Speaker of the 10th House of Representatives Tajudeen Abbas, Ex-minister of Communications Frank Nweke Jr, and the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Prof Umar Danbatta, threw weight behind the responsible use of social media.

The speaker, Nweke and Danbatta, disclosed this at the historic book launch of Cyber Politics: Social Media, Social Demography and Voting Behaviour in Nigeria, authored by Dr Omoniyi Obietan, head of media relations at NCC.

Abbas, represented by Prof. Julius Ihonvbere, described the book as “a masterpiece”, praising Ibietan for his sagacity and astute delivery of the book for politicians and academic scholars.

Abbas said: “The book should awaken the youth and the general public to return to the reading culture. I commend the author; he has not left the field of struggle. The efforts of Ibietan to put into publishing the work is commendable”.

In his address, the chairman of the occasion, Nweke, also lauded Ibietan for elevating the public discussion on cyber politics and the impact of social media on election processes.

Nweke said: “The book dwells on a better understanding of social media, and the conclusion overall is that in the coming years, the impact of social media will increase with usage.

“All these things are real, people lose their lives for someone to make one negative comment, and it spreads like wildfire. In every democracy, people reserve the right to express themselves freely, but that has to be done in a manner it does not infringe on the right of others. So it should be regulated not to undermine people’s social rights”.

On his part, Prof Danbatta stressed the need to ensure a responsible way of using social media to do politics, saying, “You cannot kill the social media; we have to learn to live with it; we have to find a responsible way to use it”.

For the erudite author, Ibietan said the book amplified that social media played a phenomenal role in the 2015 general elections.

He harped on the need for Nigerians to use social media responsibly.

Ibietan said: “What we tried to do in the book was to look at the social behaviours of Nigerians, how they used social media to interact and how social media, which of course was considered a very phenomenon shaped the 2015 general elections, in terms of the use of social technology in that election.

“However, in Nigeria, we are not just consumers of technology, but we are applying them in a context that gives meaning, not just to our lives as individuals and people who operate businesses. As a nation, communication is primordial with man, shaping our lives and businesses, and so, it is the most central aspect of politics. There is a sense in which we rely on social technology that may be detrimental to the beautiful society we are trying to create.

“One other thing we looked at is the role of historical media; the fact that we have social media does not mean the historical media is dead because we found that people also fed in the historical media and took those things back onto the social media space.

“We have found that, indeed, social media may have shaped the way people voted, but the technology did so in the context of other mediating factors and influences, one of which is the context in which elections are contested”, he stated.