I found this in my archive of unpublished stuff and I am sharing them as written then! These were my reflections on Naija at the end of December, 2012. Those were bad days for Twitter in Nigeria. The streets were mean and brutal. Luckily, things have changed for the better on Twitter since then – there is certainly more civility, less passion and less poison now! May these positive changes perdure.
But here then are my reflections on Naija Twitter in 2012
- Passion often crowded out reason.
- The noise and friction of faction often drowned the voice of reason.
- Deliberate distortion of facts was a regular feature of most blog.
- Evidence was constantly sought and used to support particular courses
- Sensationalism and capacity for outrage appeared to be highly valued and blogs tuned into this.
- Two blogs constantly provided evidence that suggested they were sponsored by persons with political ambitions.
- A number of “activists” gradually unraveled to reveal themselves as twitter foot soldiers of two major parties not in power at the federal level
- The temerity of the aggressive few bred the desired timorousness in the aggressed majority and a noisy and aggressive few managed to intimidate the silent majority.
- A number of decent folks simply steered clear of discussions on twitter to avoid being gashed and gored. With the field cleared of dissenting voices, the noisy few then had a field day ridiculing and terrorizing defenseless choice targets.
- The president continued to be the softest and preferred target for our “activists”. The most used expressions in efforts to deride him remained “clueless” and “shoe-less”.
- Twitter was gradually transmuting from a place of engagement to one of enragement as fire fights continued to be a major mode of engagement
- Dog fights and snarls became regular occurrences.
- The use of proxies to fight Twitter wars increased and paid hands and agents fought their master’s battles.
- Corruption continued to be a major preoccupation on tweets. Consistently, attention was focused at the federal at the expense of the state and LGA levels.
- The corruption focus was selective and the focus was more on corruption by persons belonging to a particular party.
- Cases of corruption by persons in favored political parties were swept aside
- The EFCC announced a number of arrests and arraignments but cases of successful prosecution are so few.
- Two Nigerians , a female in her twenties and a male in his forties win my awards for the most insensitive and agressive tweeps for 2012.
- A Nigerian saint wins my award for the most slippery and and manipulative of tweeps for 2012
Reflections 