The official report off The Social Media And Governance Project, which I undertook for my finals at Birmingham City University. It explored Nigeria's use of social media for the 2011 elections, and made a three pronged recommendation to the electorate, national electoral body, and individuals seeking various office.

2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In April Nigerians witnessed an unprecedented use of social media tools and electronic
applications to bring people together to demand for change and monitor a credible
election process. From the 9th of April 2011 till the 26th, Nigerians elected new leaders in
what has been described severally as the Nigerian Social Media debut, as it was the first
time the country in its fifty-one years of existence utilized social media tools in her
elections.
The Social Media and Governance (SMAG) project attempted to answer this question by
exploring the impact of social platforms and networks on the April 2011 elections. The
idea was to ask the same questions to different cadres of people: bloggers, officials from
the national electoral body, etc.
This report captures my findings from exploring the relationship between social media,
citizen participation in governance, and accessibility to the leadership. This exploration
was carried in the SMAG (Social Media And Governance) Lab, and features experiments
in forms including a focus group discussion, interviews with young Nigerians, polls, and a
conference held on Twitter on the 5th of August 2011.
It outlines some of the advantages and disadvantages of the deployment of social media
during the elections, and concludes with a three pronged recommendation to the
citizenry, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and serving
leaders/elected public office holders, as well as a social enterprise model I’m developing to
deliver social media solutions via text messaging.

3. TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Project review
3. Advantages and disadvantages of social media in the April 2011 elections
6. Politicians and the use of Twitter
12. Recommendations
15. Social Enterprise Model
17. Contact Me

4. PROJECT REVIEW
INTRODUCTION
When I decided to study the impact Social Media had on Nigeria’s April general elections,
at first I struggled with the thought that I might be undertaking an already proven line of
study. The verdict according to both local and international media was positive; various
media already praised social media, few words short of calling it a miracle.
True, but the question became, how many people were influenced by it? What exactly
changed about their attitude and behaviour? How did they feel about the exodus of
politicians to social platforms? How did the aspirants use social media? What did we do
wrong? What did we do right? Where do we go from here?
Reflecting on all those questions helped me draw up a list of objectives this project would
attempt to achieve. They were to:
· the growth of social media usage in Nigeria,
Trace
·Conduct an enquiry into the use of social media by four of the eighteen
presidential aspirants in the just concluded elections.
· a fresh perspective on the role of the media as a catalyst for national
Offer
development and make recommendations in that regard.
·Isolate the gaps in the usage of social media during the elections and make
recommendations on how better the opportunities social media affords can be
harnessed.
Basically, this project sought to answer the question, “using social media, how can I get
the citizens to be more democratically engaging building up to and during the next
elections”?
To answer that question I set up the SMAG (Social Media And Governance) Lab where
using qualitative research methods I sampled opinions. Qualitative research is “a type of
scientific research that
ü
Seeks answers to a question
ü
Systematically uses a predefined set of procedures to answer the question
ü evidence
Collects
ü findings that were not determined in advance
Processes

5. ü findings that are applicable beyond the immediate boundaries of the
Produces
study.” (Family Health International)
The SMAG LAB
The Social Media And Governance (SMAG) Lab is an adaptation of the ‘Living Labs’
concept developed by Professor William J. Mitchell of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Media Lab and School of Architecture. This research concept is a user-
centred set up where the target audience are not merely respondents, but partners in an
environment that allows for open innovation. In other words, the ‘respondents’ bring
their creativity and diversity to the research, and that was what I achieved by asking
young people severally to proffer solutions to what they perceived as poor usage of social
media either by aspirants to various offices, or the electoral body itself.
The Target Audience
The demographic for the audience was digitally enabled young people aged 18 – 35. This
demographic was chosen on the back of statistics that show that out of an estimated 150
million Nigerians, 87million own mobile phones that can send and receive text messages,
44million have internet access, 3 million are on Facebook, and approximately 60, 000 on
Twitter. Of these figures, 70% of the people utilizing social media are within the 18-35
age bracket.

6. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE
APRIL 2011 ELECTIONS
From the electorate to the aspirants, electoral bodies and other stakeholders, the April
2011 polls were different, and positively so too. How exactly? This project asked questions
severally on the positive and negative implications of our employment of social media
tools. This is what young people had to say.

