Citizens Perception on New media and Government Accountability in Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria like many other developing countries of Africa are ceaselessly confronted with under-development related problems such as poor infrastructure, high death rate, low level of illiteracy, poor health amongst others. These challenges notwithstanding the abundance of resources (human and natural) persisted because African countries- Nigeria inclusive have accountability problem. Despite various measures put in place to tackle poor accountability by successive Nigerian government, the menace does not seem to abate. This article therefore essentially studied the perceptions of citizens on new media and accountability in governance between 2015 and 2019 by focusing on ways of utilisation of new media by Nigerians and the effects of new media on accountability in governance. The study adopted a descriptive research approach which involves gathering data that describe events or a problem and organises, tabulates such. Data were gathered through the administration of questionnaires to a sample of 300 in three (3) local governments in Lagos state as well as materials retrieved from books, internet sources, articles and journals. The gathered data were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) based on simple percentages and frequency counts. The study found that there is consensus in the views of respondents that new media improves transparency and accountability of officials of government as major new media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram aided in engaging and making government officials in explaining actions to citizens.

Keywords: New media, Accountability, governance, facebook