Presidency To Deactivate Redundant Social Media Pages
The Presidency has signed up
on Facebook page, bringing the number of social media pages President
Muhammadu Buhari is associated with to six.
This comes at a time the media team is auditing the digital media
presence of the President with a view to deactivating those that are no
longer active.
Buhari has two accounts on Twitter, one on Facebook and another on
Instagram. The Presidency, as an institution, owns an account on Twitter
in addition to the newly-created Facebook page.
Some of the pages were signed up during the 2015 general elections.
They were created as part of campaign tools of the President. After the
elections, some of the accounts went dormant, but they have not been
taken down.
On what the media team intends to do with the inactive accounts,
Special Assistant to the President on Digital/New Media, Tolu Ogunlesi,
said an audit had commenced on Buhari’s social media platforms with a
view to deactivating the redundant ones.
“We are currently doing an audit on all the Presidency’s social media
platforms so that we can streamline the messaging. Redundant platforms
will be deactivated,” Ogunlesi, who also revealed a plan to create a
YouTube channel, said via an SMS.
@AsoRock, the Presidency’s Tweeter handle, has stopped publishing
since May 31, 2015. It was used to announce the appointment of Buhari’s
media aides – Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu – after which it was
abandoned.
The page, which invites Nigerians to follow it for “latest
information from the administration of Buhari”, started tweeting on May
28, 2015, a day before the administration was inaugurated.
Buhari’s personal Twitter page – @MBuhari – played a key role in the
social media profiling of the President during the 2015 presidential
election. The President, even after an official Twitter handle
(@NGRPresident) was created, continued to use @MBuhari after he was
sworn-in.
But like @AsoRock, @MBuhari was abandoned on September 6, 2015. Its
last tweets included what the administration considered as its
achievements in its first 100 days in office. Notwithstanding its
status, @MBuhari remained the highest-followed digital page of the
President. It is followed by 525,000.
On June 18, 2015, the President took to his verified Facebook page to
mourn Nigerians who lost their lives to terrorism, after which he urged
for cooperation to end insurgency.
“I mourn every single death of a Nigerian as a result of terrorism.
That is why security is my number one priority. Our efforts to
strengthen security cooperation with our neighbours and adjust our own
response to Boko Haram will yield results very soon. Our resolve and
capacity to end terrorism is much greater than the threat we face.
Nigeria will prevail,” he posted.
The message made headlines on blogs and other social media. But the post seemed to serve as the sign-off message on the page.
Over nine months after it hit the cyberspace, the page has not been
updated. Yet, hundreds of people go on the platform daily to express
their views on policies and pronouncements by the President.
Instagram also welcomed @ThisIsBuhari sometime during the
presidential campaign with excitement. In the early days of the
administration, the page was ‘kept going’. It was, however, suspended
before Buhari marked 100 days in office.
For now, only the newly-created Facebook page and @NGRPresident are
functional. The two accounts, which are linked together, publish
activities of the President and his vice, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo.
Except the unused platforms are deactivated, Buhari is currently
ahead of his peers, at least, in Africa in terms of number of digital
media pages.
