The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is best active government agency on social media in Nigeria, a study of public sector performance on social media by Instinct Wave Media has shown.
Instinct Wave Media, an event and consulting firm, says the criteria used in reaching its conclusions are based on the amount of followers and likes on Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, Instagram followers, YouTube subscribers respectively, how often the MDAs share relevant service information to the Nigerian public, and their feedback mechanism.
INEC came top among the top ten performing MDAs with 726,000 followers on Twitter, 266,151 likes on Facebook and 37,000 Instagram followers. The Commission’s engagement level and reach on Facebook stands at 60%, Twitter 85% and Instagram 30%.
On the second spot is the Nigerian Police Force (NPF). They have 406,000 Twitter followers, 510,661 Facebook likes, 2,836 Instagram followers, 224 YouTube subscribers and 908 LinkedIn followers. The engagement level and reach of the NPF is as follows: Facebook 70%, Twitter 60%, YouTube 30%, LinkedIn 5% and Instagram is 60%.
“INEC came top among the top ten performing MDAs with 726,000 followers on Twitter, 266,151 likes on Facebook and 37,000 Instagram followers. The Commission’s engagement level and reach on Facebook stands at 60%, Twitter 85% and Instagram 30%.”
Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) which comes third on the table has: 203,000 Twitter followers, 290,247 Facebook likes, 2,626 Instagram followers and 1,011 LinkedIn followers. The FRSC engagement level and reach stands as follows: Facebook 80%, Twitter 80%, Instagram 50% and LinkedIn 20%.
Other MDAs in the top 10 include the Nigerian Army in the fourth position, the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) and Federal Ministry of Communications in that order.
The report listed Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, National Sports Commission (NSC) and National Economic Commission (NEC) as the poor performing MDAs on social media platforms.
The researchers also used the same criteria as in the MDAs to pick the top five performing Nigerian states on social media platforms. Lagos state sits atop this category with 115,000 followers on Twitter, 244,624 Facebook likes and 753 followers on Instagram. The engagement level and reach is as follows: Facebook 40%, Twitter 60% and Instagram 65%.
“The researchers also used the same criteria as in the MDAs to pick the top five performing Nigerian states on social media platforms. Lagos state sits atop this category with 115,000 followers on Twitter, 244,624 Facebook likes and 753 followers on Instagram. The engagement level and reach is as follows: Facebook 40%, Twitter 60% and Instagram 65%.”
Lagos is followed by Ekiti state with 54,900 Twitter followers, 4,009 Facebook likes, 48 Instagram followers and 214 followers on Google+. The engagement level and reach of Ekiti state is as follows: Facebook 50%, Twitter 70%, YouTube 10%, Google+ 40% and Instagram 5%.
Ogun, Osun and Taraba are third, fourth and fifth top performing states respectively. On the other hand, the top poor performing states are Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara.
While this report implies that the use of social media applications has been averagely accepted in the Nigerian public sector, it however says the acceptance and broader adoption of sophisticated tactics that go beyond information and education paradigm, such as true engagement or networking strategies are still in its infancy.
The report also noted that despite embracing the use of social media platforms, the agencies and parastatals in the sector face challenges such as leveraging the energy of a new generation, and use it to drive a new, positive culture that supports high performance, poor engagement, poor capacity building on social media knowledge (SMK), duplication of social media platforms and creating a non-business social media platforms.
Others are lack of understanding of generating rightful and engaging content, lack of sharing of best practices with the private sector initiative, lack of new strategies and innovation of social media tools, poor knowledge of engaging and connecting with the right audience, management/analysis of social media accounts and overview of feedbacks.
Presenting the report to the media, Akin Naphtal, CEO of Instict Wave lamented the negligence of social media by the Nigerian public sector which he says needs the platforms more than even the private sector.
He says, “Through our report we realized that a certain government agency said they have invested 60 million on digital, Facebook and all that and we were doing the analyses they are even not in the top 50. So how come you spent 60 million? And the man was boasting, full of confidence; this is what we have done. We pretended as if we don’t know anything about it and when we clicked on the site, they have only 50 followers and the last time they posted was about 4 years ago.
“So we take a look at it, how do we encourage? How do we bring them together? Government at this moment needs the social media more than even the private sector. And if we look deep down who should be the biggest customer service care, it should be the government. Government have a unit called Servicom, we have been talking about Servicom and we met their head last week, Servicom is supposed to be a customer service center for government that if you have any issue with a government agency, you call them and they would deal with it and relate the report to you but nothing is happening.”
Naphtal says the report will shed more light on the mechanisms of the public sector in Nigeria and its use of the several social media platforms.
“Perception of the citizenry is bound to shift with this report. There will be adequate information to justify the reasons for communication gap and how information should be disseminated,” he says.
The report according to Instinct Wave is also expected to be a guide to government portal minders to build up on a particular social media platform that could prove helpful. It will also be helpful in strategizing development with global standards of practice and the ever changing consumer behavourial pattern.
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