Cambridge Analytica did a lot of damage to Nigeria ahead of the 2015 election. We shouldn't allow their likes into our country again.
A former employee of British PR Agency, Cambridge Analytica, has been singing before prosecutors like a canary. Ahead of the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria, Christopher Wylie says, Cambridge Analytica was paid £2m by a Nigerian billionaire to manipulate and scare the sh** out of voters.
Wylie has been telling Members of Parliament in the UK how his former company got into the minds of voters in Britain, the United States and Nigeria.
For Nigeria, Cambridge Analytica flew its staff in, hacked into then candidate Buhari’s emails to extract his medical records, hacked into your Facebook accounts and put together a scary, graphic video whose sole aim was to paint Buhari as an Islamic fundamentalist.
“The video was distributed in Nigeria with the sole intent of intimidating voters. It included content where people were being dismembered, where people were having their throats cut and bled to death in a ditch. They were being burned alive. There was incredibly anti-Islamic, threatening messages portraying Muslims as violent”, Wylie said.
Another employee of Cambridge Analytica said of the company’s operations in Nigeria: “It was voter suppression of the most crude and basic kind. It was targeted at Buhari voters in Buhari regions to basically scare the shit out of them and stop them from voting.
“People were working on it in Cambridge Analytica’s office. They’d be sitting there eating their lunch and editing this incredibly graphic and disturbing material.”
Shame
It is a shame on all of us that we allowed a foreign firm into Nigeria to carry out actions that are this unethical and despicable for pecuniary reasons.
It says a lot about who we’ve become that it was a Nigerian billionaire who funded the whole Cambridge Analytica nastiness because he feared for his wealth if Buhari became president.
The details are now out there—Cambridge Analytica worked in cahoots with the Goodluck Jonathan/Sambo campaign and their materials were used by the PDP across Nigeria. It is little wonder that Governor Fayose couldn’t stop running his mouth about Buhari’s health ahead of that bitter election contest.
If you worked with Cambridge Analytica to perpetrate all of the evil that is being disclosed by the UK media, you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself as you read this. You not only let yourself down, you let your nation down.
Politics shouldn't turn us into bloodhounds without a conscience. The aim of politicking should be to elevate the discussion and proffer solutions for the greater good. There should be some honour in politics after all.
Ahead of 2019
It is a good thing that these revelations are coming before the 2019 vote. We shouldn’t allow the likes of Cambridge Analytica into our shores again for their own selfish reasons. Voter suppression and manipulation is evil, silly, despicable and illicit. It is the stuff of the Mafiosi and should be condemned by all.
Cambridge Analytica should be skinned and hung to dry for all it’s worth. They deserve all the opprobrium coming their way.