hand information about the many developmental projects in the state not reported either by omission or commission in the media.
The issue of salaries topped the interactive section, the government has been as forth coming as possible, publishing its income and expenditure on national dailies and online. you can visit the state owned website www.kogistate.gov.ng for details of all payments.
While the state acknowledges that owing salaries is not the best, its asking for the cooperation of its workers to be able to achieve set goal. Non payment of salary is a national thing but then the state government is not resting on that alibi not to pay its workers, its doing all it can to meet up with payments of it staff salaries.
