19/07/2025
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN ENSURING CREDIBLE 2023 GENERAL ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA
A Guest Speech Delivered by: Professor Moses Tsenongu at the Social Media Digest Summit on 30 December 2022 at Marquee Tent, Benue Hotels, Makurdi.
Protocol
&
Appreciation
The role of social media in ensuring credible 2023 elections in Nigeria is the theme of our gathering so I have also adopted it as the topic of my presentation. Interestinly, this topic has three basic assumptions attending it. The assumptions are: (i) that social media matter; (ii) that credible elections are desirable in Nigeria; and (iii) that there are people who are concerned about ensuring the credibility of the 2023 elections in the country. Evidently, all of us here can immediately relate to these assumptions. We are here because we take social media seriously and are concerned about ensuring credible elections in our dear country. We are concerned about electoral integrity because that is how the will of the people can be safeguarded and our democracy also secured. It was Noam Chomsky, the linguist- turned-social-commentator, who said commendably that, “Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions”. I beleive that we have established the base of our mutual assumptions so we can now embark on our discursive journey. The discourse is sliced into four sections: (a) what is social media? (b) why does social media matter in Nigerian elections? (c) how can social media enhance credible elections in Nigeria? and (d) how can social media destroy credible elections in Nigeria?
(a) What is Social Media?
The question of what social media is, is actually pedantic to an audience such as ours. As such, let me quickly clarify it: what I want to do at this point is to introduce social media since it is a key term in our discourse.Thankfully, social media is actually common knowledge. Most people know that it is the forms of internet-based communication channels involving interactive participation whereby users connect online to create and share information in their various virtual associations and communities. Social media applications include FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, whatsApp, TikTok, Messenger, blogs, and a host of others. Indeed all of these facts are common knowledge. Unfortunately, that common knowledge is incapable of eliciting the fresh appreciation of social media that this event deserves. To my mind therefore , the approach to introducing social media that is more likely to compel fresh attention to the media’s significance is defining it by contrast. When we contrast social media to its alternative, the importance of the media will be easier to grasp.
Thus defining by contrast, on the side opposite to social media is the media known as conventional media or the mainstream media.
These operate by traditional media conglomerates to communicate and disseminate information. Owing to the monopoly that they enjoy, these media conglomerates easily metamorphose into information gate-keepers wielding near omnipotent powers to either publish or rubbish information. They could impose a media blankout on information and terminate same with relish. Consequently, its obvious benefits notwithstanding, traditional media, as already indicated, has an alarming tendency for what I call communication tyrrany – the blatant censorship of information if the media overlords so choose. That is to say that the mainstream media’s propensity for cultural hagemony soon becomes overbearing. This propensity to hagemony ends up producing an enduring desire to counter-culturally disseminate information independent of the mainstream media. Indeed the history of alternative media is a history of the effort to circumvent the traditional media and its hagemonic proclivities. Even nomenclatically the alternative media is otherwise known as the independent media – independent from the conventional media. What all of this adds to the definition of social media is the fact that the emergence of this media has given great boost to alternative media in the suffocating atmosphere imposed by the domination of traditional media. Indeed, with its advantage of user-generated content (UGC), social media has emerged as a leading option against the control of conventional media. To my mind, approaching social media from this perspective of its contrast opens it up better for appreciation.
(b) Why does Social Media Matter in Nigerian Elections?
The straight answer to the above question is that, social media matter because of its far-reaching acceptance both globally and locally. Statistics bear ample witness to the popularity of this media. In Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), and Independent National Electoral Commission are all agreed about the substantial number of people using social media. Since we are discussing elections, let us look at what INEC has to say about this. According to Sa’ad Umar Idris, the Director General of INEC Electoral Institute, “out of a population of approximately 200 million Nigerians; there are 162 million mobile subscriptions, which amount to 84% of the population, 89 million have internet access, approximately 22.4 million Nigerians are on Facebook, 1.6 million are on twitter”. Statistics like these clearly show the high rung that social media has occupied on the communication ladder of Nigeria. Commonsensically, since politics and elections are about numbers, such a high-density population media compel attention in electoral matters. Thus, it is understandable for social media to carry weight in Nigerian electoral dialogue. In fact, Nigeria is just one country in a world already dominated by this new media.
(c) How can Social Media Enhance Credible Elections in Nigeria?
