Introduction: This research is aimed at harvesting and collating social media
data, open source intelligence or publicly available information on political
trends, narratives, opinion polls and employing the dataset to forecast the
likely winner in Nigeria’s forthcoming presidential election slated to take
place on February 16, 2019. Granted there are about 24 candidates in the
forthcoming presidential election but realpolitik, pragmatism implies the
election would be a two-horse race between two northern Muslims of Fulani
extraction - Atiku Abubakar (Peoples Democratic Party, PDP) and Muhammadu
Buhari (All Progressives Congress, APC). Naysayers would argue that politics is
local; that elections are not won on social media. Despite its flaws, open
source intelligence, social media and big data analytics has proven to be
veritable tools for inter-alia: predicting social unrest, economic crises, medical
epidemic, natural disasters, terrorism and also gauging the ‘political pulse’.
It
boils down to connecting the dots and using the known to figure out the
unknown. This is doable as long as available data is valid, reliable, and there
are no unforeseen circumstances that could precipitate a disruption. A 2017 report published on The
Conversation titled, ‘’How artificial
intelligence conquered democracy’’, depicts how machine-learning
systems predicts which United States Congressional bills will pass by making
algorithmic assessments of the text of the bill.
Caveat: Though an active citizen, good governance advocate, writer is not
a card carrying member of any political party in Nigeria and no one commissioned
him to embark on this task. My endeavour here as an analyst and an information
junkie, is to glean data from overt, disparate sources and try to make an inference.
First, Some Clarity…
Before delving into the nitty-gritty of this thesis, let us
reconcile the uninitiated with some terminologies they will come across in this
essay. In the Intelligence Community (IC), the term "open" refers to
overt, publicly available sources. It contrasts with close-source, covert or
classified information. Hence, open-source intelligence (OSINT), a component of
all-source intelligence is defined by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as the ‘’insight gained
from processing and analyzing public data sources such as broadcast TV and
radio, social media, websites, specialized journals, conference proceedings, think
tank studies, photos, and geospatial information, amongst others.’’ In
2014, a survey of more than 1,200 federal, state, and local law enforcement professionals in
the United States established that approximately 80 percent used social media
platforms as intelligence-gathering tools. Open source intelligence provided some insight
to goings-on in Iran during the 2009 Green Revolution. Writing
on the Observer, Micah Halpern, a political and foreign affairs commentator
opines that, ‘’Open Source Intelligence should be the go-to tool we use for
thoughtful analysis and surveys on every issue’’. In his September 25, 2018 essay
on Foreign Policy Magazine titled, ‘’Google Maps
Is a Better Spy Than James Bond’’, Nick Waters an ex-British Army officer and open
source analyst says, ‘’Open-source intelligence is, in fact, potentially far
more reliable and checkable by a democratic public than traditional closed
sources’’. Nick argues that, ‘’One of the primary strengths of open-source
investigation is that the sources and methodology are exactly that—open. Anyone
with a computer and an internet connection can follow the reasoning of
analysts, interrogate the same sources, and critique the techniques used’’.
Leading citizen journalism and sleuthing website - Bellingcat
deployed painstaking OSINT (open source intelligence) techniques to establish
what it claims is the real identity of the Russian military intelligence agents
responsible for the nerve agent attack on former Russian spy Sergei
Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom. Bellingcat reconciled Ruslan Boshirov as an alter ego of Anatoliy Vladimirovich
Chepiga, a highly-decorated colonel of the Russian military intelligence
agency, GRU and that the second suspect hitherto known as Alexander Petrov by
UK authorities, is in fact the false
name of Dr. Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin, a trained military doctor
in the employ of the GRU.
Social media intelligence (SMI/SOCMINT) or social media forensics
refers to the stack of tools that allows individuals or organizations to
monitor social media channels, conversations, emerging trends. These nuggets of
information are analyzed and synthesized into meaningful content and used to
make strategic decisions across many disciplines. Just like everything in life,
there is a drawback. The danger in social media intelligence (SOMINT) stems from the fact that some
of the information are unverified, could have been outright disinformation or
weaponized information disseminated by a bot.
