NASA Tell, International Development and Biden’s Vision for Democracy in Africa — But How Did An Op-Ed About Campaign Ads And The Nigerian Presidential Election Become Fodder for Propaganda?
NASA Tell, International Development and Biden’s Vision for Democracy in Africa — But How Did An Op-Ed About Campaign Ads And The Nigerian Presidential Election Become Fodder for Propaganda?
A Column for Tell Magazine that focuses on campaign strategies.
Original title in Tell Magazine: Between Campaign Ads and Reality
By Ben Edokpayi ©
Word Count 1971
Dateline Nigeria — If the agitated and informed banter during a recent bus ride that originated from Calabar, Cross River State is to be used as a yard stick of the electorate’s pulse then both political parties in Nigeria’s forthcoming elections certainly have a herculean task ahead.
From the Boko Haram insurgency, corruption, youth unemployment, unfulfilled political promises and many other issues troubling the polity, the mix of passengers (who offered a snapshot of the country’s voting demographics) were as passionate as they were informed on the issues and the candidates in next month’s presidential elections.
As I disembarked from the bus, the impression was that none of the passengers had decided on who they were going to vote for. A general consensus was that this was the time for whoever gets elected as President to make lasting and not cosmetic changes to pull Nigeria back from the abyss.
If that bus experience is indeed an indication of how close it will be at the ballot box on February 14, then the contest between President Goodluck Jonathan and his challenger General Muhammadu Buhari (retired) will be as important as presidential elections go anywhere in the world.
My sense is that the difference (barring massive rigging) will come down to how creative, convincing and conscientious each presidential candidate will be between now and February 14 (the original date for the 2015 elections.)
And obviously what will drive that is how they package and deliver their messages.
Mass-messaging was indeed an ever present fixture with the numerous billboards that adorned the stretch of highway between Asaba and Agbor in Delta State as we journeyed along. I lost count after about 50 billboards, but my guess is that every one of the more than 150 candidates contesting for one position or the other in Delta State, has a billboard between Asaba and the boundary with Edo State; making that stretch of highway perhaps the most politically-opinionated highway in Nigeria.
But the question is, in an era when so many things are always contending for our attention, how many zipping by at high speed will remember the message on a billboard, when there are so many next to each other. Which is why the candidates at all levels of this campaign have to find more unique and personal ways to reach out to the people whose votes they seek.
While there is still a place for billboard messages, print and electronic media spots as well as other traditional campaign methods, I believe with close to 60 million internet users in Nigeria, politicians now have cheaper and viable outlets where they can get more value for their advertising naira.
You only need to look at recent reports on Internet usage that places the tenth largest population of Internet users in Nigeria (ahead of Britain and France), to understand why an effective deployment of campaign messages and strategies through the internet and social media platforms is a goldmine waiting to be harvested.
Here are some other interesting facts on Internet and social media usage in Nigeria:
• There are more internet users in Nigeria than the entire population of Tanzania
• The average Nigerian internet user spends not less than three hours daily surfing the world wide web
• 78 percent of Nigeria’s internet population are between 19 and 35.
In another interesting report on this phenomenal revolution in communication patterns, Business Day in a 2012 story informed that of the 115 million mobile telephone subscribers in the country, 35 million use their handheld devices to access internet data services, which could indeed provide a treasure trove of information for any political campaign. My guess is those numbers have increased exponentially between then and now.
“We have millions of Nigerians connected to the social media platform and over 80 percent of them will be participating in the coming elections. So it is very important to engage in social media platforms,” Omobola Johnson, the federal minister of communications technology acknowledged recently during a ministerial forum in Abuja.
So if well harnessed and executed, an election strategy using the internet can simply not go wrong with the kind of market reach in Nigeria.
As the Obama campaign proved in the last American presidential elections, campaign websites remain the central hub of digital political messaging, if you can drive the voters’ attention to these sources. The difference in that campaign between Obama and the Republican candidate Mitt Romney was in the strategies they used in targeting the undecided voters.
While the Romney campaign certainly had more money at its disposal, Obama hunkered down to build one of “the world’s most sophisticated media and social media targeting programs, “overlaying undecided voter and demographic data with media buy cost.” And that eventually was one of the key deciding factors for the Obama campaign.
A Pew Research Center study, of how the campaigns used digital tools to talk directly with voters by bypassing the filter of traditional media, also established that the Obama campaign posted nearly four times as much content as the Romney campaign and was active on nearly twice as many on social media platforms.
The Pew study also established that throughout modern campaign history, successful candidates have tended to outpace their competitors in understanding changing communications.
From Franklin Roosevelt’s use of radio, to John F. Kennedy’s embrace of television, to Ronald Reagan’s recognition of the potential for arranging the look and feel of campaign events in the age of satellites and videotape, candidates quicker to grasp the power of new technology have used that to convey a sense that they represented a new generation of leadership more in touch with where the country was heading, the Pew study further established.
