Nigeria is in high mood on the preparation for the next general election. The election fixed for 16^th February, 2019 is to usher in a new president and new members of the senate and the national House of Representatives at the Federal government level. It will be followed by another election fixed for March 2, 2019 for the governorship elections in  all the States of the Federation ( except for Anambra, Bayelsa, Kogi, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun States) and  the state Houses of assembly election in all the States of the Federation.

Campaign by contestants and their political parties is a major aspect of preparation for election in Nigeria just like any other democratic countries of the world. Campaign is defined in English Dictionary as ’’a series of operations undertaken to achieve a set goal’’. Political Campaign engenders interaction and familiarization of Contestants and their Political parties with the Voters. It enables the parties to transmit message to voters and convince many of the registered voters as to why they should vote for them and not their opponents.  Campaigns, if properly done, can create awareness about the oncoming election and assist the voters to vote intelligently. Reasonable campaigns should also be an account of what contestants and their political parties have achieved in the past and what further improvements, progress and developments they are capable of bringing up if they are voted in the next election.

FORMS OF CAMPAIGN:

Campaigns, from the past experience, take different forms such as:

1. Door to door campaign
2. Town hall meeting
3. Jingles on the electronic media such as Radio and TV.
4. Advertisement on the Print media.
5. Town crier.
6. Personal contact with the presumed influential people or group of people such as traditional rulers, clubs, clan/village heads, business class, trade unions, market associations, artisan groups, etc.
7. Street parades
8. Public rallies in which the members of the political parties, their contestants and general public are brought together in a public gathering to introduce contestants to the public. In this medium of campaign, mammoth crowd is expected, festivities engendered, and a media coverage of the event gives it an enhanced coloration.

However, none form of campaign is undertaken by political parties in isolation. It is usually a mixture of them that are put to use by the contestants and their political parties; they all reinforce one another.

Technology and Campaign:

Modern technologies in Computers and cell phones have increased the medium of reaching people for political campaigns. These machines are now household material in many homes. When they are put on line, communication with anyone else in every nook and cranny of the world is made possible. Politicians now use facilities such as sms, mms, e-mail, and websites on the internet to transmit political campaigns to the cell phones and computer users.

E-mail:

E-mail is a system of sending messages from individuals to individuals via telecommunication links between computers or terminals. To get an allocation of a space on the internet for the purpose of sending or receiving mails on your computer or handsets, users must register their addresses with any of the following websites: www.yahoo.com, www.Hotmail.com, www.gmail.com, www.lynx.com, www.cbf.com, etc. Bulk sms on e-mail has helped many contestants to pass their campaign messages to so many computer and handsets users with ease of access and cost.

Websites:

Websites are personal domains on the World Wide Web. Like the e-mail, you have to register a website address to get a space allocated for you on the World Wide Web.  A popular website has an unimaginable outreach in term of information dissemination to the computer and handset users.

Political parties and many of the contestants now have their own websites with which they advertise their profiles and campaign contents to the computer and handset users.

Social media:

               Social media is a free on line service which offers opportunity for social interaction among uncountable number of people on the handsets and computers. Social media can be categorized into: social networking (building friendships and relationships online, charting and instant messaging (IM), online publications, blog networks, etc. Some of the Popular social media platforms are: Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp , You tube, Linked in, My space, Friendster, Delicious, Discuss, live journal, Flickr, Wikipedia, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Podcasting, Snap chat, etc. All these have gained more than one billion users worldwide and they have made it easy for users to create and exchange user-generated contents.

Political Participation in Social Media:

Getting connected to the public on social media has become a vital tool for the politicians for their campaigns in many countries of the world. With the rise of social media all over the world, politicians use the social media for communication on a larger scale with minimum effort.  Narendra Modi social campaign in 2014, Barack Obama presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012, Arab Spring in 2011 have activated the interest politicians in networked digital connectivity.

 Effects of social media in the ongoing political campaign in Nigeria:

In Nigeria, the largest percentage of voters is the youths. The youths are also the largest users of social media in Nigeria. Social media has therefore provided an opportunity to reach a larger percentage of voters in the individual constituency of contestant with ease of cost and widespread. The effect of social media in reduction of the cost of ongoing campaigns in Nigeria can therefore not be over looked.

Another significant observed impact of social media on the ongoing political campaigns is that many contestants and their political parties had started to market themselves to the public in and outside their constituencies much earlier than the campaigns for the election became a general issue in the public domain. By the time the ground is set for it there was already a feeling of satisfaction in some contestants that a lot of underground outreach has been covered. Since no medium of campaign is self-sufficient, social media is now a medium of campaign that has effectively reinforced other medium of political campaigns in Nigeria.

 Adverse effects of the social media as a tool of political campaign in Nigeria

The Adverse effects of the social media as a tool of political campaign in Nigeria are: the incidence of fake news, hate speech, and the nuisance of unsolicited messages and media hype. The low level of literacy among the Nigerians in general is also a critical limitation to the potency of this medium of campaign among Nigerian voters.

Conclusion

To improve the acceptability of social media as veritable medium of campaign in Nigeria now and in the future, Politicians need to exercise more maturity and discipline in their campaigns. Campaigns should be issue based rather than avenue for fake news, hate speech media hype, and media assault.

Social media is really a very good medium to undertake voters’ education and voters’ conviction if it is properly utilized by contestants and their political parties. Thank you.