We begin this segment with a brief digression into social media and elections generally. All in all, it is apparent that political party candidates can effectively sell themselves to the electorate by the effective use of social media. The most prominent example of this is President Donald Trump who has been known to have tweeted himself to the White House in the 2016 US presidential elections. Before Trump, Barrack Obama owed his presidential election success to FaceBook back in 2008. There is ample evidence around the world that social media has become indispensable in electoral mobilisation. This much is available in the Patruts’ edited Social Media in Politics: Case Studies about the Power of Social Media. Another engaging instance of the use of social media for elections and electoral integrity can be seen in the following words by Tobi Oluwatola, executive director of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), in an interview with the media unit of Heinrich Boll Foundation:
Citizens use social media platforms to give daily reports and updates regarding election circumstances. In recent times, ordinary Nigerians have monitored electoral situations in real-time across the country. They have tagged relevant bodies such as Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), security agencies, news channels, international organisations, etc. via social media platforms to take action. A good example is the recent 2022 Osun State gubernatorial election. INEC, security agencies and other relevant organisations were instantly responding to queries made by ordinary citizens on social media platforms. This has positioned social media as an important instrument in the hands of citizens to ensure electoral integrity in the country.
The above submission demonstrates how social media has been (and can be) deployed by individual candidates and citizens for the benefit of elections and electoral reliability in Nigeria. But beyond these normal uses of social media by individuals and citizens, the burk of what counts administratively regarding the role of social media for electoral dependability is on the table of institutions/organizations with: (i) the schedule to conduct, count, and announce elections; (ii) the mandate to field candidates for elections; and (iii) the function to observe the conduct of elections. In other words, the role of social media in the integrity of Nigerian elections in 2023 can be best realized when the three institutions/organization of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), political parties, and election observers effectively deploy social media for the enhancement of electoral fidelity. Each of these three will now be briefly dwelt upon with a view to underscoring how its social media savviness can bring about electoral credibility in 2023.
INEC, Social Media, and the Credibility of Nigeria’s 2023 Elections
Thankfully, the Independent National Electoral Commission has already been aware of the potential of social media for ensuring credible elections. This much was obvious in the presentation by Sa’ad Umar Idris, the Director General of INEC Electoral Institute. In “Social Media and Electoral Integrity: Lessons from Nigeria”, a discussion paper that he presented at the 2020 Cape Town African conference on the impact of social media and electoral integrity, Idris submitted that:
In an effort to gain the confidence of Nigerian citizens and build trust in its electoral process, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Nigeria, prior to the 2011 General Elections, set up social media platforms to disseminate information directly to citizens as well as to monitor Election Day processes and procedures. The availability of this new media changed the electoral environment. The 2011 General Elections were the first in which social media was actively employed throughout Nigeria’s electoral process by a wide range of stakeholders that included civil society organizations, political parties and candidates, the police, citizens, traditional media outlets and Nigeria’s EMB, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
The above words clearly show INEC’s commendable awareness of the significance of social media for a healthy election. It needs to be pointed out here that INEC’s 2011 incorporation of social media in its operations was most probably a fallout from the American presidential elections of 2008 when Barrack Obama used social media effectively and shot himself to the Oval Office. Regardless of how the commission decided in favour of social media, it is indeed gratifying that INEC embraced this new media way back in 2011. Thus, by 2015 and 2019 elections, INEC’s social media readiness for elections graduated to where the new media was playing a prominent role in what INEC calls ICCC. In Idris’ words,
The ICCC [INEC Citizens Contact Centre] is a facility that was established to play a major role in the Commission’s public communication with some of its critical stakeholders. It is a product of the INEC Communication Policy and it is domiciled in the Voter Education and Publicity department of the Commission. It offers the public access to the Commission with enquiries and also serves as a center for exchange of Information between INEC and the general public.
More specifically, Idris goes on, “the ICCC primarily utilizes new communication technologies and social media platforms with feedback mechanisms to reach out to voters. The use of social media within the framework of the ICCC provides a vehicle for the unprecedented mobilisation of an emergent and active generation of youths in the political process.”
Evidently, INEC has been social-media-ready for electoral functions for some time so one can only appreciate the commission’s readiness and have good reason to say that from the Commision’s side, social media will certainly ensure credible elections in 2023. But still with all its social-media awareness, there is a behemoth that the Commission must be particularly keen to combat. However, since this behemoth is a general threat, we will turn to it only when we have dispensed with political parties and election observers, the two other institutions/organizations earlier identifed for attention.
