Social Media and 2015 Elections

The Democratic Governance for Development (DGD II) Project, a Joint Donor Funded Project managed by UNDP, recently organised a two-day Social Media Retreat in Uyo. The retreat focuses on the forthcoming general election. Adebiyi Adedapo, who was there, reports

As the 2015 general elections draws closer, politicians like never before have taken campaigns into the social media space.  This formidable platform has proven to be unignorably relevant as issues of governance were being discussed via various channels on daily basis.

It is also worthy of note that many online news media sprang-up recently, some with faceless editors, apparently to serve certain interests within the polity. This is just as independent bloggers found political stories an interesting read for their followers and some in a most unprofessional manner spread stories without verifying the authenticity of such stories.
Evidently these unprofessional news sources would have misled the over 66 million population of internet users in Nigeria, according to statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

An independent survey had posited that between 2000 and 2013, internet penetration grew from a paltry 0.06 percent to 38 percent, mostly among young people of voting age. The survey also suggested that Nigeria would become the biggest internet market in Africa as this trend will continue well into 2020.

Politicians who realised the importance of capturing this category of electorate are striving very hard to win sympathy in the cyberspace. It is however not a surprise, that the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) made an entry into the twitter space with the handle @ThisIsBuhari.
This also explains why the federal ministry of information raised tact social media team as well as why President Goodluck Jonathan deemed it fit to appoint a special adviser on social media, and recently his new entrant into twitter network @OurGEJ.

Other politicians such as state governors and governorship candidates/aspirants have followed suit, while the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) also debuts the twitter website with the handle @inecnigeria and it currently has a following of over 142,000 and the National Orientation Agency (NOA) tweets @NOA_Nigeria.
Popular political parties/leaders have as well been accused of sponsoring famous social media figures to support their interest, thereby projecting issues in favor of such parties.
Meanwhile, irrespective of its advantages of spreading information like a wild fire, the social media platform could portend danger to the political landscape if the content is not well censored. 

In a bid to keep social media conversation safe and healthy for political participation, the Democratic Governance for Development (DGD II) project, a joint donor project managed by UNDP organised a two-day Social Media Retreat in Uyo last December.
The retreat which witnessed participation of government agencies, ICT experts, media organisations, independent bloggers, civil society and youth-based groups, reviewed possible threats to healthy social media engagements and strategies to avert them.
It also featured social media innovations which promised to enhance political participation in the 2015 general elections.

The lofty idea of Quick Count data, a project of the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) is designed to inform preparations as well as to serve as a baseline for assessing the quality of the 2015 presidential election. It plans to systematically assess the process and to provide independent verification of the official results by conducting Nigeria’s second national Quick Count.
According to the TMG’s representatives at the retreat, Armsfree Ajanaku, the Quick Count, also known as parallel vote tabulation (PVT), is a proven methodology employed by nonpartisan citizen observers to independently verify official election results.

Ajanaku said  a quick count based on systematic assessments of voting and counting processes would expose fraud, or identify problems in the process, they provide an objective basis for understanding the negative effects and for seeking peaceful resolution of complaints.
Another group of social media experts, WangoNet also unveil its 9jaVoter application, the app is designed to fully engage with young voters by testing their knowledge of the Nigeria’s Electoral Act, which comes with a reward of a free recharge card win.
While Enough is Enough (EE), a civil society organization,  shared information about its ReVoDa app which allows voters become citizen observers from their polling unit with their mobile numbers already mapped.

Several social media contents geared towards improving participation and ensuring transparency in the 2015 elections were showcased and reviewed, the opportunities are endless and experts disclosed that the cyberspace is still almost virgin, awaiting innovative ideas.
Interestingly, INEC, at the meeting demonstrated it readiness to further embrace enhanced features on its website. The commission disclosed that Nigerians could now check their voter registration status online through the INEC Citizen’s Contact Center (ICCC).
The commission also expressed its readiness to deploy the use of electronic card readers to confirm identity of eligible voters during the election.

However, while reviewing the commission’s strategy, National Coordinator of the Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA), Mr.  Samson Itodo, advised INEC to jettison the idea of using card readers to avoid confusion. He observed that the card readers had not been tested during smaller elections by INEC, thereby argued that the possibility of the machines malfunctioning may jeopardise the credibility of the elections. “Elections were held in Osun and Ekiti states, and card readers were not used and these elections were adjudged credible, free and fair. Since these card readers’ had not been tested before by INEC, I will advise that INEC should drop the idea against 2015 elections,” he said.

Independent bloggers and social media experts at the retreat, apart from reviewing and making inputs to improve the lofty ideas, agreed on the need to encourage a healthy discussion on the cyberspace.