MY PEOPLE PERISH, BECAUSE THEY LIKE FALLACIOUS INFORMATION

I was in a chat over a year ago with some undergraduate students, discussing the Nigerian telecoms revolution. One of them mentioned to us that Strive Masiyiwa bribed the government of Nigeria to get a licence to run Econet in Nigeria. I asked him where he got that information, and he said he read it on social media. I knew the story was incorrect because the Nigerian government issued the licence of about 280 million dollars to Strive to run his company in Nigeria, probably the most expensive licence by any African country to date.The chap kept arguing to the point that it almost became a fight. So I asked him to tell me the country of Origin of Strive Masiyiwa, and I was shocked when he said, South Africa. He did not know Strive, and he was fighting us because of a piece of information he read on social media. To clear him, I opened a video on Youtube for him. It was an interview granted by the mogul himself at Stanford Business School where he said everything about the Nigerian licence, how he took a Nigerian governor to court for bribery requests and how the governor spent 13 years in an American jail. He calmed down after watching, and he did not have any other thing to say.Why am I sharing this;1. We increasingly have a generation that feeds on junk information and is too lazy to do their research to find the truth.2. When you hear something about someone, regard it as a piece of mere information until you have confirmed the fact.3. Social media information is not the most reliable information to believe.4. There is a new generation that only needs information for gisting and not information for freedom and truth.5. You don't have to turn every conversation that is not in your favour into a fight; you should instead improve the quality of your argument.6. The people who lack the facts are most times the loudest in the room.7. Search to establish the truth because my people perish because they lack knowledge.He gives understanding to the simple.Oluwaseun David ADEPOJU