Social media revolutionizes Nigerian election

A tremendous change in the Nigerian political process has been the rise in social media. How the social media has influenced politics in Nigeria is prominently noted by the inability of the political parties to change election results. The use of social media such as Facebook, Blackberry Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter, Blog, MySpace and YouTube and Instagram emerged as an important means of electioneering and policing election results. The power of social media played a prominent role at the Ekiti and Osun states governorship elections. In Ekiti, accredited election and citizens observers, civil society situation rooms, All Peoples Congress, Peoples’ Democratic Party and Independent National Elections Commission situation rooms deployed observers who relied mainly on social media to report from the field. Three hours after voting commenced, observers and citizens started broadcasting election results announced in their respective voting centres using social media. As elections results in respective voting centres went viral on social media, political parties, citizens, both local and international observers were monitoring social media, tracking and analysing the results. Although INEC constantly maintained that election results cannot be announced using social media, three hours after election results started trending Some of us at the CDD situation room having monitored the social media knew APC had lost Ekiti to PDP. Having monitored election results trending, jubilation started in Ado Ekiti, the state capital, long before the official announcement of the result by INEC.

During the 28 March 2015 presidential election, social media as well played a prominent role not only during electioneering but in ensuring election results were broadcast before official announcement by the INEC. A few hours after voting started, results were trending on social media. From those results on the social media it became clear to Nigerians that All Progressive Congress had won in the Northeast, Northwest, Southwest, and competing with PDP in the North-central, while the PDP led in the Southeast and South-south.

Agitated by the election results trending on the social media, PDP accused APC of posting fake election results and further urged Nigerians to totally disregard the results and wait for official announcement by INEC. Indeed Nigerians waited for official announcement from INEC. However, there was no major difference between results announced by INEC and those trending on social media. APC won all the states already trending on social media.

The use of social media in election has become a key tool deployed by Nigerians to determine who leads and wins at the polls. Ekiti, Osun and March 28, 2015 presidential election are good examples that show how powerful social media can be in checkmating election rigging. With social media and digital communication increasingly being used as tools for reporting incidents in elections, it becomes important for political parties to begin to come to the terms that citizens now have power to monitor election results making it impossible for results to be tampered with since the results are already in the public domain waiting for official announcement by INEC. The extent to which social media proves effective in attracting young Nigerians to election activities now makes it possible for citizen’s votes to count. Democracy and Nigerians have more to gain through social media that has taken over communications among young citizens globally.

The emergence of social media in elections has obviously frustrated Nigerian politicians and stopped criminal strategies of changing election results by the returning officers in collaboration with political parties. The social media age is a revolution for Nigerian democracy; those who must win election must win the will of the people. The days of changing election results by the returning officers have gone!

* Audu Liberty Oseni is Program Officer, Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja, Nigeria

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