Nigeria: 'Nigerians Use Social Media for Entertainment'

Majority of Nigerians are using facebook, twitter and other social media more for entertainment than for tasking the government on good governance efforts towards national development.

This is the position of stakeholders at a three-day social media retreat in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State theme "Using Social Media for Improved Democratic Governance and Citizen Participation" organised by the Democratic Governance for Development (DGD ll) Project,

the European Union, the Department for International Development (DFID), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Youth Action Initiative Africa (YAIA).

Executive Director of the West African NGO Network (WNAGOnet), Tunji Lardner, speaking on 'An overview of the Social Media Landscape in Nigeria' said a report of a research by the Applied Physics Lab of the Johns Hopkins University shows that between April 2010 and October 2011, 131 million tweets were collected from 633, 217 users in Nigeria.

"Nigeria has 5,86,720 face book users, with 87.9 percent mobile penetration second world highest and 2,152,440 population between the ages 18-24. However, the list of top 10 twitter accounts based on the number of Nigerian followers includes the accounts of seven musicians and actors, two newspapers and one television station devoted to entertainment," Lardner said while urging Nigerians to rather emulate youths of other countries who exploit the social media to promote good governance.

(Daily trust)