NIGERIA: Issue, Engagement Avoidance by Political Parties Ahead of 2023 Presidential Election

Political parties, candidates, and their supporters concluded 20 days of campaigning ahead of the 2023 presidential election on October 18, 2022, at various venues and on virtual platforms. Throughout the day, there were numerous nods and plaudits from supporters and detractors of the four leading candidates. The Centre for Research on Development of African Media, Governance, and Society, in collaboration with the Positive Agenda Nigeria, has been monitoring campaign activities of political actors and their supporters across various media platforms since the beginning of the campaign activities.

This piece examines 1,269 traces of policy and campaign issues, 357 levels of public discussion found in 2,493 messages gathered between September 28 and October 18, 2022, with a focus on questioning the role of opposition political parties (LP, NNPP, PDP, and others) in aligning with the ruling party.

Issue convergence or divergence in 20 Days?

This goal was previously examined using data gathered by Positive Agenda Nigeria during her monitoring of the 2022 governorship election campaign in Osun state.  Part of the analysis reveals that, throughout the first four weeks of the monitoring, the ruling party (APC) concentrated on performance issues, with particular attention paid to the health sector, worker salaries, welfare and employment, social programmes, and infrastructure. The PDP, the main opposition party, addressed concerns of reputation (personality assaults, party attacks), security, and agriculture. After the PDP, Accord was determined to be equally responsible for addressing reputational issues. The party (Accord) also engaged the public by discussing concerns and/or needs related to education and security. Like the PDP, Labour party was also discovered to owned economy, reputational issues of the members and candidate of the ruling party as well as agriculture and found them worthy of discussing.

Meanwhile, an examination of the first three weeks of presidential election campaign monitoring by the two organizations shows that the opposition political parties and the ruling party have been somewhat closed in discussing infrastructure and agricultural issues, as well as residents’ needs. There was a considerable divergence in debating economic, security, education, health, workers’ welfare and salary, employment, and social programs. The findings also show a significant discrepancy in terms of discussing issues that are unrelated to people’s expectations. For example, personality attacks in the form of pointing out candidates’ health issues dominated the others category analyzed by the two organizations’ research teams.

Exhibit 1: Policy and campaign issue convergence and divergence

Avoidance or engagement?

In terms of discussing the identified policy and campaign issues with citizens (via Facebook, Twitter, newspapers, and campaign rallies explored by the organizations), analysis shows that much attention has been paid to mentioning some of the needs and issues within the previously discussed policy and campaign issues (see Exhibit 1) without stating the impacts on people and the country as a whole. Meanwhile, it is surprising that the opposition political parties jointly lead the ruling party in all three categories of engagement level being examined by the two organizations. This also applies to the discussion of the issues (see Exhibit 1). Our analyst wonders why the opposition political parties are outperforming the ruling party in every category based on the information at hand and newly revealed insights. Does this imply that it is incredibly difficult to own and debate particular issues when a candidate is not the president in office?

Exhibit 2: Level of engagement