By: Umar Aliyu,
“What will you or your principal gain as a politician by cyber bullying and cyber stalking other politicians?”
This is not a rhetorical question crafted for effect. It is a direct, unsettling inquiry that exposes one of the most troubling distortions in Nigeria’s contemporary political practice. It is a question many political actors and more pointedly, their overzealous online proxies have refused to answer honestly.
Nigeria’s politics faces no shortage of challenges, but few are as corrosive, counterproductive, and morally indefensible as the growing normalization of cyber bullying as a political tool. What dominates social media spaces today under the guise of “defending the principal” is neither civic engagement nor strategic communication. It is digital thuggery unrestrained hostility masquerading as loyalty and it is steadily degrading the quality of political discourse.
Let it be stated plainly: cyber bullying and cyber stalking of political opponents is not a demonstration of strength. It is an admission of intellectual and strategic failure. When supporters cannot defend their principals with facts, performance records, vision, or ideas, they retreat into insults. When arguments fail, abuse becomes their substitute. When there is nothing credible to offer the electorate, destruction of alternatives becomes the chosen path. That is not politics. That is desperation.
Disturbingly, a growing number of young political supporters have embraced this behavior as a route to relevance. They insult without restraint, malign without evidence, fabricate allegations without conscience, stalk families without shame, and mock personal tragedies without empathy all in the hope of being noticed or rewarded. They equate noise with loyalty and toxicity with usefulness. This is a profound misunderstanding of both politics and power.
No serious politician has ever won a credible election through online abuse. Elections are won through trust, credibility, performance, and coalition-building. Cyber bullies build no coalitions; they dismantle them. They do not persuade undecided voters; they alienate them. They do not project confidence; they advertise insecurity.
Ironically, cyber bullying often strengthens the very opponents it targets. Reckless attacks amplify their visibility, confer victimhood, and generate public sympathy. In politics, victimhood is potent currency. By attacking indiscriminately, cyber bullies frequently hand their opponents moral advantage and wider appeal at no cost to the recipient.
This raises an unavoidable question: what kind of strategy is this?
Any competent media strategist understands a fundamental truth that politics is about persuasion, not provocation. A candidate is sold through achievements, competence, temperament, and vision. Leadership is marketed through credibility, not crude insults. No candidate is enhanced by supporters who behave like digital street enforcers armed with bitterness and data bundles.
Yet, many self-styled media aides and youth coordinators appear oblivious to this reality. Instead of developing coherent narratives around policy and performance, they specialize in abuse-driven hashtags and character assassination. They confuse trending with winning. They mistake virality for viability. This is not strategic communication; it is political amateurism.
More damaging still, this conduct exposes principals to reputational harm. Leaders are judged not only by their words but by the behavior of those who speak on their behalf. When supporters act as digital hooligans, the public reasonably assumes tacit approval. Silence becomes endorsement. Distance becomes complicity.
A leader who preaches unity while benefiting from online mobs that trade in ethnic slurs, religious baiting, and personal abuse is not misunderstood; he is contradicted by his own ecosystem. One cannot claim maturity while tolerating cruelty. The inconsistency is too glaring to ignore.
There is also an uncomfortable truth that must be confronted. Many cyber bullies are not driven by ideology or conviction. They are driven by desperation seeking attention, appointments, contracts, stipends, or proximity to power. In the process, they mortgage their integrity and compromise their future.
What they fail to grasp is that power is transactional, not sentimental. It uses and moves on. The same principal defended with reckless abuse today may discard them tomorrow without hesitation. Their digital footprints, however, will endure. Screenshots do not forget. Algorithms do not forgive.
Equally alarming is the normalization of cyber stalking monitoring opponents’ movements, families, private lives, and moments of grief. At this point, political competition degenerates into obsession. A democracy cannot survive when disagreement is criminalized and opponents are dehumanized.
Strong democracies are sustained by rigorous debate, not unrestrained hatred.
If a political argument relies on name-calling, dehumanization, or celebration of another’s misfortune, then it is not an argument at all. It is a confession of emptiness. If abuse becomes campaign strategy, defeat in the marketplace of ideas has already occurred.
Political principals must also be addressed directly. Tolerating cyber bullying by supporters is not neutrality; it is benefit without accountability. Leadership is not only about manifestos and rhetoric it is about setting standards. A leader unable or unwilling to regulate the tone of his campaign demonstrates a deficit in leadership capacity.
The irony is stark. At a time when Nigeria urgently requires issue-based politics solutions to insecurity, unemployment, inflation, and the decay of public education—we are distracted by online shouting matches fueled by ego and insecurity. While serious societies debate policy, we trade insults. While others build narratives, we burn bridges.
This is not merely embarrassing. It is dangerous.
Politics should be competitive, but it must never be primitive. There is nothing progressive about cruelty. Nothing strategic about hatred. Nothing honorable about cyber bullying. It weakens institutions, deepens divisions, and entrenches fault lines that outlive electoral cycles.
To the youths: wisdom will take you further than abuse ever will. Civility is not weakness; it is discipline. Restraint is not cowardice; it is strategy. If you truly wish to help your principal, stop embarrassing him. If you seek relevance, acquire skills research, communication, policy analysis not insults.
To political strategists: do the work. Build narratives. Sell achievements. Frame vision. Control tone. Politics is not a boxing ring; it is a contest of persuasion. Those who forget this turn campaigns into liabilities.
And to the political class as a whole, the question remains unavoidable: what is gained?
Not legitimacy.
Not respect.
Not electoral advantage.
What is gained instead is a coarsened polity, a radicalized youth base, and a political culture where hatred replaces thought.
Let us be wise. Let us be civilized in all our doings. Let us reject cyber bullying, cyber stalking, hatred, bitterness, and name-calling not out of politeness, but out of political intelligence.
History does not remember who insulted the loudest.
It remembers who built, who led, and who refused to descend into the gutter when the gutter became fashionable.
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