Between City Boys and Village Boys’ Movements

Obinna Chima, Editor, THISDAY Saturday

EDGY OPTIMIST By Obinna Chima

As political alignments intensify ahead of the country’s next general elections, Nigerians on various social media platforms are being entertained with the activities of groups pushing for the endorsement of their aspirants.

From Facebook to X, Instagram, and the latest addition from the founders of ARISE and THISDAY media group, Lekeelekee, the digital space has become a theatre of endorsements, counter-endorsements, and viral political theatrics. While some of these campaigns are strategic, many are clearly driven by opportunism and the quest for relevance, offering citizens both spectacle and satire in equal measure.

At the centre of the latest drama is the City Boys Movement, a group pushing for the re-election of President Bola Tinubu, and the Village Boys Movement, a pro-Peter Obi support group which sprang up in response to the former.

While the City Boys Movement has been in existence since 2022, as a youth advocacy and mobilisation platform that supported Tinubu’s 2023 presidential ambition, with a reach it claims to be in all the States and the 774 local governments, the Village Boys Movement, an offshoot of the Obidient Movement, is a massive organic group of followers of the former Anambra State Governor and a chieftain of the African Democratic Congress.

But beneath the growing banter from these groups lies a dangerous trend, which is the gradual replacement of ideas with insults, policies with personality attacks, and democratic persuasion with online hostility.

This became rife when some South-East socialites, such as Obinna Iyiegbu, widely known as Obi Cubana; Pascal Okechukwu (Cubana Chief Priest), and other social media influencers and billionaires who supported Obi in 2023, assumed leadership roles in the City Boys Movement in the region. There have been online attacks and banters from critics who have labelled the move a betrayal of earlier political loyalties. If left unchecked, this may lead to physical attacks as the elections draw closer. The controversy has also sparked broader debates about the role of celebrity figures in Nigeria’s political landscape.

As the country edges towards another electoral cycle, the tone of political engagement matters as much as the outcome of the contest. Campaigns that thrive on hate speech, stereotyping, and personal attacks must be discouraged as they weaken democratic culture and public discourse. Nigeria deserves better.

In democracies, elections are essentially popularity contests, and in Nigeria, presidential elections have always been seen to be more important, as they determine the direction of national power, policy priorities, and control of federal resources.

While the importance of the internet as a tool for communication, networking, and social interaction has dramatically increased in recent years, at the same time, it has become a platform for organised hate groups to recruit and control their members, organise attacks, and intimidate and harass their enemies.  We must not allow this to happen as the journey towards the general elections draws nearer.

Clearly, the rhetoric of enmity and hatred spread on social media and instant messengers undermines the social cohesion of citizens, breeds distrust and intolerance, sows panic, provokes people to illegal actions, creating the ground for conflict tension.

Rather, political campaigns should focus on combating negativity by offering voters a new, unfamiliar situation with the possibility of a major gain.

Voting should be seen as an opportunity for people to have their say. That is why boosting engagement is hugely important and it offers the voting community the right to get involved and see the tangible impact of their voting power.

The City Boys Movement, the Village Boys Movement, or any other groups that would spring up in the coming days are therefore advised to focus primarily on relevant issues, push their own views, and sell their candidates without attacking their opponent in an attempt to gain votes.

Positive campaigns that allow for fact-based criticism of an opponent should be encouraged. One way candidates can maximise the positivity of their campaigns is by eliminating those things that make people and their opponents have negative emotions.

On the other hand, negative, attack-oriented campaigning is undermining and damaging to democracy and reduces the total number of citizens involved in democratic elections, thus undermining the power of the people to voice their opinions. In fact, negative campaigns reduce voter turnout during elections.

Political campaigns should not be about class and entrenching a dichotomy between elites and ordinary citizens. In a country already grappling with ethnic, religious, and regional fault lines, such narratives are combustible. Political campaigns should be marketplaces of ideas, not battlegrounds of insults. Democracy thrives when citizens are persuaded by clear visions, credible plans, and measurable records.

From Kafanchan in Kaduna, to Agbidiama in Bayelsa, Ohaji in Imo, Ado-Ekiti, Sokoto, Lokoja and other rural and urban communities in Nigeria, voters want to know how candidates will tackle inflation, address Nigeria’s worsening insecurity, end mass abduction of school children; make people return to their ancestral homes by resolving the issue of Nigeria’s growing Internally Displaced Persons camps, create jobs, improve education, turnaround the healthcare deficits, address perennial power outages and grid collapses and make Nigerians want to stay more in their country, and not who can craft the most viral insult on social media.

If elections are going to be won, they will be won in classrooms, markets, farms, transport parks, campuses, and street corners, and not on social media.

We must guard against a fractured society, as Nigeria cannot afford another cycle of political toxicity. A healthier political culture demands deliberate restraint. Political movements and political parties must commit to issue-based campaigns, fact-based debates, and respectful engagement.

Civil society, media organisations, religious and traditional rulers also have a role to play in calling out toxic rhetoric and promoting civic education.

Finally, the City Boys and Village Boys, and others must understand that the true test of leadership is not the ability to dominate opponents with words, but the capacity to unite citizens, deliver the dividends of democracy, and enthrone an inclusive country.