Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika has said the use of social media platforms influenced the popularity of the presidential party of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, at the polls on Saturday’s presidential election.

Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, declared Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, as the winner and President-elect of the 2023 presidential election.

Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes, while Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was the runner-up with 6,984,520 and Peter Obi who had only spent nine months with LP, amassed 6,101,533 votes.

Reacting to the election results recorded by Obi before the aggregate votes were collated, Sirika via a tweet on Monday, said social media and most especially Twitter was a huge influence on Obi’s massive votes at the polls.

The minister noted that social media is the paramount influencer of views when added with great efforts.

“I think it is wrong to say that there are no ballot boxes on Twitter. There are indeed, huge ones for that matter. If there isn’t any, Obi wouldn’t have come this far,” Sirika wrote.

He added, “Social media is the greatest influencer of opinions after good works. Good works plus social media means victory.”

Obi’s movement was initiated and became popular on social media especially on Twitter and Instagram as his supporters who are mostly youths promoted his antecedents when he was governor of Anambra state.  

His supporters on social media became so popular that they got the label ‘Obidients.’

Vanguard