Artificial intelligence (AI), is defined as the ''ability of a digital
computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with
intelligent beings. Coined in 1959 by Arthur Samuel, the term ''Machine
learning'' is a field of artificial
intelligence (AI) that employs statistical techniques or algorithms to give
computer systems the ability to "learn" (e.g., progressively improve
performance on a specific task) from data and make predictions without being
explicitly programmed.
A similar concept, big-data analytics refers to the strategy of analyzing large
volumes of data, or big data gathered from a wide variety of sources, including
social networks, videos, digital images, amongst others, with a view to uncovering
patterns and connections that might otherwise be invisible, and that might
provide valuable insights.
Social Media, Data
Analytics Disrupts Electioneering, Democracy
In our today’s data-driven world, social media has no doubt disrupted
the way we communicate and is bracing to disrupt electioneering and by
extension, democracy. During the 2016 U.S presidential election, data science
firm Cambridge Analytica reportedly plunged an all-embracing advertising campaign to target persuadable
voters based on their individual psychology. Similarly, UK Labour party’s
successful digital media campaigns during the 2017 general election which saw
them gain 21 seats from its Conservative opponents also buttresses the
efficacy of social media to politics.
Cyberspace, Social
Media As Election Battlegrounds
An average smartphone user clicks, taps and swipes his/her
seductive gadget an amazing 2,617 times a day. The proliferation of smartphones and high rate of
internet penetration entails many people are inadvertently
addicted to their smartphones and social media. The
Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) says there are 103 million internet users in Nigeria as
at July 2018.
We also know that Nigeria boasts of the highest Facebook
users in Africa; there were 26 million active Facebook users in Nigeria, as at May
2018. A plethora of Nigerians are also active on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn
and other social media platforms. There are manifold implications: political campaigns, electioneering are no longer the exclusive
preserve of traditional mass media/advertising platforms such as television,
radio stations and newspapers. Now, cyberspace, social media is
also political and campaign battleground. Another
import of this is that analysis of social media, open source data, prevailing
political narratives, trends, pulse of the country, could hint who Nigeria’s
next president would be. By the way, recall that social media data, opinion polls favoured and foretold Buhari’s election victory
in 2015. Cognizant of the huge role that social media played in Buhari’s victory in the 2015
presidential election, the Buhari administration through
the Ministry of Information and Culture reportedly forked out N180 million to pay
social media influencers in the 2017 federal budget. As a matter of fact, the
Buhari Media Centre (BMC) was recently rebranded, rejigged and morphed into the
''Buhari New Media Centre'', BNMC with twitter handle: @BuhariCentre, WhatsApp
forum, with membership cutting across the 36 states of the federation and the
Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Can Social Media
Intelligence, Twitter Predict Election Outcomes?
In an interview with the International Center for Journalists in Nigeria (ICFJ)
aftermath of the 2015 presidential election, Sunday Dare, a journalist and
former aide to the national leader of the All Progress Congress (APC), Bola
Tinubu, submitted that, ‘’The [2015] election was decided, dominated and directed
by social media. The power of social media came out for this country. Social
media played a central role as a watchdog in keeping the integrity of the
process. Within minutes of votes being counted at a polling unit, the results
were all over social media’’.
Nick Beauchamp, an assistant professor of political science at
Northeastern University, said in an academic paper published in the American Journal of Political Science, in 2016, that
his application of machine learning to more than 100 million tweets during the
2012 election cycle closely mirrors the results of state-level political
polling.
The academic paper asserts that machine learning and
an analysis of Twitter trends outdo traditional polls on the national level.
Similarly, a report released by Dublin City University in 2011 suggests that Twitter
data could be used as an accurate indicator of election outcomes. An artificial
Intelligence company - MogIA predicted the outcome of the last four presidential elections in the United
States, including Trump’s win. MogIA never asked a single question of a single
voter but utilized OSINT and artificial intelligence to analyze millions of
datasets from public platforms such as: Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
in the U.S. and then created its predictions. Similarly, BrandsEye, a tool that
looks at people's tweets, correctly predicted both the vote to leave the EU
(Brexit referendum) and a Trump victory in the 2016 US election. Brandwatch’s
analysis established that Trump had more Twitter mentions throughout most of
the election cycle. At a time, Trump accumulated more than 4.9 million
mentions while Clinton had just over 2.7 million.
