The President’s Encounter With Senior Editors & Journalists 2012: A Complete Waste of Time!

Good morning Ghana! I guess some of you spent some time watching or listening to the President’s interaction/encounter with senior editors and journalists at the Castle yesterday. Even if you missed it on radio and tv, you probably saw a couple of tweets or Facebook updates on it. 

Mills interacting with Media. Credit: Presidency of the Republic of Ghana

I did listen via radio in the office and after the one hour interaction/encounter, I found it a complete waste of my productive time. I was left very disappointed by the questions the senior editors and journalists asked as well as the response from the president. 

The senior editors and journalist focused on questions (in my opinion) are of very little relevance to the needs of Ghanaians now; not a single question was asked about education and health. I dare not mention technology, export and support for local businesses. I am not sure there was anything on unemployment and the other basic issues affecting Ghanaians. Instead, these so-called senior editors and journalists spent the little time talking about the relationship between President Mills and President Rawlings and how it would affect the his chances in the December poll. Ten questions were asked about the payment of judgement debt of GH¢53 million to Mr. Alfred Wayome. Yes, 10 questions and none bothered to ask about education. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to talk about the state losing such a huge chunk of money but 10 questions whilst the basics are not tackled is quite pointless. This is what these so-called senior editors and journalists sought to do; they all wanted to be quoted as asking the president that ‘controversial’ questions and also get those useless front page stories for their newspapers. Shameless journalists.

One of many questions which in my opinion was out of place and unnecessary was that by Mary-Ann Acolatse, formally of Metro TV. She asked if the government would pay compensation to someone wrongfully imprisoned for 14 years. Isn’t this something you take to the courts, the A-G or the Commission of Human Rights & Administrative Justice (CHRAJ)? Again, probably one greedy journalist try to put her media house’s story in the spotlight. There were some praise singers as always.

With an encounter which comes once every year, I think we should have gone past one hour… but then, these journalists wouldn’t have gone past asking about the president’s health, wayomegate and ask more sensible or meaningful questions.

The reaction on twitter was no different from mine after the encounter. Tweeting with the hashtag #GhanaDecides, people expressed their outrage at journalists who made the whole encounter seem rehearsed (maybe it was). Like me, most tweeps from the it hard to believe these were really senior editors and journalists. The poor quality of the questions asked reflects in the discourse these media houses chart in the country. After all, to them, asking about improvement in health care won’t sell; they would rather ask about the president’s health. I bet the president would have been caught fumbling if he had met BloggingGhana or Barcampers.

As we move towards the December poll, I urge the people and the media to ask relevant and intelligent questions when given the opportunity. That is a pretty good way of holding politicians accountable and achieving the Ghana we ought to be.

God bless our homeland Ghana!

One Year Away…

We are exactly a year away for the 2012 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. I bet I am not the only one excited about the 2012 elections. I had a couple of retweets when I tweeted it this morning.  2012 presents a new dimension in Ghana’s elections. 

Apart from the much touted biometric voters’ register and ‘vote of confidence’ in the sitting John Evans Atta Mills, I am excited about how social media will be used in our elections. The use of social media was quite low in 2008. We saw only a few tweets and Facebook status updates from Ghana. Today, we have the major news outlets; Joy 997, Citi FM, Peace FM and the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation all have twitter accounts now. I believe the number of Ghanaians on twitter and Facebook since then has tripled.

I expect a revamped Electoral Commission of Ghana website to include social media just as the Independent Electoral Commission of Nigeria (INEC) did in 2010. Hopefully, the EC will have a Twitter and Facebook page in 2012.

The candidates are also gearing up for 2012. I have seen a couple of politicians on Twitter including Vice President, John Dramani Mahama and the Nana Akufo-Addo 2012 campaign team. I will verify and detail the social media accounts of politicians and key people to follow in 2012 in another post.

