About three weeks from now, one of the anticipated general elections in Africa will be held across Nigeria with an incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, locking horns with self-proclaimed reformed dictator, Retired General Muhammadu Buhari. The candidates are going from one place to another, locally and internationally, while their social media frenzy fans are setting trends on Twitter and sponsoring posts on Facebook.
Social media is a critical part of this year’s presidential campaigns and the supporters are aware of this development. It is not surprising to see long threads of comments on any status update that is related to the general elections as Nigerians on either sides of the aisle express their opinions on the issues and the contestants. Impacts are somehow being made since, for the first time, both candidates see social media as an essential aspect of their campaigns. They are spending lots of money on Google ads, YouTube and several others.
This development is further supported by Nigeria’s rising mobile penetration rate and steadily increasing number of internet users. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Eskimi and others have millions of users while contents including musical videos from Nigerian content producers have been watched several millions of times.
The internet revolution, no doubt, is happening in Nigeria. But it is not huge enough to solely determine who gets elected and who gets booted out of office.
Despite high telecoms numbers, illiteracy is still high and millions of Nigerians especially the aged and those without adequate understanding of tech devices, are still the majority that vote during elections. In other words, successful online campaigns may not yet be enough in Nigeria, a lot more needs to be done.
The politicians are aware of this development and that’s why they rarely lose sleep over issues discussed online. As for now, the battle is not of hashtags but in places in the creeks and areas in the grips of Boko Haram.
In other words, while hashtags are cool and retweets are awesome, none of these will guarantee any candidate victory at the polls – no matter how long they trend on Twitter.