According to a 2015 study titled 'How Africa Tweets', an annual
study by Portland Communications which highlights Twitter trends, hashtag usage
and online habits in Africa, Portland analyzed 1.6 billion geolocated
tweets and the top 5,000 hashtags for 2015. The most tweets in Africa came from
Egypt which accounts for about 500 million. Nigeria came in second with 360 million tweets followed
by South Africa, Kenya, and Ghana.
Given this result, it is safe to say
that Nigeria has the second largest amount of Twitter users in Africa.
Similarly, Portland Communications July 2018 report which covered polls held in 10
African countries between June 2017 and May 2018, highlighted how Africans in
the Diaspora influenced elections in Africa. The report says, "People
continue to seek out the voices they trust with established journalists and
news outlets consistently ranked in the top three influencers across all
elections. With fake news and bots influencing conversations on social media,
people continue to search for traditional sources of verified, accurate
information’’.
Case
Study: Nigeria’s 2015 Presidential Election Opinion Polls
Buhari led Jonathan
whom he defeated during the 2015 presidential election in several opinion polls,
including the poll
administered by Jonathan’s Special Assistant on Social Media, Reno Omokri and
also by online newspaper, Premium Times, JJ Omojuwa, the Africa Independent
Television, AIT, World Stage Group.
Out of the
total 9,206 respondents to the poll, 8,176 Nigerians said they would vote for
Buhari. Buhari also bested Jonathan in another opinion poll by Daily Post
newspaper. Out of a total of 9,204 votes in the poll, Buhari emerged winner by
polling 6,129 votes (66.59 percent) and Jonathan, with 2,516 votes (27.34
percent). Buhari also emerged a winner in another poll conducted by political
risk research and consulting firm, Eurasia Group. Buhari reportedly got 60
percent while Jonathan got 40 percent. The dissenting poll
was the one conducted by Kevin, Charlyn and Kimberly Associates, a United
Kingdom (UK)-based research and political risk consult.
2019 Election: How Buhari,
Atiku Fair On Twitter, Online Polls
Northern Nigeria's only surviving newspaper - Daily Trust launched
a twitter poll on October 12, 2018. The poll asked: ‘’who are you supporting in
the 2019 presidential election? Retweet for @MBuhari, like for @atiku. Notwithstanding
the unfair advantage of retweet button allocated to @MBuhari by Daily Trust, Atiku
trounced Buhari in the poll. As at the time (1920 Hours, October 14, 2018) of
writing this report, Atiku had amassed 14,500 ‘votes’ while Buhari lagged
behind with an abysmal 4,699 ‘votes’. This poll seems to portray the pervasive
disenchantment with the Buhari administration. I think this shows how #Atikulated many Nigerians are. At the peak of the #Change
mantra and #SaiBaba frenzy in 2015, it is unthinkable that Atiku would trounce
Buhari in a poll.
 |
| Daily Trust Newspaper Twitter Poll |
Recall that the ruling APC has won every single opinion poll conducted
by Daily Trust in the last 4 years (2014- 2018).
 |
| A Nairaland member's comment |
Similarly, a recent online poll titled Atiku vs. Buhari: Who can manage the economy better? Conducted by Nairametrics, Nigeria’s leading financial literacy and business intelligence website, more than half of the respondents to the poll (55%) say Atiku will be able to manage Nigeria’s fragile economy better than Buhari. Presidential candidate of the SDP, Donald Duke came second with 24% of the poll, while President Buhari scored the least (21%) among the trio.