7. Disadvantages
Unfortunately, as is with every new concept, the opportunities for abuse are more for the
simple reason that in trying to get acquainted with it, people are bound to abuse it,
because they don’t know any better.
But worse, there are evil people who will take advantage of the ‘newness’ of an idea to
foment trouble.
Both scenarios presented on Twitter during the elections in Nigeria; there was the class
who didn’t know, wanted to know, and got the hang of things as time went on. There
was also the group who knew, but was aware that others didn’t know, and so had a field
either spreading rumours, inciting others to violence, etc.
The most obvious disadvantage of social media incidentally is its strongest point and
biggest edge over mainstream media. That is its ability to be instantaneous. We won’t be
hearing from me directly though; I have again compiled from Twitter users, the
disadvantages they had with using it during the elections.

8. It is literally like standing in the middle of a busy marketplace, and blowing powder from
your palm into the air. Not only will the effect be felt immediately, the people affected by
that powder (both directly and the ripple effect) will never be able to all get back in one
place for you to take the powder off them. This plays out especially Agree with that
analogy?
There is also the class of people who felt social media on the elections had negligible
impact. Different people, different opinions.

9. AN ANALYSIS OF POLITICIANS AND THEIR USE OF TWITTER
From 2009 and the emergence of the Light Up Nigeria online campaign, Nigerians
became more aware of an emerging middle class who were finding their voice using
social media. Young people, who constitute approximately 70% of Nigeria’s population
decided to become aware, and get involved in the governance of their country.
Politicians noticed it too, and from 2010 began to flock to various social media platforms
to interact with and woo potential voters.
According to the BBC News article, Nigeria Election: Politicians All of A Twitter’, “the
politicians appear to have shunned the traditional press in favour of the social networking
sites to reach the younger generation which represents a new phase in the country’s
online revolution”.
President Goodluck Jonathan joined Facebook on the 5th of July 2010, and in five days,
recorded 73, 064 likes to his page.
So how did young Nigerians react to politicians coming on social platforms? Here is one
answer:
The table below, created by the Social Media Tracking Centre Team (2011), shows the top
three users of Twitter among the aspirants at the commencement of the elections.
Candidate Twitter ID No. of Following Followers Lists Party Office
tweets Sought
Dele DeleMomodu2011 1,792 4,145 129 51 NCP President
Momodu
Tunde TundeFashola 1,504 41 20,497 167 ACN Governor
Fashola
Muhammadu Buhariforchange 644 1,137 10 9 CPC President
Buhari

10. The question now is, how do politicians see social media? With a specific focus on
Twitter, was it just a means to an end, or are they on Twitter to truly interact with the
demographic there? On the 6th of September, I captured the screens of six politicians on
Twitter (out of a possible 10), showing the last time they used it after the electioneering
period. While I don’t mention when they joined, the term ‘preliminary search’ refers to
their level of interaction (or not) from the last 20 tweets to date.
1. MUHAMMADU BUHARI, presidential aspirant on the Congress for Progressive
Change (CPC) platform.
·Preliminary search – No engagement. Last Tweet – 26th of April, 2011
2. FOLA ADEOLA, Vice Presidential candidate on the Action Congress of Nigeria
(CAN) platform.

11. ·Preliminary search – No engagement. Last Tweet – 14th of April, 2011
1. PAT UTOMI, presidential candidate on the Social Democratic Mega Party (SDMP)
platform
·Preliminary search – No engagement. Last Tweet – 26th of September, 2009

12. 1. GOODLUCK JONATHAN, presidential candidate on the People’s Democratic
Party (PDP) platform.
·Preliminary search – No engagement. Last Tweet – 2nd of May, 2011
2. DELE MOMODU, presidential candidate on the National Conscience Party (NCP)
platform.
·Preliminary search – high level of engagement. Last Tweet – few hours
before I checked.

