Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on Friday claimed the popularity of the Labour Party on social media does not matter because 90 percent of Northerners are not on social media and do not have Internet access.
The former vice-president who spoke in a chat with Arise TV on Friday, also said that he does not expect a miracle to happen for the Labour Party to win the presidential election because Peter Obi is its presidential candidate.
He noted that Labour Party does not have an elected governor or members in the National or state assemblies at the moment.
Atiku said that politics in Nigeria depends on having these structures, adding that the Osun State elections were a pointer to this reality.
The PDP presidential candidate noted that the popularity of Peter Obi on social media does not count as “90 per cent of Northerners are not on social media.
But data from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics titled “Telecoms Data: Active Voice and Internet per State” and published in February 2022 which measured Telecoms figures for Q2 2021 show that a total of 140,175,169 subscribers were active on the internet
The NBS date showed that South West had the highest number of subscribers followed by the North Central and North West. South West, South East and North East had the lowest subscribers.
Breaking it down into zones, North Central had 26,593,200 subscribers while North West had 25,383,386 subscribers. North East which had the lowest subscribers in the region had 13,780,489 subscribers.
Verdict: While the unofficial population of the North is said to be about 100 million, 65,780,000 subscribers, approximately 65.7 percent have access to Internet in the North. A greater part of this 65.7 percent also has access to social media. Therefore, there is no truth in Atiku Abubakar’s claims that 90 percent of Northerners don’t have Internet access and are not on social media.
