Why we integrated politics and social media via Wardchat — Lawal

Kunle Lawal is the Country Lead, Wardchat Nigeria, a social media app designed to bring Nigerian voters together to discuss, interact, trade and chart a way forward, towards the oncoming general elections. In a recent interaction, he spoke about the app and its importance to the nation at this critical time in Nigeria’s history.

You just launched the app, Wardchat. Tell us about it and how it works.

Wardchat is a social media app. Social media apps connect people, but Wardchat takes it to another level where it relates to people on a proximal relationship based on the smallest unit of a political structure, which is the ward.

You register on the app using your polling unit or ward and within your constituency. It helps you relate with people, trade, engage. Wardchat helps you discuss and communicate with people who are actually there, close to you and are experiencing things with you, not someone in France talking about what is going on in a constituency. It would change the face and game of how politics is done and the way debate is being done on social media.

 

Is this a way of bringing social media into politics?

For a long time, this has been debated. The answer is yes, and we are doing more than that. Imagine you sell small chops and you know that when you are promoting on social media, you are doing so to someone in Britain, America or somewhere else. Wardchat cuts it down and ensures it is people in your area that are seeing your promotion. A ward is about three or four streets. Imagine people in your area know you sell small chops, they can simply order it from across the road. It reduces the parameters on trade.

We have reached the point of leveraging on technology to propagate politics. It is being done in a dismal way on apps that were created by Nigerians for Nigeria. This by Nigerians for Nigeria.

 

As the country lead and a former politician, don’t you think people might tag this as a move by a political party or personal agenda?

Everyone always has an agenda. The real question is, what exactly is that agenda. I had a brief stint with politics, but it doesn’t mean I am related to anything. I have two godfathers: the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Nigerian people. In over two years, I have been away from politics. I don’t belong to any political party. Also, the visionary behind Wardchat is not a politician. I was only brought in for my expertise with not only running for office, participating within party politics and my understanding of governance and the constitution. I am a worker with Wardchat.

 

Who are the target users?

We all say politics is local and it can only be that way. If interaction can also be made local, I think that we can start to have some very concrete conversations in democracy.

 

What reactions and challenges do you envisage?

Let’s use religion as an example. When Jesus Christ and Prophet Mohammed were on earth, we didn’t know that they were the best things to happen to us. Eventually, people would realise that they were the best things to happen to the world. I believe this would be the best thing to happen in politics for the next 10 years.

 

What are the plans to sensitise people at the grassroots to plug in?

We are using the normal marketing strategies, using influencers, but our system is to do more than just engage. We have 73 million registered voters in Nigeria, and only like 28 million participated, mostly at the grassroots. We have taken the conversation to them now. If the people who are actually voting participate in this, we can leave the rest on the usual social media platforms to continue to complain.