With the presidential, governorship, and federal and state legislature elections in Nigeria over, several disputes surrounding the votes continue to reverberate, particularly with party supporters constantly clashing online.
This war of words was a permanent fixture in the 2023 election cycle, and according to the recently published ‘European Union Election Observation Mission Nigeria 2023 Final Report,’ demeaning words like ‘Thiefnubu’ and ‘Obidiots’ were the most common slurs used to describe the opposition by vociferous supporters of the various candidates.
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Between then-candidate Bola Tinubu and Peter Obi, online virulence was more strong. Mr Tinubu (the APC flag candidate) was later declared the winner of the presidential election on February 25. Mr. Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party came in second, and Mr. Obi came third.
‘Obidiot’ had 14,812 mentions, while ‘thiefnubu’ received 17,924.
The opposition frequently refers to Mr Tinubu as a drug lord and other claims of corruption as “Thiefnubu.”
‘Obidiots,’ a derogatory term formed from Mr Obi’s name and ‘idiots,’ was a derogatory nickname used by opposition supporters to designate followers of the former Anambra governor, also known as Obidients. The derogatory phrase implies that the followers are lapdogs.
‘PDPigs,’ ‘Athiefku,’ ‘Obingo,’ and ‘aboki’ were other commonly used derogatory words and phrases on social media sites throughout the 2023 election cycle.
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The European Union body designated Messrs Abubakar, Obi, Mr Tinubu, and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian People’s Party as the four leading presidential contenders in the February 2023 election, with suspicious social media followers “used to create a false impression of support.”
According to the EU, Mr Kwankwaso had 80% questionable followers on Twitter, Mr Atiku had 60% suspicious followers, and Mr Obi had 23% suspicious followers. Mr Tinubu had the fewest of these supporters, with 22%.
“There was a steady increase in the number of followers of key presidential candidates over a period of three months (January – March). During the week of the presidential election, there was a sharp increase in the number of followers for all four candidates,” the final EU observers’ report on Nigeria’s 2023 presidential poll stated.
It added, “It should be noted that a relatively large number of these new followers are suspicious accounts, used to create a false impression of support.”
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The accounts could not be identified as suspicious at first glance, according to the EU, because they had an original-looking profile name or used a random snippet of a photo used online as a profile picture that could not be directly identified as having already been used (using Google’s reverse image search).
However, additional study identified negative characteristics, such as anonymity or significant participation and endorsement of specific people, topics, and hashtags, according to the report.
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