13. FINDINGS – from the list of aspirants analysed above, it is seen that save one, all the
accounts for the aspirants only existed as a means of pushing information to their
followers, not having a conversation.
Some of the aspirants started out using it properly, and then after a few weeks fell back to
just using it as one more channel to publicise their press releases.
There is also the issue of verification of accounts by the aspirants, who can rightly be
referred to as ‘microcelebs’. Microceleb is a term used to refer to people who by reason of
their position in society (musician, actor, politician, etc.) or their personality on Twitter,
are very popular. To safeguard against impersonation, Twitter has a function whereby
such people can ‘verify’ their accounts; the reason you see a blue tick beside the names of
celebrities on Twitter. None of the accounts for the politicians are verified and so it
causes a lot of confusion as to what site the aspirant actually owns. For example, a search
on Twitter for ‘Muhammadu Buhari’ revealed more than six different accounts.
That’s potentially very dangerous because anyone could using those accounts say
anything and his followers would take action on it because it’s his name and picture on
the account.
Another emerging trend is politicians using Twitter as their ‘day in court’, to defend
themselves or have their say on accusations levelled against them through mainstream
media. Again it is that wooing of the demographic on Twitter at play here. For instance,
in June 2011, Diezani Allison Madueke while going through the screening process by the
National Assembly was accused by some quarters of a number of things including
accepting/giving bribes in her previous tenure as Minister, and not undertaking the
compulsory one year of National Youth Service. In the middle of the outcry from that, she
created accounts for herself on various social platforms, including Twitter, and gave her
side of the story. She has since been confirmed as minister, and has abandoned her
Twitter account (last tweet was the 6th of July), as evidenced by the screen grab below.

14. L inks to the stories can be fou nd here:
http://234next.c om/cs p/cm s/site s/Ne xt/Ho me /5722931-
146/die zani_allison_m adu ek e_sk ipp ed_nys c_.csp ) and (http ://ynaija.com /soc ial-
networking-state -se cu rity-a nd -the-new-world-ord er).
Pe rtine nt to note is, while I was d oing the se arc h for these politicians on Twitter, I
twe ete d that I was trying to find a particu la r handle. I got this rep ly:
L ooks lik e this y oung m an alre ady drew the c onc lu sion then!

15. RECOMMENDATIONS
The elections have come and gone; it is time for the elected leaders to begin to fulfil the
countless promises they made in their manifestoes, it is time for them to show the
citizenry that they were the right candidate to have been voted in.
It is time to ask, ‘what next’? After Nigeria’s debut, how do we regroup, rebrand, and
restrategize for the second season of elections starting at the end of this year with
gubernatorial elections in some states?
Below is a three pronged set of recommendations to the Independent National Electoral
Commission, to politicians and public office holders, and finally to the peo ple with the
power to install and unseat leaders, the citizenry. These were drawn from online and
offline discussio ns with young people.
To INEC
·
Explore the use of text messaging both as a means of distributing information
and a way of receiving information/feedback from the people. The use of toll
free lines to call or short codes for texting is mandatory to encourage
participation from the people. Periodically (quarterly o r twice in the year),
publish the data o f the amount of interaction (calls and texts) that has
happened in that period. It will increase the credibility of the commissio n by
giving peo ple an idea of how much data the Commission has to work with.
The website should be updated o n a daily basis. It is the first port of call for the digitally
enabled and sho uld be resplendent with up to date information to

16. ·
discourage rumour mongering and douse tension, especially building up to,
during, or post elections.
· and maintain an up-to-date voter’s registration data base that can be
Create
crosschecked against census data. Make it public, and encourage people to
write in if there are deaths, so names can be removed.
·need for an all year round Social Media Tracking Centre cannot be over-
The
emphasized. Constant interaction via social platforms provides invaluable
information, and helps the citizens get used to it.
·
Incorporate the use of social media in voter education. Fund the creation of
demographic specific voter education manuals that civil society and pressure
groups can use for voter education.
·
Constantly publicise avenues/numbers by which the public can contact the
Commission to get/give information, not only during elections.
· avenues to provide feedback to complaints/inquiries from the public.
Create
Again, publicise this from time to time (without the sensitive data of course).
To Elected Officials
· what social platforms you want to use and seek training on how to
Decide
effectively use them.
·
Verification of your accounts on Twittr is necessary. It ensures that no one can
create an account in your name and perpetuate mischief or incite violence from
that account. It also helps people identify imposters and treat them as such.
· platforms are originally designed for conversations, not broadcasts. They
Social
are not for posting links to press releases or the publicity of your activities alone;
they are primarily to be used to have conversations.
· that is acceptable to have a team tweet for you; just devise a way by which
Note
your followers know when it’s you tweeting. For example, some of the tweets
from Barack Obama’s account are from his team, his tweets are always signed –BO
so his audience can tell it is the President himself tweeting.
· communication drives online communication, and vice versa. Create
Offline
opportunities to physically interact with your audience/constituencies.

