The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has decried the high rate of hate speeches that characterised the Kogi state governorship election, and has equally appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure that the heartless killing of Mrs Salome Abuh is not allowed to go unpunished.
The CITAD disclosed this in Lokoja, Thursday, noting that the centre was able to track a total of 387 instances where such hate speeches were made.
The Coordinator of CITAD, Hamza Ibrahim, lamented the records of violence against women during the just concluded governorship election were ethnic, religious, and gender-based.
Speaking the coordinator said out of the hate speeches, 32 per cent were ethnic, while 26 per cent were election-related stressing that religious-based, gender and issues of attention were on the rise.
He observed that the hate speeches were tracked by the centre using trained monitors and platforms such as the face book, Twitter, and added that the centre’s analysis established that the hate speeches occurred in textual, video, pictorial and symbolic form.
While appealing to President Buhari to ensure that the killers of Mrs Abuh are brought to book to serve as a deterrent to others, Ibrahim warned against the dangers of hate speeches drawing the attention of the political actors to the peace accord signed prior to the election.
The centre equally cautioned social media users to sanitize their post against hate speeches, just as he admonished Twitter and Facebook users to report instances of hate speech on their platforms.
