Yaounde: Organisation empowers community leaders on combating hate speech, fakeness.

The leadership capacity enhancement programme was under the theme: "Leadership development and hate speech mitigation". The young leaders were drawn from different spheres of life.

According to the Country Director Interim for C-Life Cameroon, Ngwain Cleopatra Bineng, “there is a cankerworm eating up the society which can result in mental, emotional depression and many others triggered by hate speech”. 

Ngwain stated that “teaching a leader about hate speech is like a barrel with more than 3,000 persons since they are charged to influence society positively where they find themselves in areas of leadership”.

The Conflict Research and Activity Implementation Coordinator at defyhatenow, Dr Kinang Derick Fai, on his part underscored the need for effective synergy to eradicate hate speech. 

“We keep telling people that we need to come together as one people. It's a synergy that is needed to put an end to this existential scorch,” Dr Kinang stated.

He saluted “C-Life's flagship programme on servant leadership”, restating that “we are touching the right persons that can in return serve as a useful effect in their communities, to use their servant leadership skills to make our society a hate free society”.

The workshop also comprised practical and engaging activities which aimed to build the capacities of the leaders in conflict resolution. 

They were also empowered on identifying and counteracting hate speech and fake news. They were equally provided with some tools in a way to combat the long existing parasite. 

For the participants, it was a rearmament action which will bring about change in their different spheres of influence. 

Angu Nahwise, a teacher who took part in the exercise, complimented the initiative, stating that there are expressions he had been using not knowing it was hate speech.

“You know as a teacher, you interact with students and they are sometimes annoying, you use one or two words trying to get back at them not knowing that it's a hate speech,” Angu stated. 

Another partaker, Ndoaboh Nestor, told The Guardian Post that he is ready to apply the knowledge gained.  

“I am not going the same way I came. I am going well armed to fight against hate speech in our community,” Ndoaboh said. 

C-Life has trained over 300 young leaders through its Servant Leadership Fellowship Program. It has reached over 16,000 people in their seven years of experience.