Ben Uzor Jr
In greater depth, the potential of Facebook as an online tool for social agitation has become prevalent in Nigeria by way of the increasing number of protest community groups springing up and the complex socio-political issues debated on the social networking site, Business Day can now reveal.
With the population of Nigerians on Facebook surpassing the 1.14 million mark as at March 2010, there are burly indications that the social media platform could eventually become a strong meeting point for social protest going by its growing popularity amongst Nigerians and strong participatory elements through comments, ratings or other mechanisms.
But more importantly, it offers a great platform to reach million of Nigerians with amazing targeting possibilities including age, gender, interest and behavioral markings, experts have argued. BusinessDay has also learnt that youths, civil and human rights groups are already engaging the platform for constructive social criticism.
Only recently, the issue of the practice of Islamic law in northern states sparked off heated debates on Facebook. The Civil Rights Congress (CRC) of Nigeria, a Kaduna based human rights organisation began the debate on Facebook and Twitter asking members their opinion over the amputation of a peasant farmer’s hand in March 2000 after he was convicted by the Islamic court for stealing a cow.
To this effect, an Islamic court order was issued to CRC ordering them to shut down its chat forums on Facebook. Another good example of social agitation online is the ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign on Facebook originally designed to inquire about ailing president Umaru Musa Yar’Adua whereabouts.
As regards demographics, latest statistics derived from Facebook show that globally the most popular age demographics on the social media platform was 35-49. The report further revealed that the platform was amongst the top three most visited sites by Nigerians. Conversely, women still represent the majority of users (51 percent to 45 percent) and whilst younger users still represent the majority of active users on the service, users over 55 are driving most of Facebook’s current growth.
On the global scene, countries like China, Syria and Iran have banned the use of Facebook from their web sphere at one point or the other by their government. On the contrary, the United States has embraced this technology. The social networking platform was instrumental to the victory of Barack Obama as great support was mobilised via Facebook during his campaign.
In Nigeria, it is also evident that some governors, public office holders and prominent Nigerians use the social media platform to connect with their friends, family and associates. Also, some politicians have already started using Facebook to declare their interests in the forthcoming 2011 general elections.
Kenneth Omeruo, founder of TechTrends Nigeria, a leading ICT empowerment blog who spoke to Business Day in a telephone chat said: “If you understand the dynamics of Facebook, you will know that the potentials are limitless. Facebook is indeed a tool for social change; it was instrumental to Obama’s victory at the polls. A lot of individuals were mobilised online.
“Coming back home, the opportunities are rife as lots of youths are already engaging the social media platform for constructive social criticism. For example, the ‘enough is enough campaign’. Though, it is going to take some time to be very effective, we will definitely get there. We still need to get a lot of people to use the tool. We need to get more people connected to the internet because our internet penetration is still very low. The way we can achieve this is to continually encourage investment in broadband infrastructure”, the internet marketing expert stated.
In the same vein, Lanre Ajayi, president, Nigerian Internet Group (NIG) also agrees that Facebook could foster social change because of its interactive and participatory elements, adding that socio-economic development would be dictated by the level of broadband internet connectivity in the country. “The future outlook of broadband infrastructure deployment in Nigeria looks good, if the right environment is created for investment in this area”, he posited.
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