The Senior Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on New Media, Tolu Ogunlesi has revealed that 16 million Nigerians use Facebook monthly while 7 million out of the 16 million use the medium daily.
The Presidential aide also admitted that most of the ministries, department and agencies (MDAs) of government do not update their websites, saying it makes it difficult for Nigerians, and even foreign investors to have access to information. He however promised that there would be changes in a couple of months.
Ogunlesi made this known in Abuja at the launching of Conversations for Change (C4C) Media Strategy, aimed at creating the platform to inform, empower and provide platform for young people to exchange ideas and have their voices heard.
He said: “Every month, 16 million Nigerians use facebook, 7 million of those people use Facebook daily, Blackberry Messenger (BBM), they are almost 5 million, Twitter is a couple of millions, connected mobile phones is 150 million, about 90 millions of those mobile phones are connected to the internet monthly.”
According to him, there has never been any media that cover a large part of the population as the social media, stressing that it is interesting to be part of C4C that is determined to bring young people together with social media, which has been known as the default mode of communication for young people.
“What we met on ground when we started was that there is no online record of the previous government for the past five years. It is true that government parastatals and MDAs don’t have up-to-date information on their website. But in another couple of months there will be changes,” Ogunlesi said.
