4 People Tweeting’ Changed the Face of Nigerian Politics
On election day, Maryam Adetona arrived at her polling unit in Ilorin in North-Central Nigeria at around 10 am, while officials were still setting up. Across town, Akinwale Philip arrived at his polling booth at 9 am. In Owerri, in the southeast of the country, Chisom Nnachi got to his polling unit at around 8 am, and had to wait four hours before officials turned up. In Abeokuta, southwest, Adebayo Ayomide got held up, and made it to his unit only at around 11 am. All four are in their twenties, and were voting for the first time in the country’s presidential and senatorial elections, held on February 25, 2023.
Nigeria’s young population is incredibly politically active—at least online. But the country’s political establishment has often dismissed them as “four people tweeting from a room,” in the belief that online activism wouldn’t translate to real-world action. Historically, they might have been right. Even though two-thirds of Nigeria’s population are under the age of 30, youth participation in Nigerian elections has typically been low. In the country’s last election in 2019, only 34 percent of registered and eligible voters voted. In February’s election, the two main parties—the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), which have dominated Nigerian politics for decades—hardly bothered to target young voters in the online spaces where they congregate.
But this year, a wave of online organization and youth participation brought an outsider candidate, Peter Obi, to within touching distance of the establishment parties, upending the country’s politics.
“The internet allowed youths of the same mind to connect and organize organically. It was the first time we were seeing spontaneous organic rallies being held nationwide, with little to no party force organizing it,” says Joachim MacEbong, a senior analyst at Stears Inc, an intelligence and analytics company based in Lagos. “Opposition [parties] missed these early signs and dismissed them as ‘four people tweeting in a room.’ And now, months later, we can see it was much more than that.”
The roots of the online wave were planted in 2020, when an online protest movement against police brutality—known as EndSARS—led to street demonstrations that were, at times, violently put down. Even though the immediate political impact of those demonstrations was limited, it led to the creation of informal advocacy networks that survived into the election period. As one first-time voter, Abdussalam Abdulqoyum says, the movement “apathy-shamed” young Nigerians into turning out to vote.
Ayomide, the first-time voter in Abeokuta, witnessed the EndSARS protests firsthand, and says that was the moment when he started to feel engaged in politics. “It became a life and death situation for me,” said Ayomide.
