Lekan Adeniran and Akanni Alaka
Posters and billboards are the earliest sign that election is fast approaching. Coming in various sizes and shapes, posters, especially, represent the cheapest means of getting the attention of the electorate. It is also money spinning and lucrative business for many, especially printers, who print for various aspirants and candidates at princely sums as well as the thousands of jobless youths who risk their lives posting such posters across the nooks and crannies of their man’s constituency.
But it has also become a deadly and dangerous game and point of serious political altercation between political gladiators, leading at times to the death of opponents and turning streets and roads to battle grounds.
It is part of the game plan by politicians to have advantage over their opponents. In Rivers State, an All Progressives Congress, APC, women leader and her son allegedly stabbed a middle- aged man, Chimezie Dike to death for placing campaign posters in their neigbourhood.
The posters allegedly bore the image of another APC candidate who was contesting for election into the House of Representatives. The suspects reportedly attacked their victim because their preferred candidate lost during the party’s primary election for the slot.
In Lagos, six men were apprehended by the police for removing or defacing the posters of other political parties, while pasting that of Omoyele Sowore, who is the presidential candidate of African Action Congress, AAC.
Lagos police spokesman, Chike Oti, said the six men were arrested in the dead of the night. He said: “The office of the Commissioner of Police is inundated with complaints of indiscriminate removal/destruction of campaign posters/billboards of political parties/aspirants by unknown persons. It was alleged that those involved in this act usually operate at odd hours, particularly between 1:00a.m. and 4:00a.m.
“The anti-crime patrol team of the Lagos State Police Command, Ikeja Division, about 2.30am on December 9, 2018, arrested six young men, namely, Olagokun Odunayo, Kool-Kloud Henry, Ugaju Joseph, Damilola Omidiji, Michael Kate and Banwo Olagokun, of Take It Back movement, tearing posters of other political parties and replacing them with that of the African Action Congress, contrary to the Lagos State Signage and Advertisement Agency laws that forbid advertisers from pasting posters at no other hour than the day time.
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There have been allegations and counter allegations involving the candidates of the two major political parties in the state. PDP’s Jimi Agbaje accused APC of defacing his posters on the Third Mainland Bridge. There was counter allegation by APC and its candidate, Babajide Sanwo-Olu.
The Social Democratic Party, SDP, also had its campaign posters and flex boards defaced in Agege area of the state by political opponents.
The party’s candidate for Agege Constituency II, for the state House of Assembly, Toyin Raheem, said the action tantamount to political bitterness and pettiness.
He said that it was detestable and unimaginable for political opponents to paste posters over those of the party’s candidate.
“In Ibadan, Oyo State, four Action Alliance, AA, party members were attacked while pasting the posters of their candidate, Taiwo Otegbeye, in Akobo area of Ibadan. They were attacked by political thugs, according to Otegbeye, while visiting the victims in the hospital where they were rushed to.
The victims were chased by the attackers, as they managed to escape to Iwo Road, where one of them managed to call for help.
Similarly, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Muhammed Abba-Aji, accused the Borno State government of ordering local security operatives to destroy opponents’ campaign posters and billboards in Maiduguri, the state capital.
The state government had earlier pulled down posters and billboards of political candidates over an alleged non-payment of necessary charges to the state.
Abba-Aji, a former senator and presently contesting Borno Central Senatorial seat on the platform of PDP alleged that the posters pulled down were targeted at political opposition by the Borno State APC-led government.
Dr. Oladokun Omojola, Associate Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication, Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State said politicians go for posters because it is a cheaper means of getting to their audiences. He also posited that poster war is not limited to Nigeria alone.
He said: “Posting of posters to convey political messages is common in nearly all countries. Posters are cheaper to produce and posted while their medium of exposure is also cheaper or free to acquire compared to others. Poster defacing also exists in many countries both developed and underdeveloped.
“In the 2013 federal election in Germany, there were cases of poster destruction. However, Nigerians have taken it to an unprecedented level.
“In Nigeria, politicians use poster defacing as a political culture jamming or containment. This is what some call ‘subvertising’. It is a tactical component of strategic intervention to subvert the opposition.