17. To the citizenry
· that it is your responsibility to demand good governance, accountability and
No te
transparency from your leaders
·
Constantly update your knowledge on national and international issues; be aware
of dev eloping trends that you can adapt to your immediate environment.
·
Governance shouldn’t be left in the hands of public officials alone. We must play
our own part in being responsible citizens and carrying out our civic duties;
especially as it co ncerns elections and electioneering.
·Offline communication drives online communication, it is not enough to sit
behind your co mputer to whine. Ask to hold (or o rganize) town halls and invite
your constituency representatives; hold them accountable.
· te that your knowledge is limited by the information you are exposed to. Read
No
the constitution; be aware of your rights. Only then can you make reasonable and
feasible demands that are covered by the laws of the land.
· all times, and especially in times, refrain from making or peddling unconfirmed
At
statements or reports.

18. SOCIAL ENTERPRISE MODEL
As a result of this project, and on the back of discussions with Nicholas Holzherr, an
entrepreneur and CEO of Qrky Codes in Birmingham, below is a model for widening the
scope of social media usage in Nigeria using text messages.
With SMAG.BD (Social Media And Governance Broken Down) as a working title, this
model is as the name implies, a social media delivery tool centred on creating
transparency in government using text messaging.
Justification
Of 150 million Nigerians, there are 87 million mobile phone users. Of that number, there
are approximately 34 million who use the text message functionality. That is a huge
number considering that social media usage currently stands at approximately 3 million
on Facebook, and 60, 000 on Twitter. (Statistics from www.socialbakers.com and the
Social Media Tracking Centre Report).
Goals
· provide periodical, location based information on elected officials to their
To
direct electorate. E.g., someone in Lagos state will receive information more on
the activities of elected officials from Lagos state, both local, and national. I
propose collaboration between the project and Wireless Access providers for this.
·Conduct polls based on different issues which can feed into research by
government institutions.
·Provide a voice/direct line of communication from between citizens and their
representatives.
·Distribute a simplified, broken down interpretation of the constitution to the
citizenry handling different aspects weekly.
Modus Operandi
The plan is to start with a state for the pilot and then increase locations as the model is
fine tuned. It will function akin to the Social Media Tracking Center, only using text
messages. There will be three stages of work before the commencement of the project
1. Research on political office holders in the pilot location and details about their
offices (budgetary allocations, staff strength, job openings, etc.)

19. 1. Collection of demographic details of citizens in the pilot location; names, age,
phone numbers, gender, and profession. This will help in crafting specific
messages.
2. Isolating laws peculiar to the area for instance, Sharia law in the North.
It is estimated that it will take approximately three months to collect this information if
there are three different teams (with a different number of people for each team) working
on the three areas listed above.
After these stages are completed, the first of text messages will be sent out (5 messages
over a two week period), and then an in-depth survey be carried out to see the effects, if
the recipients have learnt anything new, if the grammar needs to be further simplified,
etc.
This project will only receive funding from independent local and foreign who have no
party affiliations whatsoever, to ensure the credibility and unbiased nature of the model.
Once in operation, it will be subject to a quarterly review.

20. CONTACT ME
As mentioned in the executive summary, this project explored the impact social media
had on the April 2011 elections, as told by the young people themselves. All the views
captured on Twitter filed in this report are but a fraction of the wealth of information I
gathered; the rest of it can be found at www.chiomachuka.com.
Do get in touch for
·Bespoke social media solutions
·Hands-on monitoring and technical support
·Content development and production for radio and television programmes
Email – chioma@chiomachuka.com
Facebook – Chioma Chuka
Twitter - @chiomachuka
LinkedIn – Chioma Agwuegbo
www.fairygodsister.wordpress.com
www.chiomachuka.com
2011