Nigeria Content Online

When the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party announced it would
hold a National Executive Council meeting on Wednesday, the same day chosen by
presidential candidate Ibrahim Babangida to announce his presidential ambition,
there were rumours that the timing was deliberate, to take the shine off the
Babangida declaration.

But the ‘event’ that would end up snatching the limelight from
the Babangida rally took place in the most unexpected of places, as far away as
possible from Abuja, or anywhere else for that matter – on the social
networking site, Facebook.

At 10 o’clock that morning, as the Babangida rally prepared to
kick off, a message appeared on Goodluck Jonathan’s Facebook page, confirming
his much speculated presidential bid. Within minutes, the Jonathan ‘coup’ had
come to the notice of the world – leaping from Facebook to Twitter, news
websites, wire services and mobile phones.

The next day, news headlines that would have been wholly devoted
to Mr Babangida’s declaration, shifted their emphasis to Mr Jonathan’s:
“Jonathan, IBB open Presidential bids,” The Guardian said. “Jonathan declares
ambition on Facebook,” said The Punch. Jonathan’s “crowd” – albeit virtual, made
up of his Facebook “followers” – was at least 200,000, far more than the number
that thronged the Eagle Square, Abuja, for the Babangida declaration.

In the beginning was
Obama

It is hard to believe that President Jonathan is barely three
months old on Facebook. In May, in his speech at the 26th Convocation Ceremony
of the University of Port Harcourt, the newly sworn in president promised to
launch a presence on the social networking site.

On June 28, he fulfilled his promise, becoming the first serving
Nigerian President to tap into the craze that is social networking.

Instantly following this was a feverish scramble by Nigerians to
become Facebook fans of the President. Less than two weeks after his page went
up, more than 100,000 persons had signed up as followers.

Today, Mr Jonathan has more than 200,000 Facebook followers,
making him by far the most popular Nigerian on the Internet. British Prime
Minister David Cameron, who came to power around the same time as Mr Jonathan,
currently has 87,000 followers. German Prime Minister Angela Merkel has 46,000;
South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, 11,700.

All of these, however, pale in comparison with Barack Obama’s
Facebook profile. The American President’s page has more than 13 million
followers. Indeed, when the history of the emergence of the Internet as a tool
for political mobilisation is written, the longest chapter will be reserved for
the 44th American President.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Digg – none of the most
well-known social networking sites, escaped the colonising force of the Obama
campaign team.

The team went further to launch MyBarackObama.com, a social
networking site devoted to Obama supporters. The site allowed users to create
personal accounts, blog and donate to the Obama campaign. More than a million
persons signed up. And more than 3 million Americans donated to the Obama
campaign, many of them through the Internet.

The unprecedented use of the web by Barack Obama has evidently
not gone unnoticed by Nigerian politicians. President Jonathan is far from
being the only example. In August, Ibrahim Babangida appeared in a YouTube
video asking Nigerians to visit his campaign website. Before then, a Babangida
aide had boasted, in a series of newspaper interviews, that the 69-year-old
candidate was an ardent Facebooker.

The Nuhu Ribadu campaign says it is aiming to use the web to
build an Obama-style “volunteer corps” and fund-raising mechanism. Last week,
Atiku Abubakar launched his campaign website, and Twitter and Facebook pages.
Also last week, Mr Dele Momodu launched his campaign logo on his Facebook page,
and posted photos of the event at which he formally notified the Labour Party
of his intention to run for President on its platform.

An audience of millions

When democracy returned to Nigeria at the turn of the century,
there were less than a hundred thousand Internet users in the country.

Today, a decade later, there are more than 20 million Internet
users in the country, according to the International Telecommunications Union
(ITU).

This makes Nigeria the country with the highest number of
Internet users in Africa.

In that same time, mobile phone use has also expanded.

From a negligible number in 1999, there are now more than 70 million
mobile lines in the country. Alongside the explosion of mobile phone access has
emerged a rash of companies providing bulk text messaging services. “Right now,
we have a database of 35 million Nigerian numbers,” says Wale Arowolo, of
Perfect Trend Guarantee, one of such firms. “Before January we should be
looking at about 50 million.”

Last week, many Nigerians received a message on their phones:
“We are on the road to rebuild our Nation. Stand with me, Stand for
transformation.” The sender: “J. Goodluck.” But politicians are not the only
new converts to bulk messaging, which has long been popular with the corporate
world. This month, NEXT launched its SMS news service, to deliver regular news
alerts to millions of mobile phones across the country.

The opportunities (web and mobile phone) indeed appear
limitless. Last November, Arianna Huffington, co-founder and Editor-in-chief of
the popular political news website, Huffington Post, told a gathering of media
executives in Lagos: “Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be
President.” Time will tell if the man who will become Nigeria’s President on
May 29, 2011, will owe some, if not most, of his victory, to new media.