“This political subversion is done in five ways in Nigeria; If a candidate’s poster is well designed, the opposition can steal the design and produce/print something similar, use of graffiti or some other markings to deface the posters, the use of add-on.
“For instance, a moustache can be given to a woman to make her look like a man, excessive criticism of the posters especially if they had been posted on inappropriate locations, tearing of posted posters and outright removal of posted posters.”
Dr. Omojola told The Nigerian Express that going by law, those posting the posters and the culprits responsible for their removal are liable.
The bitter campaign is not limited to the poster war alone. Like in other parts of the world, Nigerian politicians are taking full advantage of the social media to communicate directly with the citizens.
“With the social media, politicians are able to do away with the ‘gatekeeper’ in the traditional media establishments even as they gain the control of the content, distribution and timing of their message.
It was believed that the first wide use of the social media for electioneering purpose was by former President Barrack Obama in the 2008 United States’ presidential election.
“Research after the election indicated that Obama was able to especially reach young people through the social media and was able to get as much as 70 per cent of the votes of that segment of the population to become victorious in that election.
Nigerian politicians fully caught the fever of the possibilities inherent in social media for election campaign in the run up to the 2015 general election.
The then ruling PDP and the opposition APC employed hordes of so called ‘influencers’ and even set up departments with the sole purpose of influencing opinions and selling their candidates to the public through information posted on the different social media platforms.
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Some of the leading candidates also appointed special assistants on new media and because of lack of regulation, the platforms – with twitter and Facebook being the most widely used also became an avenue for spreading fake news and misinformation primed to de-market political opponents.
Some analysts had listed effective use of the social media as one of the factors that helped the then opposition APC to defeat PDP in the 2015 general election.
It’s, therefore, not a surprise that politicians have again hugged the social media as an essential tool in their campaign strategies as the nation heads towards another general election.
Indeed, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of PDP declared his bid to run for the presidency as well as launched his campaign for the election through live broadcast on Facebook.
Many of the candidates, their supporters and different groups supporting their ambitions also have twitter handles, Facebook pages as well as WhatsApp platforms. With the recent revelation by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC that at 26.57 per cent of the total of 84,004,084, students constitute the highest population of Nigerians registered to vote in the 2019 general elections, politicians will no doubt intensified the use of social media ahead of the election.
While the platforms are ostensibly for dissemination of information about plans and programmes of the parties and their candidates, they are mostly used, just like in 2015 to spread information intended to portray political opponents in the worst possible light.
Indeed, it is now becoming increasingly impossible for Nigerians to visit any of the social media platforms without being confronted with obviously fake news, manipulated pictures, videos or manufactured quotes or the other and against political opponents.
Top social media influencers, publicity workers of political parties as well as media aides of leading candidates have also been caught spreading fake news and pictures and manipulated data for and against their principals on the social media.
For example, as at the time of writing this story last week, a supposed photograph of one of the leading gubernatorial candidates dressed as a mentally disturbed individual was circulating on the internet with the author(s) of the picture urging the electorates not to vote for a ‘mad man.’
Also, quotes demeaning political opponents are being manufactured in scores, attributed to respected personalities in Nigeria and outside the country for circulation on social media pages.
Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has been a target of the social media ‘quote manufacturers.’ Speaking last Wednesday at the Beyond Fake News Conference organised by the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, in Abuja with the theme, ‘Nigeria 2019: Countering Fake News’, the Professor lamented the continuous attribution of quotes to him in a kind of language which he will never use. “For example, during the last presidency, statements attributed to me were saying that I said that it served President Jonathan right for marrying an illiterate woman. I never made any comment whatsoever about that lady, and suddenly there it is staring me in the face,” the Nobel Laureate said.
“And at other times a card is created, and from time to time that card comes out on the internet, is sent to me, and it says Professor Wole Soyinka says anybody who votes for this person, one, must be stupid, two, must be mentally retarded, three, his mother must be a goat, four, his father must be a gorilla… under Wole Soyinka’s name. And this goes on all the time,” he lamented.