Political Parties, Social Media, and the Credibility of Nigeria’s 2023 Elections
There is a disturbing dimissive attitude by some politicians concerning the social media prominence of some politicians and their political parties. While it is true that much of the social media hoopla regarding some politicians has been hpyed too far away from reality, it is equally true that being dismissive of the social media prominence of any politician smacks of a cyber cynicism that is dangerous self-sabotage to any politician. The point at issue is that politicians and political parties have no option but to take social media with the seriousness that the media deserves. As has been mentioned earlier, this media has become indispensable in elections the world over. But it is not just with electioneering, the new media has a considerable potential for safeguarding the reliability of elections. So both politicians and political parties must take advantage of such potentials.
It is a fact that apart from sponsoring candidates during elections, political parties also participate in building legitimacy for the electoral process when, through their agents and representatives, they monitor the processes and procedures of the exercise. In that role, they become the watchdogs whose presence checks any infraction that would otherwise have taken place. Indeed their participation in the process lends credence to the exercise and also secures significant credibility for it. But how does social media come in here? Social media come in because the new media is instrumental in the hands of political parties engaged in their various monitoring functions of elections. Political party agents take position in INEC situation rooms protecting their party interests and reporting via social media thus underscoring the role of the media in the credibility of elections. In this area too, the significance of social media in ensuring the credibility of elections in 2023 argues itself.
Election Observers, Social Media, and the Credibility of Nigeria’s 2023 Elections
Another organization with a substantial schedule in the integrity of elections and the 2023 Nigerian elections is election observers. These are the persons or groups accredited to observe elections. They could be foreigners or nationals who have chosen that role. This group too often relies on social media to do its job. Regarding the 2015 elections, Chude Jideonwo and Adebola Williams noted what may be seen as indicative of what to expect in 2023: “The 10,000 election observers across the country not only engaged in their traditional monitoring responsibilities, but also followed the social media posts to identify and address problems at polling stations. A report by Demos found that more than 12 million tweets about the Nigerian election were posted” (172). Here too the signal is clear that social media is usually effective in the hands of election observers during their observation duties in the field. With the prominent function of election observers in the security of elections, it is self-evident that social media, on which they so much rely, has a major role in the 2023 Nigerian electoral process.
From all the above, it is plain that social media is generally indispensable for purposes of both electoral ex*****on and integrity. Whether from the perspective of individuals, contestants, and citizens or from the perspective of institutions and organizations like INEC, political parties or election observers and monitors. But it will also be helpful to briefly look at the other side of social media. In other words, how can social media hamper the credibility of Nigeria’s 2023 general elections?
(d) How can Social Media Destroy Nigeria’s 2023 General Elections? or The Behemoth of Social Media Threats to the 2023 Nigerian General Elections
It is pertinent to, first of all, point out that not all people are persuaded about the value of social media not to talk of its capacity to substantially benefit elections. I refer to those people as cyber cynics or social media skeptics. For instance, Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right now is an interesting case of cyber cynism. There is also Matthew Hindman’s two books: The Myth of Digital Democracy and The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy – both of which express serious reservations about the internet and social media. But apart from exogamous attacks like these, social media has its own existential challenges that are capable of undermining society generally and the 2023 Nigerian elections in particular.
The catalogue of potential social media toxicities is endless. Nilgin Tosun has listed the following: fake accounts, theft of accounts, social malware, phishing, cyber bullying, similar name fraud, common friends feature, photos with GPS feature, mobile application, deepfake, social network disease, violation of privacy, and violation of confidentiality of communication. To these can be added what I call needless hypization. All of these jeopardize the operations of social media. It is needless dwelling of each of the abovementioned so I will just take a brief look at the following three: fake news and deepfakes, bots and false publicity, and senseless hypization of non-issues etc.
