Parties spent N29m on social media adverts — Report
A recent report revealed that political parties spent N28,784,369 in paid political content on Facebook and Instagram, during the peak of the election campaign.
The European Union Election Observation Mission quoted the Meta Ad Library in its final report on the 2023 general elections. The period under review was between January 2023 and mid-March 2023.
According to the report, the official handles of the political parties spent N22,670,327, while the unofficial handles spent N6,114,042.
The breakdown showed that for their official account, the All Progressives Congress spent N9.8m; Peoples Democratic Party spent N10.74m; Labour Party, N156,000; New Nigeria People’s Party, N139,000; while others spent N1.83m.
For the unofficial account, APC spent N3.67m; PDP, N1.49m; Labour Party, N680,000; NNPP, 21,000; and others, N250,000.
Other parties that purchased paid ads were African Action Congress, Young Progressives Party, Accord Party and Social Democratic Party. The ads gained 8,280,000 impressions.
The report further revealed that Twitter did not allow political advertising. Although paid ads had been allowed on YouTube, since Google’s transparency report was not active for Nigeria, details regarding paid ads were not publicly available.
In addition, out of all the 18 presidential candidates, nine actively used social media, including the frontrunners, while a total of 1,089 published posts were analysed.
