Governor Sule Charges AI Trainees To Deploy Expertise To Positive Use, Not Abuse On Social Media

Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State, has charged 100 youths who recently completed a one-week intensive training in Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics to deploy their newly acquired skills for productive purposes, warning them against using digital tools to abuse and harass others on social media.

Governor Sule gave the charge when he received the trainees at the Government House in Lafia, shortly after the conclusion of their programme at the Ta’al Conference Hotel.

The training was organised by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board in collaboration with consultant Luka Dalang, a corporate trainer with experience in education and development projects and a leading advocate for AI and digital skills adoption across North Central Nigeria.

Each trainee went home with a laptop computer and N100,000 as a startup package.

Visibly excited by the event, Governor Sule traced the origins of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board to the oil and gas sector in the mid-1990s, when virtually every aspect of petroleum operations in Nigeria was handled by foreign companies.

He said the board has since grown from a small unit within the NNPC into a full agency and has now extended its reach well beyond oil and gas into areas like digital technology and artificial intelligence.

“For you to undergo this training in Nasarawa State is a big deal for me,” he said, commending the board and the consultant for bringing the programme to the state.

The governor drew a direct comparison between AI and the computer numerical control machines he encountered early in his engineering career, explaining that both operate on the same basic principle — that output is entirely determined by what goes in.

“AI is nothing but garbage in, garbage out. If you program the AI system to cause destruction, it is destruction that it will carry out. If you program it to build, it will build. The way you program it is the way the execution is going to be,” he said.

He used that principle to drive home a strong message about responsibility, urging the trainees not to turn their digital skills into tools for online harassment.

He expressed concern about the growing culture of unprovoked abuse on social media, describing it as one of the more troubling trends in the state.

“Please do not use your knowledge to go and be paid to abuse other people. Only people who have no future spend so much time abusing other people on social media,” he added.

He recounted a specific incident that had troubled him, in which a young man was found online insulting the Deputy Governor without ever having met him or having any personal grievance against him.

“He abused him with the kind of insult that you cannot direct at a small child, all in the name of politics. That is what politics has become in our state and it is very sad,” the Governor said.

Governor Sule urged the trainees to think beyond themselves and become trainers in their own right, passing the knowledge they had received to others in their communities.

“You may not be able to give them a laptop when you finish training them, but at least you will be building someone who has the capacity,” he said.

He also expressed hope that none of the trainees would dispose of their equipment, encouraging them instead to grow the startup capital into something more meaningful.

“I want to see someone change that N100,000 to one million, and that one million to five million, because you have to start from somewhere,” he said.

Consultant Luka Dalang, speaking at the event, described the trainees as highly engaged participants, noting that not everyone who attended was guaranteed a certificate, as the programme demanded active participation.

Dalang said monitoring mechanisms were already in place to track how the trainees applied both their skills and the funds provided.

One of the trainees, speaking on behalf of his colleagues, gave a summary of what the week-long programme covered, including machine learning, deep learning, data visualisation, prompt engineering, and the ethical use of AI in government and public institutions.

She described the training as more than an acquisition of skills, saying it had prepared Nasarawa youths for the future.

Earlier, in an opening remarks, Secretary to the Government of Nasarawa State, Labaran Shuaibu Magaji, SAN, commended Governor Sule for affording the trainees the opportunity to acquire meaningful skills, especially at a time when others are training the youths to become attack dogs on social media.

The SGNS was particularly excited because the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board selected Nasarawa State for the AI and Data Analytics training as a result of the sterling leadership being provided by Governor Sule.