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With Nigeria’s 2027 general elections approaching, journalists, fact-checkers and Wikimedia editors have been trained on practical ways to verify information and counter disinformation in the country’s increasingly digital information space.
The three-day seminar, organised in Lagos by the Fundación para la Internacionalización de las Administraciones Públicas (FIAP) through its implementing partner FactCheckAfrica, in collaboration with Wikimedia Nigeria, brought together Wikimedia editors, newsroom editors, and fact-checkers for sessions focused on information integrity, fact-checking, source verification, digital investigation, and open-source information verification.
ROUNDCHECK was represented by its Executive Director, Caleb Ijioma, as part of the organisation’s commitment to contribute to information integrity.
Beyond the training sessions, participants took part in a Wikipedia edit-a-thon focused on election-related and public-interest content. The exercise recorded 296 edits across 52 Wikipedia articles, with participants contributing an estimated 17,400 words and 170 references.
Among the articles edited were those on the 2027 Nigerian general election, the 2026 Osun and Ekiti State gubernatorial elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV), Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC), political parties and other election-related topics.
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The seminar also examined how misinformation and disinformation can affect public understanding of elections, particularly as political claims, manipulated media and unverified information continue to circulate across social media, news platforms and messaging applications.
Speaking on the initiative, Founder of FactCheckAfrica, Abideen Olasupo, described electoral integrity as an information integrity challenge and said citizens need access to accurate, verifiable and properly contextualised information as they make decisions about issues affecting them.
The Lagos seminar is the first of two regional cycles under the initiative. A second seminar is scheduled for Abuja from September 28 to 30, with another group of Wikimedia editors, newsroom editors and fact-checkers expected to participate.
