The findings of the report indicated about 60 percent of the campaign messages were dominated by issues that had no national importance, adding that the campaign atmosphere within the last eight weeks have “a mix of both positive and negative outcomes.”
While presenting the factsheet of the report at an online event, the Director of the project’s Communication and Public Engagement, Jamiu Folarin said the experts and stakeholders are expected to x-ray the report and outline insights expected to improve the election climate.
“In the two months of monitoring activities of political actors and their supporters, our analysts gathered a total of 4,366 relevant messages across social media (Twitter and Facebook) and traditional media (Television and newspapers). We equally collected data from online platforms such as YouTube used by the political actors for dissemination of campaign speeches and short advertorial about what they would do if elected.
“Our analysis of policy and campaign issues messages showed an abysmal performance of both the actors and supporters in addressing the germane issues and needs of national importance.
“Rather, our findings indicated that irrelevant issues outside of the key policy and campaign issues dominated the campaign sphere representing (60.22%) of the entire campaign messages in the last two months. Issues relating to economy, education and security were represented in the campaign discourse at 10.44%, 8.01%, and 7.51% respectively.
“It is worrying that as the election hinges nearer, conversations on the campaign terrain largely focused on candidates’ personality and competence disparagement at the expense of major socio-economic issues ravaging the country,” the report indicated.
On the campaign strategy adopted, the finding indicated that the acclaims strategy, which simply represents the promotion of leadership qualities and competencies of political parties and candidates to win the presidential race and provide good governance, had the highest percentage of presence at 69.7% throughout the eight weeks of monitoring followed by the attacks strategy with the defenses strategy recording the lowest appearance on the campaign atmosphere.
The report pointed out: “Across parties in the campaign atmosphere, the PDP was found to have deployed the attacks strategy the most among the three leading political parties followed by the LP and APC respectively.
“We noted a decline in personality disparagement among the political stakeholders as the parties and candidates disparage others without reference to leadership abilities, educational credentials, or track record of resource management. Our analysis showed declining aggression in the campaign landscape.
“Though the monitoring observed a decline in aggression, analysis showed that the LP was most aggressive and was the party that deployed most of the disparagement noticed in the campaign atmosphere in the last eight weeks of campaign monitoring. The APC followed in this order and the PDP came last on the list of the three leading parties.
“On information pollution, our analysis observed that there were still more instances of presenting conflicting identities of newsmakers and sources than other misinformation-specific criteria in the eight weeks of the campaign.
“Despite this, satire, conflicting statistics, inaccurate photos, and inaccurate image captions were also used. This shows that there were still only a few cases of candidate misrepresentation, use of misleading statistics, as well as inaccurate photos and captions.
In its conclusion, the report submitted that rather than focus on issues of national interests, Political actors and their supporters have resulted in polluting the space with more conflicting identities as well as misleading statistics.”
CERDEMS-Africa/PAN thereafter advises political actors and supporters to tone-down their use of attacks strategy and highly intensive personality disparagement as observed across all the dominant political parties.
“It is also critical that traditional media, particularly newspapers, are more alive to their responsibility by using their platforms to verify leadership competence and personality of the candidates as projected by their supporters through the acclaims strategy.
“Besides, the fact that aggression has increased in the last two months should be noted and addressed by the electoral umpire towards attaining a credible general election season in 2023.
“We appeal to the electoral management body (INEC), the media, social media influencers to challenge the parties, their candidates and supporters to high level engagement of policy and programmes.
“The decline in aggression exhibited by the political parties in the combined analysis of eight weeks of campaigns is worthy of commendation and emulation. Stakeholders are enjoined to keep playing according to the rules of productive engagement which would promote a sane campaign atmosphere. It is in such a campaign environment that both the political parties, their supporters and the general voting public could engage in a transaction of ideas,” the groups noted.
Earlier, the Executive Director of CEREDEMS-Africa, Dr Muhammad Mustapha said the discussion of the report will offer experts to dissect the patterns of campaign strategies deployed by political stakeholders for the 2023 Nigerian presidential election during the last two months.
Dr Mustapha urged stakeholders to review the report in a bid to improve on the election landscape ahead of the general elections in Nigeria next year.
Meanwhile, a legal practitioner and university administrator, Mr. Ogochukwu Nweke and a senior lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University, Dr Mukhtar El-Kazim, have called on political stakeholders to reverse the negative outcomes and improve on the positive findings noted in the report on the monitoring of the presidential election campaign.
The experts want political parties and their candidates to take control of the narratives in the on-going presidential campaign which is expected to be guided by specific political ideology, and realistic models to address issues of national importance.
They want political stakeholders to intensify voters’ education, discuss issues of national interest in campaign, engage more in town hall meetings than rallies, bring electoral offenders to book, and make the campaign atmosphere free of information pollution.
While Mr. Ogochukwu cautioned against defamation of character in the course of political campaigns, he clarified that presentation of factual information about a candidate should not be considered as personality disparagement.
“When an information is shared, the main fact that it expresses somebody’s incompetence does not make it a disparaging statement… It is a revelation of whether or not that person is able to do the job and that is the only way to do it.
“Of course there are some private media that are used to disseminate the wrong information in the name of propaganda, propaganda seems to be an accepted practice now.
“Freedom of information is a fundamental right and freedom of the press is an integral part of that right, and so, when the information is being shared, as long as it is not a lie, the problem is that when it becomes a lie, as long as it is not a lie, it is information that will make the voters or the electorate make the right decision.
“It is the responsibility of the information consumer even though it comes through traditional media, to make sure that the information is verified…we have seen situations where even traditional media shared the wrong information.
“Information consumer has the responsibility of verifying information he has received…before you share information whether you get it through traditional media, mainstream media or through social media, make sure you verify the information, it is your responsibility,” Ogochukwu said.
Dr Mukhtar however noted that unlike the social media, the mainstream media are more responsible because of professionalism and regulation but quick to add that the traditional media are also exploited through ownership, sponsorship, advertisement, influence editorial contents and patronage.
“Unless politicians start being involved in claiming damages, unless the court rises to their responsibilities and people see clear implications of defamation and now defamation of character is one of the political cultures that Nigerians are using to pollute the politics,” Dr Mukhtar said.
