SOCIAL MEDIA ABUSE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR DEMOCRACY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Nigeria’s democracy has been under the siege of incessant crises and these crises are a culmination of the country’s successive years of corruption, human rights violation and in recent times the misuse of social media (through the use of propaganda, cyber bullying and cyber harassment) that heats up the polity and generates bitter politics, hate and bigotry. The implication of this is that it creates a rife environment for continuous electoral violence and ethnic strife that consequently undermines democracy. In the light of this, the objective of this paper seeks to identify how the wrong use of social media can be a threat to the consolidation of democracy in Nigeria. Qualitative method based on document investigation was adopted and the findings from this paper revealed that some of the causes of social media abuse is the culture of gross impunity of the Nigerian society and the lack of effective regulation of social media by governmental institutions. It therefore concludes and recommends that effective policies must be enforced to end the culture of impunity and abuse of social media in order to put an end to ethnic cynicism, ethnic conflicts and hateful politics that breeds sycophants, political violence and the consequent destruction of public administration in Nigeria.