tsohG 👻

I just remembered that last year I quoted two sponsored tweets from accounts based in Nigeria and South Africa that were actively trying to incite xenophobia against Nigerians in Ghana. This was after a video resurfaced of an Igbo king talking about establishing a kingdom in Ghana. Mind you, the video was recorded in 2013, not recently, and he never actually established this kingdom. Yet somehow, more than a decade later, the video was recycled online and presented as though it were a current development, with people deliberately using it to stir resentment against Nigerians living in Ghana. The Ghanaian Minister for Foreign Affairs even met with him and confirmed that the video was from an old interview. The man himself apologized and clarified the circumstances surrounding the video. But chale, the damage had already been done. A political party that is honestly of no relevance in Ghana even went as far as sponsoring protests against “Igbo Nigerians”, claiming that they were trying to steal land and establish territory in Ghana because of this resurfaced 2013 video. And I remember thinking: how exactly are ordinary Ghanaians supposed to identify “Igbo Nigerians” walking down the street? 😂 How do you distinguish an Igbo Nigerian from any other Nigerian based on appearance? The whole thing was so absurd that it raised serious questions about who was actually behind the attempt to manufacture this outrage in the first place. The timing and the way the narrative was being pushed made it increasingly difficult to see it as organic public anger. An old video was presented as something happening now, a clarification from our own Foreign Affairs Minister was largely ignored, the man involved had apologized, and yet people were still being encouraged to direct their anger towards an entire ethnic and national group. Sponsored accounts based in Nigeria and South Africa began capitalizing on the resentment that had been created around the Igbo king controversy. The nigerian accounts dierr I’m sure it’s because of tribalistic sentiments their government is trying to push to cause division and so that people vote based on tribal lines. They started pushing fake and misleading videos of ghana’s metropolitan assembly demolishing illegal structures along the roadside and falsely claimed that the demolitions were specifically targeting Nigerians. The reports showed that these demolitions happened because it was affecting traffic flow o. The sponsored account in Nigeria claimed that the demolitions were directed at Igbo Nigerians, while the account based in South Africa framed them as an attack against Nigerians generally and used it to push their already hatred towards Nigerians. It was basically like a “see! See! We’re not the only ones that do not like Nigerians” So now you had two different narratives being pushed to two different audiences, both designed to produce the same outcome: anger, resentment and division between Ghanaians and Nigerians or resentment towards Nigerians in general. I remember even tweeting at the time that the whole thing felt deliberate like someone was actively trying to manufacture hostility between Ghanaians and Nigerians. But oh well we keep falling for it I guess