I am curious to see how my home region of Brong-Ahafo will vote in 2012. As they say in the USA, “As Maine goes, so goes the nation” but in Ghana, it is “As Brong-Ahafo goes, so goes the nation.” Christened the “Chameleon of Ghana Politics”, the Brong-Ahafo has gotten every election right since 1992 and I don’t expect that trend to end in 2012.

This is most likely to be Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Electoral Commissioner of Ghana’s last elections and I expect him to do a fantastic farewell job. I trust the Ghanaian blogging and Twitter community to do a great job with telling the world, the real situation before and after December 7 2012.  

God bless our homeland Ghana!

Technology & Social Media: Lessons From The Nigerian Elections

It’s a wrap and as expected Goodluck Ebele Azikwe Jonathan has been elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for the next 4 years. I closely followed the Nigerian Polls way before it begun. Nigeria was on everybody’s radar when Umar Yar’Adua, the former president was elected in 2007 after his demise last year.

My interest in the Nigerian Elections was in the use of the internet, technology and social media and I looked it from its use by the Independent National Electoral Commission, Political Parties/Candidates, the People (Voters) and the media. In all, I was trying to draw lessons as Ghana prepares to go to the polls in December 2012.

Despite the initial hitches, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did quite a good job. I was impressed by how Nigeria deployed the biometric voter registration system. This is something we have been talking about in Ghana for some time now and I really hope we can get a biometric voters’ register for the 2012 elections. I will eliminate/reduce electoral fraud and vote rigging. The process according to the Electoral Commission will cost $80 million. I don’t think that is too much to spend as we want our polls to be credible and avoid situations like the Ivorian one. INEC’s website displays boldly links to their Facebook and Twitter pages, Blackberry PIN, email address, SMS and telephone numbers for results and updates. I am quite certain the Electoral Commission of Ghana’s website will be update towards 2012 with social media integration. They better hire the right people to manage their Social Media office.

The candidates and political parties used social media to woo young voters. In 2010, CNN published an article on its website titled Goodluck Jonathan: The Facebook Preseident in 2010. Back then Mr. Jonathan had 246,000 friends. Goodluck Jonathan went on to announce his candidature for the presidency on Facebook. Today, he has 532,000 friends and counting. Social Media was widely used in the campaign trail and I expect that to catch up with Ghanaian aspirants for both the Presidency and Parliament. Ghanaian politicians haven’t showed much interest in Social Media. John Evans Atta Mills has 15,500 fans and counting on his unofficial Facebook page. Opposition leader, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has 4,920 friends on a page I believe is his personal profile. I expect these pages to swell up with friends and fans towards #election2012. Can someone confirm Nana Addo Dankwa’s twitter page? Can we get more Ghanaian politicians using Social Media, please?

My primary source of news for the past three years has been Twitter and my RSS feed. I turned to Twitter for updates on the elections via the hashtag #nigeriadecides and users on my private NigerianVotes list (@eggheader, @africanelection, @NigeriaNewsdesk and @bubusn). In 2008, I remember using Twitter to push out updates to Ghanaians in the diaspora and people who were interested in happenings in Ghana. I will single out @ghanaelections as the best source of 2008 elections update on Twitter. The account now tweets post-election issues. I recommend you follow @ghanaelections now! With the number of Ghanaians on Twitter growing, the world should expect an explosion of tweets from Ghanaians in December 2012.

I don’t remember any media house in Ghana using Twitter during the 2008 elections. I am not sure about Facebook either but as we gear towards the 2012 elections, taking examples from the USA’s 2008 elections, Nigeria’s 2011 elections and recent Social Media-led revolutions, I bet our media houses will be doing a lot of reporting via twitter and facebook. I tip @Joy997FM and @peacefmonline to lead the way. Between the two, they have some 5,000 followers on twitter. I expect them to beef up their social media desks in the next 12 months in anticipation of the 2012 polls.

Let us continue to pick lessons from the Nigerian polls and debate how the Ghana online community can contribute and make ours free, fair, transparent and better.

God bless our homeland Ghana!!!