allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Response to Facebook Page Thrills Jonathan

Lagos — President Goodluck Jonathan has expressed delight at the immense response his new Facebook fan page has received in its first days.

Jonathan made good his promise to set up a page on the social networking site Facebook, after his profile was uploaded last Monday. Within four days, the President has registered 50,000 fans, more than any Nigerian politician on the network.

Jonathan had during a working visit to Rivers State on May 15 this year promised to set up a profile page where he will directly interact with Nigerian youths and sought their opinion on the way forward for the country.

THISDAY's monitoring of the page indicates that while pages of other Nigerian politicians have an average of 80 to 200 comments posted per day, Jonathan's page has an average of 1500 comments per day.

A look at the comments show they are mostly messages of solidarity from Nigerians from all walks of life cutting across the geo-political zones.

Giving an insight into the huge following the President gets from the online community, one of the pioneers of Internet campaigns, Joe Trippi said it is always rare to find a connection between the youth of a country and the head of the political leadership of that country.

"In Goodluck Jonathan however, the Nigerian youth have found a rallying point. "They see an unassuming leader who emerged in almost divine circumstances and who is not the typical type of Nigerian politician and they are flocking to him like the Pied Piper of Hammelin and what I would just advise is for him to ride the crest of the wave," Trippi, the author of the best selling "The Revolution will not be Televised," he told THISDAY from his base in the United States of America.

Also speaking on the issue, a US-based Nigerian and VP Africa at Joe Trippi and Associates, Reno Omokri, said the phenomenal growth of the President's facebook fan page is an indication of his popularity and if he can act on the feedback from Nigerians who comment in their thousands on the page he should be able to sustain this popularity.

According to Omokri, "if for instance Jonathan wants to know what the public feels about any issue in particular, all he has to do is make that issue the subject of his facebook update and within minutes he would have gotten the honest opinions of hundreds of Nigerians from all shades of life."

Asked for his reaction on the issue, the Special Assistant to the President of Strategy, Mr. Oronto Douglas said the President is delighted with the new avenue of interaction with Nigerians, especially the youths.

"I must say that Mr. President is pleasantly surprised at the response from the people of Nigeria to his page particularly as he manages and monitors it personally.

"The feedback we glean from the almost 2,000 comments posted on the page by Nigerians daily has started helping and will continue helping Mr. President feel the pulse of the public as he takes decisions that affect Nigerians everyday."

via allafrica.com

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