SOCIAL MEDIA TRANSFORMING POLITICAL SPHERE OF MY COUNTRY.

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I'm so excited to be back for this lovely edition. Last week I couldn't participate in the third edition because I went for an outreach in a community since on Thursday to Sunday. It was hectic but fruitful a long the way. It was such a time to meet with different kinds of people and impact them with the little we had. One outstanding thing that stood out for me was the fact that the people received us with gladness of heart. It was such an awesome experience.

Stumbling on this theme for the first edition, it's something that has eaten deep into the fabric of the political scenes today. Social media has influenced and showed significant effects in the political situation in my beloved country. These impacts has created both negative and positive. I could remember during the last election in 2023, there were sets of politicians that really leverage on the use of social to achieve the intent of their hearts. Some depicted false of their lifestyle whereas in another instance it speaks volumes of their true life stories.

In Nigerian politics, social media plays a vital role and has a lot to do with individual. Some people's political career were ruined by their political enemies. With the advancement in technology, pseudo statements are normally postulated about some high profile politicians while others use it to sell themselves to the public even though what play out in reality is normally different.

Let me share some of the advantages or positive impacts that social media has done as far the politics in my country is concerned.

• Social media today has become a means for mobilizing and gaining people from the grassroots. You may not need to have physical meetings at a specific venue. They leverage on the social media handles to project whatever they want. For instance during the last election the leader of labor party Mr Peter obi that contested as president. Greater percentage of his campaign strategies began from the grassroots of social media platforms. I could remember how I joined one of them. Before you know it structures were laid and it became a formidable force to move with. Other movements for protest began from social media handles before it escalated to a national matter. Social media is a platform that helps to mobilize people from the grassroots.
• One of the positive impacts that social media has on politics of Nigeria is that it increased political engagement in the sense that Nigerians can easily assess some information. Platforms like X, Facebook, WhatsApp etc I was able to read through some of the intentions of some political giants. Just yesterday, I read through some of the proposed manifesto a vibrant young man who wants to run for the seat of governor in my state. He dropped his ideas and made it easy for everyone to read on the social media. Anytime I login to Facebook I would see what he has dropped and when you go through the comment section you would see a lot. This has increased engagement or activities of people on the social handles.
• The adventure of social media has made the citizens to hold their politicians responsible. Infact these platforms has become opportunities where they easily share their achievements or scorecards. This goes a long way to make other politicians that are weak to wake up to responsibility.

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Conclusion

Well the social media has transformed the political hemisphere of my country. Virtually all the politicians are trying their best to snap and show their level of achievement on these handles so that people would see. Initially you won't even know the level of their impacts but the social media has helped to boost their performance.
There's nothing I would like to change about this even though it has its negative impacts as well but my focus is more on the merits.

Thanks for reading through my entry for this edition.