PACHE Trains Borno Youths on Use of Social Media For Development

By Abdulkareem Haruna

The Peace Ambassadors Center for Humanitarian Aid and Empowerment (PACHE), a Maiduguri-based civil society organisation, had on Saturday trained youth from different walks of professional backgrounds on how to positively use social media to enhance their professions.

The training which comes under the auspices of USAID and Northeast Connect held at the office of PACHE where more than 30 young people who are making marks in different fields of humanitarian and business endeavours were drilled for hours on the use of social media to achieve their Personal and Professional Development.

Ambassador Ahmed Shehu, the Chief Executive of PACHE said the idea of enhancing the capacity of young people especially journalists and social media influencers, in the use of social media was to capacitate them to effectively engage and bring about change in society.

He referenced the #EndSARS protest as one of the most significant indicators of how the youth can force authorities to be responsible and accountable to the people.

Mr Shehu said the training aims to be able to coordinate a “network” of well-groomed social media influencers for effective advocacy and calls to action in Borno state.

The PACHE CEO said his organisation leverages opportunities to facilitate such training even as he referenced that the key facilitator, Janet Lenya, an organisational development consultant with USAID had graciously accepted to provide the one-day training at the end of a different weeklong training event that brought her to Maiduguri.

He added that the co-facilitator, Abu Kale Yajiwa, who coordinates the Borno social media forum was brought in to share his amazing experience on how to engage effectively with social media.

Other top talkers at the event, like the Twitter sensation, Yadoma Bukar-Mandara were also brought in to share their expertise on how best to use social media for effective engagement.

Janet Lanye who took participants in more than an hour of interactive sessions on the use of social media emphasised that the new media has flattened the spherical shape of the world so much that interactions have become much easier and speedier now than ever before.

Mrs Lanye said with over 4.7 billion users of social media users which is about 59.0 per cent of the world population, sticking to one or two social media handles means underutilization of the ample flat spaces the social media avail the youths.

The consultant said for impactful engagements users of social media build a community, engage influencers, use mixed media, write ebooks, use hashtags, avoid unnecessary tagging, be consistent, post creative content, organise hangouts, build an impressive profile, carve a niche, create weekly newsletters, add a call to action on every post etc.

The co-facilitator, Mr Yajiwa, in his presentation, said Facebook remains the most influential social media platform with more than two billion people using it every month.

He said with its about roughly 36.9% of the world’s population on Facebook, the platform also remain popular in Nigeria because of its simplicity of usage.

Mr Yajiwa who is also an aide to the governor of Borno state noted that social media remains the fastest and quickest channel for citizens to gain the attention of those in government.