Using Open Source Intelligence, Social Media Data To Forecast #NigeriaDecides2019

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’.

The New Terrorism: How To Fight It And Defeat It

The fight against radical Islam and the global jihadist movement is the challenge of our time. Threats to our homeland are constantly increasing and our lack of real border security has only compounded the problem.