PDP’s candidate, Atiku trounced Buhari in an earlier twitter poll
conducted by pro-Buhari groups - Mark Essien via @markessien and @YNaija. Atiku also floored Buhari in a 6-day Twitter
poll conducted by Japheth Omojuwa, a prominent Buhari proponent. In the first
poll, Atiku garnered 35% of the votes compared to Buhari’s 32%. In the first
online poll conducted by Mark Essien, Atiku polled 43% as against Buhari’s 35%. In the second poll, Atiku secured 39% of the votes while
Buhari came second with 34%. In both polls, respondents were asked: “Who would
you vote for President if elections were held today?” Of the total combined
votes of 81,065, Atiku secured 29,672 representing a cumulative percentage of
36.6% compared to Buhari’s 26,590 representing 32.8%. If both polls - Mark
Essien and Omojuwa’s are combined, Atiku will enjoy a
9% lead over Buhari.
Polls by NOIPolls Limited in October 2015 showed that Buhari had 80% approval rating. Between June 2015 and April
2016, President Buhari’s approval rating sank to 42 per cent. A survey conducted by the renowned NOI Polls Limited asserts that
President Muhammadu Buhari's job approval rating dropped to its worst in 18
months, at 38% as at February 2018. This is the president's second lowest score
since he was sworn-in over two years ago. In another poll conducted sometime in May 2018 ‘amongst 4,000 Nigerians’
across Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory by Buharimeter, a brainchild of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD)
which was launched to track the delivery of President Buhari’s campaign
promises, Nigerians rated President
Buhari below average even in his three cardinal campaign promises: Corruption,
Security and Economy. According to this poll, President
Buhari’s approval rating stood at 40, a decline of 17 per cent from 57 per cent
rating recorded in the 2017 Buharimeter National Survey. Another poll conducted on www.politicsngr.com which lasted between May 21 - June 3, 2018, respondents were
asked, ‘Will you vote for President Buhari in 2019’? 5,227 votes were
recorded. Of the figure, 3,687 votes representing 70 per cent voted against
Buhari re-election bid while 1,538 votes representing 29.4 per cent supported
his ambition.
However, President Buhari defeated Atiku was in a Twitter poll organized by @SaharaReporters
on November 26, 2017. 49 percent (a total of 21,704 Twitter users participated
in the poll) of respondents say they would
vote for Buhari (APC) while 26 percent opted for Atiku Abubakar (PDP). 25
percent said they would vote for neither candidate.
 |
| Atiku trending worldwide on Twitter after he emerged PDP candidate. Atiku @ number 1 while Buhari @ 12 |
Conclusion:
Politicians and their foot soldiers are seemingly the most
optimistic people in the world. I am reminded that a week, let alone four
months to a presidential election is a long time in politics. The gospel truth
is that Buhari has lost the mojo, massive goodwill he enjoyed in 2015. I think
insecurity and more importantly the economy would tilt the balance in the 2019
presidential election. People, Nigerians are suffering! Allan J. Lichtman,
distinguished professor of history at American University who correctly predicted
30 years of United States Presidential elections including that of Trump which
many opinion polls got wrong, says, ‘’presidential elections don’t work the way
we think they do,” “They’re not decided by the turns of the campaigns, the
speeches, the debates, the fundraising. Rather, presidential elections are
fundamentally referenda on the performance of the party holding the White
House. If that performance is good enough, they get four more years. If it’s
not, they’re turned out and the challenging party wins.” I think Prof
Lichtman’s hypothesis pertinent to Nigeria. If the current mood of the nation,
open source, social media intelligence is anything to go by, the odds are
against President Buhari. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, hate or love
him, Atiku is in all probability, the next president of Nigeria.
Written
By:
© Don Okereke, a security
analyst/consultant/open source intelligence junkie/writer/active citizen
October 14, 2018
Follow me on Twitter: @DonOkereke
October 14, 2018
Follow me on Twitter: @DonOkereke
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
***This
essay is an adaptation of my presentation: ‘’Social Media and Data-Driven
Targeting in 2019 General Election’’ presented During The 2018 Cyber Secure
Nigeria Conference Organized By The Cyber Security Experts Association of
Nigeria (CSEAN), At Four Points By Sheraton Hotel, Victoria Island,
Lagos, Nigeria on Wednesday, May 9-10, 2018.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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