The impact of Social Media in our political landscape in Nigeria

Social media has made people to become more politically aware of their society & government and has become a channel for people to voice out their opinions, frustrations & criticisms to the government. With the aid of social media Nigeria can now mount more pressure on the government while speaking in one voice, often times this has seen trends go global for the international community to see and come to Nigeria’s aid. On Twitter, by tweeting in a particular #HashTag about a particular topic, a trend can go global. There are instances when social media has had global ripple like when it was used to start or spear head campaigns/protests against the government, one of the most notable example is the #OccupyNigeria protest and the most recent being the #BringBackOurGirls. Social media can also be a good campaign tool when strategically employed by politicians and political aspirants to keep their followers engaged on their political activities while campaigning effectively and building their brand/image.Many politicians and government officials have become active on social media, let’s take for example the President Goodluck Jonathan with about 141,7837 Facebook fans, former Vice President Atiku @atiku with a twitter account of 119,000 followers  affirms on that he’s a strong believer that social media can change the government and is a great tool for the government to understand the citizens and get active feedback from them as a vital process to improve on Nigeria’s democratic existence. Notably for the online political platform the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC @inecnigeria is on Twitter with the purpose of enlightening, updating the Nigerian social media populace on the electoral process as well as getting feedbacks from the citizens. The ill workings of the government don’t go unnoticed by the active political social media watch dogs and help shape people’s minds politically, notably in this sector there are the likes of Japhet Omojuwa @Omojuwa & Kayode Ogundamisi @ogundamisi The influence of social media in Nigeria is on the rise and in the near future could see full blown political campaigns on social media platforms as the American political platform which Nigeria models has seen its first social media President in the name of Barrack Obama whose social media campaign you can say won gave him victory in his last election. With the growing rate of social media users & armchair social media activists  in Nigeria, social media is greatly influencing the way information is being communicated & is a great source of influence in media as it provides the most feedback from the  users whose demographic range from the young students to the average working class, elites of the society, celebrities. Politicians, government officials etc. Thank you for reading, please don’t forget do drop your comments on this vital Issue