The leading candidates in the 2013
Anambra State governorship election have since abandoned their social
media accounts, especially Twitter, which came in quite handy during the
campaigns.
Those who signed up for major social
networking sites in the build up to the elections were the
governor-elect, Willie Obiano of the ruling All Progressive Grand
Alliance; Senator Chris Ngige of the All Progressives Congress; Dr.
Patrick Ubah of the Labour Party; and Tony Nwoye of the Peoples
Democratic Party.
Continue reading after the cut....
The four candidates had leveraged the
use of Twitter to announce their policy thrusts, build recognition, as
well as canvass votes from the people.
Investigation by iPUNCH on Monday, however, showed that they are struggling to stay on the social platform, barely two months after the elections.
For instance, Obiano, who had stated
that he “campaigned vigorously” on Twitter and pledged to remain visible
on the social network, may have broken his promise.
Basking in the euphoria of his victory
at the poll, he had tweeted, “You will still see me here on Twitter. I’m
here with you. It will be a long journey, but I want to rely on your
sincere observations here on Twitter of our successes and mistakes to
get this journey right.”
The governor-elect was last seen by his
followers on the micro-blogging service on December 24 when he posted a
message on his Twitter feed.
It is noteworthy that during the
electioneering, Obiano had kept up with conversations on the social
network so much that he tweeted 114 times on October 25, barely 21 days
to the election.
A visit to Nwoye’s Twitter page reveals
that the PDP standard bearer drew the curtains on his use of the social
network two days after the first round of the election. In fact, five of
his followers have since unsubscribed themselves from receiving his
tweets because of the seeming lack of activity on his Twitter feed.
Although Nwoye’s followers were 132 as at December 2, the number dropped to 127 by Monday.
While Nwoye could not wait more than two
days after the first round of the elections to opt out of Twitter, Ubah
waited till January 2, 2014 before calling it quits. Before then, he
had not been using the micro-blogging service as much as he did before
the election.
Ngige, who signed up for Twitter long
before many of his opponents, also went on vacation on December 25, 2013
and only returned to action on Sunday evening to offer New Year best
wishes to his over 5,000 followers.
A social media strategist, Sola
Fagorusi, says it was apparent that the governorship candidates merely
joined the bandwagon after they learnt that it would be politically
wrong to abandon the social media.
Fagorusi notes that the online behaviour
exhibited by the candidiates depict them as fair-weather politicians
whose new media strategy leaned solely on a “get-the-vote-at-all-cost”
method.
“The party is over and since their
signing up for social media appears more to be a reactive attitude in
the first place, it is only logical to abandon the plan. Politics here
seems to be for the short term benefit and not for what it should be – a
long term engagement with the electorate,” he observes.
He advises that the use of social media
should be a consistent and constant engagement with socio-political
issues and warns that the absence of the governorship candidates online
is dangerous as it may encourage impostors to represent them on social
media.
He adds, “Social media is one of the
cheapest and best means to reveal the ideas, plans and thought process
of any serious political office holder. Politics is a continuum.
“There will always be another day.
Social media will keep even a failed politician’s voice permanently loud
and relevant. It has the capacity to turn failure to success.”
-Punch
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