The Nigerian Navy has called on the media to join in the fight against terrorism, piracy and pipeline vandalism describing the media as “force multipliers in modern warfare”.

The Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Dele Ezeoba, who was represented by the Flag Officer Commanding, Western Naval Command, Rear Admiral Ibok Ibas, made this call at a naval information management workshop in Lagos on Thursday.

He said, “The support of the media is crucial to the Armed Forces in general, in the ongoing counter-terrorism operations, particularly in the North-Eastern part of the nation. Our recent efforts and the resultant gains in combating illegalities on our waters confer a duty on our friends in the media to generate the much-needed public awareness of what the service is doing in ensuring sanity in our maritime environment.”

Dr. Josef Bel-Molokwu of the School of Media and Communication, Pan-African University, delivering a paper titled, ‘The potential of the social media as tools of information management by the Nigerian Navy’, at the workshop advised the navy to embrace social media.

Bel-Molokwu urged that social media should be incorporated into the overall communication strategy of the Navy since the Internet had become the major source of information for most people.

He said, “Social media has the potential to make the profession more global, strategic interactive, dialogical and socially responsible. However, many practitioners are using the new media the same way they use the old- as a means of dumping messages on the general population.

“Best practices should be adopted and social media management tools should be used to improve on productivity,” Bel-Molokwu concluded.