The Akin Fadeyi Foundation has trained hundreds of secondary school students in Lagos on the dangers of cyberbullying, sextortion and other social vices, urging them to embrace responsible behaviour, particularly in their use of social media.
The training also focused on educating the students on the legal consequences of online misconduct, with the foundation stressing that digital platforms do not provide a shield against accountability.
Speaking at the event in Lagos on Thursday, the Founder and Executive Director of the foundation, Mr Akin Fadeyi, called on parents to complement their verbal instructions with exemplary conduct, saying children were more likely to emulate what they saw their parents do than what they were told.
Drawing from his childhood experiences, Fadeyi said the lessons of hard work, diligence and good relationships instilled by his parents helped shape his character and professional development.
He said, “My advice to parents is that what they say to their children is as important as what they do in their presence. When you give birth to children, the values you want them to imbibe should not end with what you tell them. You must practise those values.
“I had my hardships while going to school. My mother was a teacher, but by the time I got to A-levels, I had already published a campus magazine. What galvanised my competence to achieve that was the quality of teaching I received from my parents, particularly their emphasis on hard work, diligence and friendship.”
He also urged public office holders to recognise the influence of their conduct on society, noting that leadership decisions and personal examples could either promote responsible behaviour or encourage wrongdoing.
“I am tired of advising the government, but they must understand that the people entrusted them with power. They should constitute themselves as a well-behaved institution because decisions they make with a stroke of the pen affect a critical mass of people.
“People are driven by the exemplary conduct of those who lead them, just as they can be influenced by the wrong conduct of those who mislead them,”
Fadeyi said
Explaining the foundation’s approach to behavioural change, Fadeyi said institutional collaboration and partnerships had remained central to its activities since 2016.
“At the core of the work we do in Nigeria are institutional collaborations and extensive partnerships. We realised that to take our behavioural change messages to a wider audience, we had to work with stakeholders. One cannot sit in the dark and keep winking,” he said.
He listed the Office of the Inspector-General of Police, the Federal Road Safety Corps, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission and the Ministry of Women Affairs among the foundation’s institutional partners.
He also identified international development organisations, including the European Union, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the United Nations Development Programme, as well as the MacArthur Foundation, as partners in its initiatives.
According to him, the foundation’s engagement with the Oil Producers Trade Section provided an opportunity to extend its behavioural change campaign to young Nigerians.
“OPTS reached out to us to train these young Nigerians, and we were happy to do that because it aligns with the track record we have built in institutional collaborations. We have decided to drive behavioural change from the bottom up,” he said.
Fadeyi maintained that Nigeria’s long-standing institutional challenges could only be addressed through individual responsibility and a deliberate effort to instil good values in younger generations.
“The only way to change Nigeria is to start with ourselves. The problem we are dealing with is a dysfunctional system that has remained in place for decades. To change the nation, we must start with the man in the mirror,” he added.
On the growing incidence of online misconduct, Fadeyi said the expansion of digital technology had created new challenges that required deliberate public education and behavioural reorientation.
He noted that with about 159 million Nigerians using mobile devices, the digital space had become too influential to be ignored in efforts to promote responsible citizenship.
Also speaking with our correspondent on the sidelines of the event, the lead speaker, Toyin Taiwo-Ojo, a child safety advocate, human rights activist and legal practitioner, described cybercrime as an increasingly disturbing menace, particularly among the younger generation.
She said the growing tendency to circulate unverified information, bully people online and share intimate images without consent for blackmail and harassment had made the digital space increasingly unsafe.
Taiwo-Ojo noted that, unlike in the past, some internet users now exploit the perceived anonymity of social media to attack others without considering the consequences of their actions. She warned that cyberbullying and online harassment could have devastating effects on victims, adding that some people had lost their lives as a result of sustained online abuse.
She said the increasing cases of digital abuse had necessitated the introduction and enforcement of legal safeguards, including the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 and the Cybercrimes Prohibition, Prevention Act 2015, as amended in 2024, as well as relevant provisions of the Constitution.
“These laws have been put in place to protect people against cybercrime, and I can say to a very great extent that they are being applied every day and are beginning to produce the desired results,” she said.
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