Within the last one year that the Osun
Government was inaugurated, her communication with people of the state has not
been properly planned and coordinated by the government’s media team.
In
a new data-based report released today by Positive Agenda Nigeria (PAN), an
independent research-oriented non-governmental organisation in the state, “the
closed culture of interaction existed” between the government and the people
“throughout the last one year.” The over 30-page report is titled “Changing
Civic Engagement: Creating Better Processes for a Broad, Balanced and Connected
Public Communication in Osun State.”
“Over
3% (of the sampled citizens) indicated
that they received information on security, health, infrastructure, industrial
development, workers’ welfare and employment opportunities combined.
“Radio
(73.80%) and Television (43.70%) were the two dominant broadcast media used for
the dissemination of the government and governor’s activities. We also
discovered newspapers (online and offline- 12.69%) and government official
website (7.89) and social media (Twitter and Facebook) as the media employed”
by the government in 2019. “Our analysis reveals that the newspapers used 509
words in the headlines of the 63 published stories. This generated 3,841 and
2,612 cumulative engagement and impression score respectively.”
“It
is obvious that closed culture of interaction existed throughout the one year.
When there is such interaction, government and the officials give room for
rumour. It also contributes to less social credibility. We investigated this
further by examining the number of comments and replies the posts and tweets
had. A total of 2,405 comments and 4,285 replies were found on Facebook and
Twitter respectively. On monthly basis, we discovered low social proof for the
government and the governor in November, 2018. The public started having
interest in commenting and replying to the posts in December, 2018 and tweets
in January, 2019. It is clear that the proofs maintained irregular trends from
May, 2019 till October, 2019.”
Although our findings revealed that
some of the governor’s programmes and implementation were communicated to the
people, the media team of the governor still lagged behind in content
production, content dissemination and monitoring of the government and the
governor’s public image in 2019. Our one-year monitoring of Governor Oyetola’s
official Facebook page, Twitter handle and Osun website indicates that a lot of
strategic moves are required of Mr Governor’s media team if the popularity
index of Alhaji Oyetola is to rise.
“In terms of appearance (in images),
government officials were more presented (42.1%) than the citizens (4.4%). In
what appears as a disconnection with the citizens while discussing policies and
issues, our analysis shows that citizens (99.1%) and community’s efforts
(99.5%) towards the growth and development of the State were not emphasized in
the messages. Government’s efforts were more stressed (26.2%).”
Aside the monitoring of the
government’s digital infrastructure and other technologically-driven designs,
PAN’s research team also interacted with journalists and Public Relations
practitioners in the state. Citizens in the headquarters of the 9 Federal
constituencies in Osun were also sampled. Scientific analyses of newspaper reports
about Governor Oyetola were not left out in our research consideration.
A part of the report also notes:
“With these stories and those posted
and tweeted on the identified social media, we asked the citizens in the
headquarters of the 9 Federal Constituencies about their level of satisfaction
with the information received during the one-year period of our analysis.
Analysis indicates that 23.40% of the citizens sampled in Ede, the headquarters
of Ede South/Ede North/Egbedore/Ejigbo Federal Constituency were not satisfied,
followed by those in Osogbo/Olorunda/Orolu/Irepodun Federal Constituency
(12.70%).
“Over 9% of the samples in
Ila/Odo-Otin/Boluwaduro Federal Constituency were equally not satisfied with
the information received between November 2018 and October 2019. The high level
of satisfaction was only recorded in Iwo (18.10%), Ife (16.90%) and Oriade/Obokun
(13.30%). When we examined the satisfaction within the satisfied option,
we found that the percentage of the citizens in Ife who indicated that they
were highly satisfied (16.90%) was close to what was obtained under the satisfied
option (14.30%).”
On what PAN stands for, one of its
co-conveners, Rasheed Adebiyi hinted, “The Positive Agenda Nigeria is
a non-governmental organisation dedicated to focusing on good governance
through government-citizen interaction. The organisation deploys evidence-based
advocacy for a robust communication between elected representatives and
citizens. Thus, this study is a follow-up to the work done during the 2018 Osun
governorship election where we monitored the campaign atmosphere on both
physical and virtual spaces where candidates engaged the citizens to see the
quality of campaign promises.”
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