Speaking at the same conference, INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmud Yakubu, also raised the alarm that the increasing deluge of fake news was a danger to the 2019 election. Yakubu, who was represented by Festus Okoye, a national commissioner, said: “Fake news is misinformation; it has no basis in fact and no basis in reality. But it is generated for a particular purpose. The issue of fake news is of utmost importance in an election period where the stakes are high and where the gladiators want to win and some of them want to win by all means.”
He noted that there are some political actors who will deliberately sit down and concoct ‘fiction’ with a view to generate a certain reaction. “In a country like Nigeria, sometime people receive information saying ‘forwarded as received’ without you looking at the dynamics of what they are forwarding. So for me if you forward as received that means you believe in what they are forwarding or you can attest to what you are forwarding. It is a very serious issue and we are also paying close attention to fake news,” the INEC chairman said.
According to him, INEC recently had to battle with fake news that it has established polling units in Chad, Niger and other neighboring countries for the purposes of having Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs to vote. The Federal Government, through the Ministry of Information and Culture had last year launched a campaign against fake news ahead of the general election. The BBC initiative is part of efforts to mitigate the influence of misinformation on Nigerians on who to vote for in the 2019 general elections.
In a chat with The Nigerian Express, Dayo Aiyetan, Executive Director, International Centre for Investigative Reporting, ICIR, noted that most of the younger people who are vying for offices in the 2019 general elections are also using social media to campaign because of its ability to reach a wider audience.
But he also lamented that all the negative aspects of the physical campaign have also been taken to the digital space and because of its ability to reach millions of people, social media have thus become a vehicle for mass misinformation by politicians.
He identified WhatsApp as the most used for circulation of fake news in the current election season. “Fake news and recent elections have shown us that misinformation can cause a lot of damage. Like during the Osun State governorship election, when they said that the APC government has frozen the account of the Adelekes, I’m sure the APC government may have lost some voters because of that information,” he noted.
Aiyetan added that while such manipulation of information may be intended to hurt political opponents, in a country divided along ethnic and religious lines like Nigeria, it can cause so much havoc beyond the intended target: “All the parties are involved in this.
It is very sad because it is a deliberate concerted strategy to use misinformation to hurt the other party. Misinformation has the capacity to cause even civil war, religious war, so one really needs to deal with it,” he said.
Ayetan noted that the ongoing concern that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election has raised the alarm on the influence of the social media and how people can deploy it for evil means during elections.
He noted that this was why various bodies are coming up with initiatives to curb the influence of fake news on the 2019 elections like the Crosscheck Nigeria which involved about 17 newsrooms across the country coming together to verify news published on various social media platforms using technology.
The initiative is being implemented with an organisation called First Draft based in the United Kingdom which has developed a technology with which information can be verified.
According to him, the initiative involved partnership with WhatsApp and use of dedicated numbers which Nigerians can call if they want any information to be verified. “We use technology to verify information that is likely to go viral and do the most damage and we all jointly publish the result on the website.
“A number of posts have already been published and the latest one we are publishing is the deliberate misinformation used either to whip up sentiment or discredit the other. The APC said that somebody who is part of their door to door campaign was brutalised in Lagos and we verified the information and found out that this picture was first used in Uganda,” he said.
Dr. Omojola told The Nigerian Xpress that fake news is a serious problem that is a global phenomenon, but is more prevalent in third world country like Nigeria because of poverty.
He said: “There is an on-going research to determine the prevalence of fake news around the world divided into four country categories: developed, developing, non-developing and poor.
“Preliminary findings show that fake news prevalence corresponds to the country’s development status. For instance, fake news is least prevalent in countries of Europe and North America and most prevalent in non-developing countries like Nigeria and poor countries like Sierra Leone and Congo Democratic republic.
“It appears that citizens of poor countries use fake news as a weapon of protest against poverty, unemployment and lack of development.
“They are dissatisfied with their governments. This implies that fake news is inversely proportional to socio-economic development.
“Fake news is compounded by the use of social media with private orientation like WhatsApp that has end-to-end encryption which means most fake news cannot be tracked. What government can do is to continue enforcing the laws against fake news (if they exist) while we hope for accelerated development.”
