Social media and the 2011 elections… .

Business Day

3 May 2011

Social media and the 2011 elections… .

Charles Igbinidu    . .

The 2011 elections were undoubtedly remarkable for a number of reasons; they were historic in part because information technology allowed more people to participate than ever before. Nigerians actively reached out, connected, exchanged ideas, and promoted their points of view using social networking sites. 

While expenditure by candidates on print, electronic and out-of-home media was still high, 2011 is undoubtedly the first time in which social media played a momentous role in persuading and galvanising the electorate. Indeed, I believe it is apposite to tag the 2011 elections as Nigeria's first social media elections. I am one of those people captivated albeit not amazed, by the smudging line between politics and technology, particularly social media in Nigeria.The liberalisation of the telecommunications industry has made access to telephones and internet very easy. With just about 400,000 telephone lines a little over a decade ago, Nigerian telecommunications operators now have a combined customer base of about 90 million. Easy telephony access has also led to improvement in internet penetration.

The increasing penetration of internet and telephone technology has culminated in an embrace of social media platforms by the Nigeria electorate, especially the youth who are increasingly becoming very vibrant and technology savoir-faire.

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The fact that people waited for the results of their polling units to be counted, the escalation of the results and the eventual announcement of results which were in line with what a lot of people already knew, made it impossible for politicians who lost to rubbish results announced by INEC.

For example, Nasir el-Rufai has been having an uphill task convincing his Facebook friends that the presidential election was not free and fair. The more he tried to do so, the more he is assailed by contrary opinions from many of his Facebook friends and supporters.In conclusion, I will say that it seems as if our politicians have caught the social media bug, and have ubiquitously used it to connect with voters before elections.