By Ajani Okanlawon
Professional online publishers in Nigeria have resolved to boycott the activities of political parties in the country with immediate effect.
The publishers, who met in Lagos on Saturday to review the activities of political parties in relation to advert patronage, accused campaign organisations of the political parties of deliberately diverting advertising funds meant for online news platforms in the country.
The situation was roundly condemned and a call made to all online news platforms in the country to shun all political parties’ related activities until the abnormally is addressed.
The publishers expressed disgust at the gimmick of the campaign organisations to use the advertisement streaming platforms of Google and other third party advertisement organisations, which pay little or nothing for it, instead of dealing directly with the Nigerian publishers who are creating jobs for millions of Nigerians in the online industry.
In that regard, the publishers ordered the immediate stoppage of online political advertisements with foreign inputs with immediate effect.
The publishers gathered that one of the two major political parties in the country had budgeted not less than N150 million for online advertisement campaign.
However, till date, no credible online news website has indicated it had benefited from the advertisement campaign fund.
The Deputy Director General of one of the campaign organisations told an online publisher at the Presidential Villa in Abuja that approval had been given and money released for the party’s advertisement campaign on credible news websites but expressed surprise that the money had been diverted.
This is apart from the millions of naira budgeted for media relations.
Aside from streaming political advertisements through third parties on the news websites, thus creating the impression that advertisements had been given, what some of those involved in the campaigns themselves had done was to quickly open phoney news websites and diverted the funds for the advertisement campaign into private pockets.
It was in the light of these revelations that the online publishers decided to, with immediate effect, boycott the activities of the political parties, some of which “dump” press statements on the online news websites as early as 6am and send as many as 10 of such releases in a day.
