The Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre says it trained 1000 students on how to be safe online between 2017 and 2018.
Its Communications Officer, Adeyemi Odutola, said that the training was in line with the celebration of the 2018 Safer Internet Day.
According to a statement issued by him, there is need to strengthen knowledge and skills of Nigerian youths on ways to engage and use the internet positively towards socio-economic growth of the country.
The statement said: “The ‘Safer Internet Day’, marked on February 6, is a day set aside to raise awareness for the empowerment of more people to using internet technology towards community development.
“The focus of Facebook for the Safer Internet Day is making the internet safer for the youth.
“To this effect, to mark the day in Nigeria, Facebook partnered with W.TEC to host a day of workshops and fun activities for secondary school students.”
Odutola said that the global theme for SID 2018 was “Create, Connect and Share Respect: A better internet starts with you’’.
He said that during the workshop sessions, W.TEC taught the students Nigerian Internet laws and the reality of Internet safety in Nigeria.
Odutola said that the workshop was delivered under the W.TEC’s SID theme: “Becoming A Civil Citizen of the Internet: For A Better Internet For All”.
He said that the event was organised for the youths to appreciate them for being law abiding on the internet and to practise better safety as it affected everyone.
He said: “The objective of this is to teach our youths the innovative ways of using the internet safely.
“To also teach our youths to have a better understanding of the legal aspects to social media and the internet so as for them not to trample on the rights of others.’’
The communication officer said that the programme had 10 schools in attendance with the host school being the New Era Girls Senior Secondary School in Surulere, Lagos.
He said that a total of 200 select male and female secondary school students as well as 15 teachers participated in the day-long fun-filled learning experience of workshops and interactive activities.
Odutola said that programme involved two major activities, a workshop featuring two presentations, learning more about Nigerian Internet laws/enforcement and social media community rules presented by Paradigm Initiative Nigeria.
He said that the second presentation was on the reality of internet safety in Nigeria presented by Co-creation Hub.
