With few weeks to the polls in Nigeria, an outsider who is running on the platform of a party most Nigerians did not even know existed one year ago, is leading in several opinion polls and is looking to create an electoral upset in Africa’s largest democracy. Propping the outsider is a movement peopled by millions of Gen Z and Millennials armed with nothing but their smartphones and an unrelenting desire to take back their country.
The Obidient movement in Nigeria is a full Twitter-led movement to install Peter Obi as the President of Nigeria come February 25. It may draw parallels with Kenya where President Ruto was recently elected in an upset against the political dynasties of the Kenyattas and the Odingas, still, the Obidient movement had been coming for years and it was solely born on Twitter.
The outbreak of the Arab Spring at the beginning of the last decade hinted to researchers and politicians that social media could drastically impact realpolitik. As the streets raged in Cairo, organizers – many residing outside Egypt – coordinated the protests using Facebook. Facebook also played a role in the emergence and rise of Donald Trump in America and in the resurgence of far-right ideologies in many parts of Europe peaking with the Cambridge Analytica imbroglio. When the culture wars of the Trump presidency spread the historic American partisan divide from mainstream media to social media, Twitter ascended the podium as the go-to platform for shaping the political fortunes of nation-states, impacting issues from Brexit to BLM.
Facebook and WhatsApp are the most popular social network platforms in Nigeria, a West African country of over 200m people. However, recent thinking has illustrated that Nigerian Twitter has become a public sphere where intellectuals, influencers, politicians, government officers, business leaders, media outlets and personalities, and separatists congregate to raise prominence and set agenda on different issues. Narratives, memes, and popular comments then “sift down” to Facebook or WhatsApp where they go viral and shape opinions.
The Obidient movement sprang up from the ashes of the 2020 #EndSars protests when young people protested police brutality across the country using Twitter as the operational headquarters. The disappointment with the government’s handling of the protests, including sending in the military became the primary inspiration for the young people to change the status quo. Political observers had serially fantasized about a third force candidate to change the duopoly of Nigerian politics. The protests finally handed the sòrò sókè generation the blueprint.
In Nigeria, political power has rotated between two legacy parties the PDP and the APC since the return to democracy. The parties have no ideological differences and most of the leading members have crisscrossed between the two since the return to democratic rule in 1999. To retrieve power from the major contenders in these parties (some of whom have been in government since the end of the civil war in 1970), young, educated Nigerians have deployed Twitter to campaign, mobilize and organize for Peter Obi, a former governor of the South East State of Anambra. Dutifully following the script from the 2020 protests, Peter Obi supporters have created a movement that has dominated the news cycles and created a wave online and offline.
Videos of Obi’s interviews, rallies, and achievements as Governor have been tweeted and retweeted constantly. Social media influencers, Afrobeats celebrities, film stars, and intellectuals have latched onto the movement to campaign endlessly for Peter Obi. His supporters have used Twitter to espouse the narrative that Nigerians must eschew the old order and elect Obi who is campaigning on financial frugality and increasing the country’s productivity.
The fervor of Obidients as Peter Obi’s supporters are called – a mashup of Obi and obedience – has led to political operatives of the other parties labeling them online mobs and labeling their politics as toxic. Anti-Obi voices have been strenuously shouted down in the charge that is noticeably led by young, urban Nigerians and voices from the diaspora. Nigeria’s diaspora has always been influential and vocal online, and since the inception of Twitter has become a source of contagion for many of the liberal ideas that are beginning to permeate into Nigerian society.
Getting free publicity on Twitter means that Obi, who is running on the platform of a fringe party – the Labour party – can compete with the legacy parties in campaign ads and communications. Using their network connections and reach online Obidients have managed to set the agenda and drive the narrative throughout the campaign season.
For instance, when the Presidential candidate of the ruling APC and former governor of the commercial capital Lagos, Bola Tinubu slurred his words at a campaign stop, Twitter users trended the video on the app before it was picked up on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Tik Tok. The video of the former Governor struggling to say the words “hullabaloo” has become the defining visual of the election cycle, with the video going viral across a slew of social media platforms and constantly being referenced on Twitter. The constant umbrage against Tinubu from across social media, even before his gaffe, led to the 70-year-old complaining about social media: “I don’t read social media anymore; they abuse the hell out of me. If I read it, I get high blood pressure and angry”.
Initially seen as an internet sensation that will peter out in due course, the Obidient movement has lasted the course. With a few weeks to the Presidential polls in February 2023, opinion polls have continued to report that Peter Obi is now the leading candidate heading to the vote. Deploying a Twitter-centric election campaign, Obidients have crowdsourced funds, utilized user-generated campaign ads, organized street marches and campaign rallies, and stayed atop the trending lists across all social media apps. It remains to be seen if the movement derisively labeled as “four people tweeting in a room” at the beginning will go the whole hog in winning the Presidency in Africa’s largest democracy.
Sirwebs Football Tips 