The European Union Election Observation Mission has disclosed that the political parties that participated in the 2023 presidential elections spent N29m on campaign between January and March,2023.
The mission explained that the amount was spent at the peak of the election campaign period.
According to the EU Election Observation Mission report, a total of N28,784,369 was spent on paid political content on Facebook and Instagram by political parties.
The Mission which quoted the Meta Ad Library in its final report on the 2023 general elections, declared that the official handles of the political parties spent N22,670,327, while the unofficial handles spent N6,114,042.
The period under review was between January 2023 and mid-March 2023.
According to the breakdown of the report, for the parties official account, the All Progressives Congress spent N9.8m; Peoples Democratic Party spent N10.74m; Labour Party, N156,000; New Nigeria People’s Party, N139,000; while others spent N1.83m.
But, for the unofficial account, APC spent N3.67m; PDP, N1.49m; Labour Party, N680,000; NNPP, 21,000; and others, N250,000.
Apart from APC, PDP, Labour Party and NNPP, the report also revealed that other parties that purchased paid ads were African Action Congress, Young Progressives Party, Accord Party and Social Democratic Party. The ads gained 8,280,000 impressions.
It further revealed that Twitter did not allow political advertising. Although paid ads had been allowed on YouTube, since Google’s transparency report was not active for Nigeria, details regarding paid ads were not publicly available.
In addition, the report stated that out of all the 18 presidential candidates, nine actively used social media, including the frontrunners, while a total of 1,089 published posts were analysed.
The report noted that topics of the posts made by presidential candidates via Facebook and Twitter included campaign rally, encouraging votes, media interviews/press statements/others, political manifesto, positive/supportive messages, and smear campaigns.
From the breakdown, Peter Obi of the LP had the highest posts of 411; followed by Omoyele Sowore of the African Action Congress with 233; while Atiku Abubakar of the PDP had 179 posts.
Others include Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP with 102 posts; Bola Tinubu of the APC with 74 posts; Christopher Imumolen of the Accord Party with 32 posts; Adewole Adebayo of the Social Democratic Party with 31 posts; Hamza Al-Mustapha of the Action Alliance with 17 posts; and Kola Abiola of the People’s Redemption Party with 10 posts.
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