Fake News and Deepfake
Fake news is false information presented as news to mislead. It is criminal and carries a penalty in Nigeria’s Anti-social media Bill of 2019. The slightly celebratable fact about fake news is that it can be fact-checked and possibly exposed. This is hardly the case with deepfakes. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines deepfake as “an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said”. Tosun has expatiated that deepfakes “means to process a photograph and mount it to a pornographic video.... These videos are often of a sexual or humiliating nature; this is because it is used for harm or slander.... Close-up photographs shared on social networks are sufficient materials for deepfake.” (Tosun 199). Wikipedia has even gone ahead and stated the production process of deepfake thus:
[deepfakes] are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness. While the act of creating fake content is not new, deepfakes leverage powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate or generate visual and audio content that can more easily deceive. The main machine learning methods used to create deepfakes are based on deep learning and involve training generative neural network architectures, such as autoencorders, or generative adversarial networks (GANs).
This terrifying! It is terrifying because this means that completely false words and actions can be imposed on anybody with audio-visual “evidence” backing it up! It is the more terrifying because factchecks cannot help in this circumstance. The dissemation of fake information has therefore been taken to a new unfortunate plane. Closely related to deepfakes is the similarly alarming deceit by bots.
Bots and False Publicity
This has to do with fake accounts. Bot is a word clipped from the word robot and the phenomenon is another intimidating falsehood trick ravaging social media now. Let us consider this instance cited by Oluwatola in the aforementioned interview:
Our analysis of popular hashtags related to the major political candidates of the 2023 general elections revealed bot operations. Hashtags such as , , , , etc. were found to have been driven by bots. This camouflaged scheme is likely to intensify as the elections draw closer. We also carried out a bot analysis on the major candidates, using Botometer and Botsight tools, and found there are more than 1 million bots following them on Twitter. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress candidate, had one million followers as of February 2022. Currently [that was in October 2022], he has 1.4 million followers: an addition of 400,000 followers within eight months. Our bot analysis revealed 17.1% (248,000) of the followers as bots, fake accounts created within that period. Peter Obi had 705,600 followers as of February 2022. Currently, the Labour Party candidate has 2 million followers, a tremendous increase of 1.3 million followers within eight months. Analysis of these followers revealed that 26.55% (531,000) are bots. These are fake accounts created to follow Mr. Obi on Twitter. The same picture emerges across all the candidates. These bots are able to trend any topic quickly and create an illusion of a movement out of what may be a fringe view. This is known as “astroturfing”.
Bots are truly capable of a lot of damage to the electoral process and the integrity of the exercise.
Senseless Hypization of Non-isssues
Then, there is also the social media menance of overhypization whereby truly inconsequential issues are bloated out of proportion, mountains are made out of molehills, and storms in teacups receive all the weather analysis in the world. The way non-issues easily trend is a sad statement to the cerebral emptiness that social media culture is cultivating. Due to minuses like these social media is looking more and more like mob media. These are some of the challenges associated with social media that threaten the Nigerian 2023 elections. But these challenges are surmountable through “media literacy programmes, making true information more readily available, working with technology companies on content moderation, and data-based media monitoring” as Oluwatola so acceptably opined.
Conclusion
Social media, as has been shown above, can be likened to a communication treasure guarded by the equally abovementioned dragon ills. But the treasure is too precious to be abandoned so the dragons must be exterminated. When those dragons are eliminated and the treasure acquired, the intigrity of the 2023 Nigerian elections will be amply guaranteeable through social media.
Works Cited
Chomsky, Noam. “Brainy Quotes.” Web. 22 Dec. 2022
“Deepfake.” Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. Web. 23 Dec. 2022.
Hindman, Matthew. The Myth of Digital Democracy. New Jersey: Princeton 2018. Print.
---. The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy. New Jersey: Princeton 2018. Print.
Idris, Sa’ad Umar. “Social Media and Electoral Integrity: Lessons from Nigeria.” Presented at African Conference on the Impact of Social Media and Electoral Integrity, Cape Town, South Africa. 2nd - 5th March 2020.
Jideonwo, Chude and Adebayo Williams. How to Win Elections in Africa. Lagos: Kachifo, 2017. Print.
Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts. New York: Henry Holt. nd. Print.
Oluwatola, Tobi. “Bots and Biases: The Role of Social Media in Nigerian Elections.” Interview. Heinrich Boll Foundation newsletter. 26th October 2022.
Patrut, Bogdan and Monica Patrut. Eds. Social Media in Politics: Case Studies about the Political Power of Social Media. New York: Springer, 2014. Print.
Tosun, Nilgin. “Social Networks as a Learning and Teaching Environment and Security in Social Network.” RedFrame; Journal of Education and Training Studies. 16. 11a. (2108): 194 - 208.
