A research shows that political parties spent a total of N28,784,369 on paid political contents on Facebook and Instagram during the height of the election campaign season.
The Meta Ad Library was referenced in the final report from the European Union Election Observation Mission for the 2023 general elections. Review time frame was from the beginning of 2023 to about the middle of March of that year.
The research claims that political parties spent a total of N22,670,327 through their official handles and a total of N6,114,042 through their unregistered handles.
The results showed that the All Progressives Congress spent N9.8 million on their official account, the People’s Democratic Party spent N10.74 million, the Labour Party spent N156,000, the New Nigeria People’s Party spent N139,000, and others spent N1.83 million.
The unofficial tally shows that the APC spent N3.67m, the PDP spent N1.49m, the Labour Party spent N680k, the NNPP spent 21,000, and other parties spent N250,000.
According to the data, the African Action Congress, the Young Progressives Party, the Accord Party, and the Social Democratic Party all spent money on advertisements. A total of 8,280,000 people saw the adverts.
It was also reported that political advertisements were banned on Twitter. YouTube has authorised paid advertisements, but specifics about these advertisements could not be made public because Google’s transparency report was not enabled for Nigeria.
Nine of the 18 presidential contenders, including the frontrunners, were found to make regular use of social media, and their combined 1,089 published posts were evaluated for the report.
According to the survey, presidential candidates’ Facebook and Twitter posts included a wide range of themes, from campaign rallies to voter encouragement to press statements to political manifestos to slander operations.
According to the breakdown, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP had 179 posts, followed by Omoyele Sowore of the African Action Congress with 233 and Peter Obi of the LP with 411 posts.
Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP has 102 posts, Bola Tinubu of the APC has 74 posts, Christopher Imumolen of the Accord Party has 32 posts, Adewole Adebayo of the Social Democratic Party has 31, Hamza Al-Mustapha of the Action Alliance has 17, and Kola Abiola of the People’s Redemption Party has 10.
