These days, having
Facebook and national elections in the same sentence inspires more questions
than confidence.
Over the past week, as the extent of Cambridge
Analytica’s data harvest has become clearer, Facebook has faced severe
questions over its own data policies. In his first public statement since the
news of Cambridge Analytica’s collection of Facebook data, Mark Zuckerberg
hinted at being open to regulation for the social network.
In recent days, Nigeria, Facebook’s largest
market in Africa, has also popped up in Cambridge Analytica-related news with
reports that the company attempted to sway Nigeria’s presidential elections in
2015, with hacked emails of president Muhammadu Buhari, then
the leading opposition candidate. The firm was allegedly paid £2 million ($2.8
million) by an unnamed Nigerian billionaire to “orchestrate a ferocious
campaign” against Buhari.
It’s unclear how much of Cambridge
Analytica’s work in Nigeria involved harvesting Facebook data locally. But the
timing of these reports could not have come at a worse time with Nigeria’s
general elections now less than a year away. Just last month, Facebook offered
to work with Nigeria’s electoral commission “on voter education” as it
did in Kenya last year in response to the prominence of
fake news on its platform. But Nigeria’s political elite, who have typically
been distrusting of social media and have attempted to regulate it,
may not be as welcoming. As a repercussion, it’s likely that news of Cambridge
Analytica’s use of Facebook data may undermine the social network’s public
policy work.
Facebook’s prominence in Nigeria’s
political circles has steadily grown since the turn of the decade. Back in
2010, former president Goodluck Jonathan chose the platform to first announce
his plans to run for the presidency and, as part of its public policy work, in
2015 Facebook also partnered with Nigeria’s senate to
school lawmakers on how to use the platform to engage their constituents.
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