IT is my wife who has been passionately involved in the social media arguments about the best candidates for the 2015 presidential elections. Observed from the social media stand-point, the campaigns pendulum seems to be swinging in favour of the candidacy of Dr Goodluck Jonathan. It was not so from the beginning.

If you were following the social media and the traditional media commentaries in the early days of the presidential campaigns of the All Progressive s Congress, APC and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, you would conclude that the APC had the upper hand and Candidate Gen. Muhammadu Buhari would carry the polls if they were held then.

Even at this point though, my wife still insists that the seeming advantage that candidate Buhari enjoyed in the media and the various opinion polls that were conducted thereby, that suggested that Buhari was leading would not count much for him on election day. She pointed to a similar case in the 2012 United States elections where the Republican candidate Mitt Romney was adjudged, by the media -conducted opinion polls, as being ahead of President Barack Obama.

A CNN team of expert commentators had, however, drawn attention to those who cared to listen that the United States media opinion polls and rating should be taken with a pinch of salt because, according to it, a greater percentage of Republican supporters with better education and access to various media platforms were more likely to be involved in the opinion polls and media conversations than the Democrats would. This was a time when the majority of Black Americans, Hispanics and other minority groups were rooting for Obama.

She noted that the same scenario seems to be playing itself out in Nigeria. I agree. If you look at the media commentators you would agree with me that many are largely from the more educated and media savvy South West. This group of persons control a greater percentage of the media content and chart the path of its conversation. Many of them have openly declared their sympathy for the APC that is obviously controlled by the vivacious Bola Tinubu media machinery and strategists.

No doubt, the APC campaign machinery, mostly on the media platforms, had been formidable. APC’s publicity secretary, Lai Mohammed, has been doing a yeoman’s job. His message which he had harped on at every opportunity for the campaigns was that the PDP gave birth to and bred corruption; that its governors were never do wells and nothing good had ever come from the PDP states. He painted President Jonathan as a clueless, hapless and failed leader; one who could not fight corruption and that, with him as leader, Nigeria could never come out of the present mesh of insecurity. He even, at a point, succeeded in creating the impression that the Jonathan government gave birth to Boko Haram.

Most in the social media space bought into the product as marketed by Lai Mohammed and his team of publicists. Media commentaries latched on to the theme and went to town with these base opinions which mostly favoured the Lai Mohammed mantra. Many media commentators and opinion writers never interrogated the APC messages leading some to suggest that many media practitioners may have been bought to tag along; a case of the payer of the piper dictating the tune. Initially the timid approach by the PDP publicity team which never countered the APC claims revved the APC engine.

At a point, it appeared that the PDP campaign team and the Jonathan administration expected that the Nigerian media would motivate itself to finding out if APC’s claims about the PDP-led Jonathan administration were true or not. Those who watch the evolution of the Nigeria media are likely to agree that the days when the media set its own agenda and pursues it with altruistic gusto had long gone by. Some would argue that the Othman Dan Fodio aphorism: Conscience is an open wound, only truth can heal it, from which the Guardian motto: “Truth Nurtured By Conscience” was derived, has for many media practitioners become “Truth Nurtured by Coins”. As it is now across the globe, the media most often pursues the agenda that is set for it by different interests.

The seeming silence of the PDP which for long would not sing its own songs and engage in self-praise gave vent to APC and its team of writers’ claims that the Jonathan government had done nothing to warrant a re-election.

But what has changed the game and is swinging the pendulum the other way? The PDP campaign, the behemoth that it is, has woken up and is now interrogating the APC claims through various adverts and advertorials and putting a lie to them.

The PDP is now coming out to tell Nigerians that contrary to the APC claims, the Jonathan PDP-led government and its governed states have achieved much and leading Nigeria on the right paths. Governor Godswill Akpabio is leading these claims with a documentary of his uncommon transformations in Akwa Ibom.

The other day, the Bayelsa Governor, Seriaki Dickson, was on AIT to showcase the developmental strides in his state. The ministers who initially appeared to have watched from the sideline have also entered the field, telling Nigerians that the Jonathan government has achieved much. This they are doing with visuals that they are putting on the media; some through painstaking documentaries in the broadcast media.   The PDP now knows that it would take a long time to change the lie and half-truths that had been sold to the Nigerian voters and is flooding the media with these messages, though at great cost.

PDP campaign messages have also gone ahead to tell Nigerians that corruption is not limited to the PDP ecosystem, but also a culture in the APC. The wrap-around messages are a great hit. Many Nigerians who do not watch television and may not buy a newspaper are likely to see the front- page visuals and messages from the newsstands, where many Nigerians mill around these days, and as vendors carry them along the roads.

They are telling Nigerians that candidate Buhari is not the purists, the democrat and the messiah that he has been portrayed by the APC spin doctors. Efforts by the APC media machinery to dissuade PDP from this line claiming that the approach did not speak to the issues failed. Beaming on the character of leadership had always been an issue of campaigns anywhere. It was for APC which for long vilified Jonathan’s leadership character. When the lever came upon their candidate they protested. It would have been foolhardy for PDP to swerve off it.

This strategy seems to be paying off handsomely going by the change in the slant of commentaries that are flooding the media in the past weeks and many others on the street who are now armed with both sides of the story.The several endorsements that Jonathan now enjoys also speak to where the pendulum is now swinging. The messages seem to be getting to Nigerians. In the coming weeks, we hope to see the PDP campaign push out more of these messages.

By Aaron Ukodie