And I believe this scenario can be replicated with the Nigeria of today.
With nearly 60 million internet users in Nigeria, the Jonathan or Buhari campaigns cannot go wrong if they successfully harness this strategy by filtering their messages through the various digital platforms to their central hub, which in this case will be their campaign websites.
But first they will have to ensure that the digital gateway’s for their online messages are secured from 419ers and hackers.
In my research for this column, I tried to friend both candidates through their Facebook platforms. But with so many Goodluck Jonathan and Mohammadu Buhari’s on Facebook I still am not sure I am connected to the right candidate, which I believe is also the dilemma of many internet-savvy Nigerian voters out there.
Important Trivia! Did You Know That I and My Uncle Sir Victor Uwaifo, one of Africa’s greatest musicians, attended the same high school interestingly known as Western Boys High School. Cross Country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY_dtyUaHrs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrUT3cQh_-w
Inside The Minds Of Group Think Gay Analysts In The DC Beltway.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-senate-hearing-surveillance-live
Is There A Secret Cabal In Langley and Washington Set Up To Develop Templates About Black People from Africa and In The Diaspora As Inferior, Another Dangerous Chapter, And Why We Must Continue To Expose This Depravity
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/morning-i-met-donald-trump/616556/
More tales of the Weird. Broadcaster swallow a fly on air.
Wow! I have been on TV since I was a child when I debated for my High School on National TV and through 2018 at this recording in Van Nuys and such an anomaly has never happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MqyE909iCM&t=65s
Now that’s a cause for laughter as we approach World Teachers Day in October. In remembrance I honor two high school teachers in Nigeria who helped establish a solid foundation for me. Firstly, Mrs. Agun at Western Boys High School (Now Renamed Airewele High School in Benin City who taught me English and also prepped the school’s debate team (which I belonged to) for a High School debate appearance at the Benin studio of the Nigerian Television Authority (evening program dedicated to promoting high school debate) and our humorous but very strict History teacher at Saint Patrick’s College ( a catholic school) in Asaba Mr. EfOBI! His pre-independence Peugeot 403, a relic, used to be the source of class jokes. The door of the car always came unhinged every time he was running late for his class. It was a miracle he never had a mishap. One more high school note? I recall a funny incident in the cafeteria. What happened I think it was one of those days they served beans and a friend from Niger Beans who had an Ibo nickname for Beans was so upset at why on that particular day of beans the food took so long to arrive. Of course that sparked jokes in the school cafeteria which led to a fracas in the cafeteria between two 15 year olds. Of course the culprits including me were punished by public humiliation before the school’s morning assembly and instead of attending class we spent that day using machetes to cut grass on the football field. Of course it never happened. So what’s the big deal? Who doesn’t have an interesting high s? Delta Tv, Asaba- NUT visit Gov Okowa.
https://twitter.com/BashirAhmaad/status/1190657480868524032?s=20&t=w37VCDk3GgrN16qlVW6nZA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws-wcM6ppn8
In Memory of the Great Sir Victor Uwaifo. Exceptional Musician and Artiste and An intellectual and Professor of Fine and Applied Arts, Ph.D (Sculpture)
Read for more details about my first road trip in Nigeria by Bus since I left the country in 1989. I returned to Nigeria in 2013 for FMLA after what happened to my son.
The Cross Country trip recall published verbatim: “In the few months I have been back I have had opportunities to criss-cross Nigeria by air and land and yesterday presented another opportunity to experience Nigeria by road after more than 20 years abroad. The journey from the Eket Cross Country Station (located in a building owned by a late Uncle U.U. Essien) began inauspiciously at around 7.20 a.m. But the journey took an interesting twist when our driver stopped in Uyo to pick up some more passengers. Before we knew it there was a commotion at the booking office of the bus service. Turns out it was a fight between our driver and his girlfriend, that almost resulted in the driver being mauled by an angry mob. Because of the fight we were all asked to move to another bus and then asked again to move to the original bus because the driver was now in a better frame of mind to complete the more than seven hour journey. To say the least it was a traumatic experience, that was eased when we stopped at Agbor in Delta for a break, that brought back absolutely nothing but great and pleasant memories of the time my family spent there during my early childhood years. Also had a chance to stop at Western Boys High School, the high school on the outskirts of Benin City where I started high school (before transferring to SPC, Asaba). WBHS formerly known as Airewele is a great school that has produced the likes of Victor Uwaifo, the great Nigerian musician, writer, sculptor, and musiCian. SPC is also a great school with great alumni.”
https://www.space.com/artemis-1-launch-scrub-hydrogen-leak
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/nasa-making-second-attempt-to-launch-the-sls-rocket/
https://tell.ng/nigerian-civil-war-lens-medic/ (NG Is the Uniform Resource Locator for the Nigeria, a nation with 212 Million People.
