Nigeria Content Online

For the eighteen
days that the revolution in Egypt lasted before achieving its core
objective of ousting President Hosni Mubarak, Nigerians like the rest
of the world were glued to satellite television and the Internet to
monitor history unfold.

The traffic of
information from chat rooms of social media, media websites, and
Tweeter twits guided what satellite television aired and has been
acknowledged as contributing its fair share to the ousting of the
Mubarak administration. Many have solely credited this alliance with
Mubarak’s fall. Wael Ghonim, Google executive in Egypt, who was
detained during the uprising, lavishly proclaimed after: “If you want
to liberate a government, give them the Internet”.

While the jury is
still out debating the forces at play in the overthrow of the ancien
regime, we hold that the new media alliance helped to define the
struggle, but the courage to defy, confront, and resist provocative
acts of intimidation belongs to the Egyptian people. Put another way,
the Internet did not bring down Mubarak but it served as catalyst for
change.

The people of
Egypt, who employed social media tools to coordinate their resistance
and mobilise others, worked for the change. The existing conditions in
the polity, ranging from youth unemployment, to high cost of food, lack
of say in the affairs of their country, insensitivity of the privileged
class, and absence of hope in the near future were necessary
ingredients for the uprising.

Mubarak may have
been acclaimed in the West as the bastion of stability in the Middle
East, the dependable ally in the fight against international terrorism
and the containment of radical Islam, but domestically his policies
were not putting food on the table. The little that was available was
too expensive. His family and leading figures in his government
radiated opulence in the face of biting poverty. Faced with a future
that was anything but inspiring, the people snapped, propelled no doubt
by news of happenings in their part of the world, especially
neighbouring Tunisia.

Technology per se
does not cause uprisings; the drivers of the uprising and the contexts
in which they operate shape them and are in turn shaped by the
uprising. Over time the Egyptian media’s loss of credibility among the
people through its slavish support for the state had forced the youths
to rely more on mobile telephones and the Internet as alternate means
of sharing information on issues concerning their welfare. In its panic
response to the protest by shutting down the Internet, disabling sms on
mobile telephones, Mubarak’s regime only succeeded in strengthening a
bond that already existed.

Having succeeded in
occupying Tahrir Square as the fort of resistance the people were
unintentionally herded into a conspiracy of underground messaging and
rededication to their cause to overthrow Mubarak. This development also
gave the new media expanded influence.

The collaboration
by Google and Twitter in launching Speak to Tweet at this juncture
restored Egypt to cyberspace by allowing voice mails in Arabic to be
shared. That in turn propelled an outfit, Small World News to create a
site, Alive in Egypt, which translated the posts to English, thus
allowing further internationalisation of the resistance.

Every move the
Mubarak government then made was too little, too late: the xenophobic
card of blaming the protests on foreign interests; his agents’
molestation of journalists and protesters; the offer that neither he
nor his son, Gamal, touted as his heir apparent, would run for office
in September when his term was to end; his appointment of spy chief,
Omar Suleiman, as his first vice president in thirty years; the
increase of civil servants’ wages, and mandate to Suleiman to open
negotiations with the opposition.

The Egypt uprising
offers some lessons for Nigeria. It advertises the need for good
governance as the perfect insurance for stability. It tells that if we
can overcome our artificial divisions the people can make a lot of
difference to their fortunes. It informs us that a cohesive army
appeared to side with the people even as it gave its own a safe landing.

It also reminds us
that in our growing reliance on the new media our perspectives on the
Egypt crisis were shaped in the main from outside. Missing was the
decidedly Nigerian voice articulating Nigeria’s viewpoints in the
crisis. Except for the reportage of the commendable initiative of the
federal government in ferrying out of Egypt a thousand Nigerians out of
the 200, 000 resident there during the crisis, and an editorial in
NEXT, neither the federal government nor the mainstream media openly
brought a Nigerian perspective to bear on the crisis in the first
eighteen days.

No on the spot
reporting from any Nigerian news medium, yet Nigeria, Egypt, and South
Africa are the power bases in Africa. For a country that prides Africa
as the cornerstone of her foreign policy the reporting of the Egypt
uprising was a humbling reminder that ours is still a mute voice in
critical matters of international significance.