How paid digital mercenaries meddled in Kenyan and Nigerian polls

Influential bloggers in Kenya and Nigeria said key political players regularly hired their services to operate fake accounts, sway public opinion and fan tensions during elections.

Kenya went to the polls in 2022, followed by Nigeria a year later. Both presidential races were keenly contested and unleashed an avalanche of false claims targeting key candidates.

“Kenya’s 2022 and Nigeria’s 2023 polls were inundated with domestically originating disinformation,” Mark Duerksen, a researcher at the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, told AFP Fact Check.

“The campaigns sought to delegitimise political institutions, cast doubt on the electoral processes, and malign opposing candidates with false information.”

The continent’s overwhelmingly young populations have helped spawn a new industry – packed with online personalities who parrot politicians’ views, create false narratives, deflect criticism and promote viral conspiracies.

Six of these so-called digital mercenaries in Kenya and Nigeria told AFP Fact Check that they had been recruited by political parties to run large-scale disinformation campaigns seeking to discredit opponents.

The bloggers were interviewed over several weeks as part of an investigation run with the support of the International Center for Journalists‘ Disarming Disinformation programme.

They spoke on condition of anonymity, with the exception of popular Nigerian blogger Rabiu Biyora.

Based in Kano state, Biyora has a strong online presence and posts in Hausa, one of Nigeria’s most common languages with over 50 million speakers.

Biyora has openly written about receiving gifts and money from senior members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in exchange for his political support.

AFP Fact Check came across a Facebook post from 2021, in which Biyora alleged that prominent APC politicians had gifted him cars.

In November 2022, he shared a photo of what he said was an APC contract hiring his services for the presidential campaign of Bola Tinubu who won the election in March 2023.

Biyora stood by these claims when contacted by AFP Fact Check.

“Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s son gifted me my first car. Later, politician Sha’aban Sharada, a former member of the House of Representatives, bought me another car,” he said.

Sharada served as a personal assistant to former Nigerian president Muhammad Buhari.

Biyora also acknowledged receiving “payments from politicians” for his services but declined to disclose the amounts.

“I earn enough that it enables me to subcontract other bloggers,” he said.

“But in this country, you don’t talk about such payments so I prefer not to discuss that subject further.”

AFP Fact Check contacted the APC for comment and will update the story accordingly.

Lucrative market

The disinformation ecosystem undoubtedly created lucrative opportunities for bloggers in Kenya and Nigeria, as both face sky-high inflation and exorbitant living costs.

Kenya is “an emerging marketplace for influence operations where hashtags and tweets carry a price tag and a vast supply of digital entrepreneurs stand ready to monetise their social networks,” according to a 2023 Institute of Security Studies (ISS) report.

Prominent influencers hired by political parties or candidates during Nigeria’s 2023 election campaign were estimated to earn up to 500,000 naira ($1,000) per month – way more than the average monthly salary.

Like fellow Nigerian blogger Biyora, Schuks (not his real name) said he had been on the APC’s payroll for the ballot.

“We had a large team and received generous wages, but the payments ceased immediately after the elections concluded,” he said.

Another Nigerian blogger told AFP Fact Check his job had been to leak dirt on the rivals of Labour Party leader Peter Obi.

He said he had been paid to share “stories that make our political opponents look bad” on his website.

“For money, we published whatever our employer wanted, sometimes it was false, misleading or even inciting,” the blogger added.

The Labour Party acknowledged it had used bloggers to reach Nigeria’s youth and avoid paying for expensive media ads.

“The Labour Party used bloggers during the election because… virtually everyone in one way or the other is an influencer using blogs and social media,” party spokesman Obiora Ifoh told AFP Fact Check.

“The message we have disseminated through this blogging system resonated across Nigeria particularly among youths.”

However, he denied that the influencers were paid or encouraged to spread false claims.

“We didn’t pay them, they came on their own, donated their phone and their systems and blogs to us because these are young men who are hungry for change in Nigeria,” Ifoh said.

“We didn’t campaign based on falsehood, we campaigned based on what we can do when we get elected.”

Kenyan influencers are also tapping into the money-spinning disinformation market.

Blogger Bazenge (not his real name) said his monthly earnings ranged from $1,000 to $2,000 when he worked for the presidential campaign of William Ruto who won the 2022 ballot.

“I expected the role to provide me with substantial financial gains and valuable political contacts, and it did,” he told AFP Fact Check.

Onyonka (not his real name) also claimed to have made “a substantial amount of money” after being hired by Ruto’s bitter rival, Raila Odinga.

“I was paid 100,000 Kenya shillings ($970) a month during the campaigns,” he said.

Recruitment process

Nigeria and Kenya are no strangers to election meddling.

An expose by a UK broadcaster revealed that data by Cambridge Analytica, a British firm that used the personal data of millions of Facebook users to target political ads, played a critical role in Uhuru Kenyatta’s successful presidential campaigns in 2013 and 2017.

But today, domestic mercenaries bankrolled by politicians have taken charge.

“Domestic actors have… increasingly integrated disinformation into their political playbooks, notably during Kenya’s 2022 and Nigeria’s 2023 election,” the Africa Center for Strategic Studies noted in a recent report.

In many cases, the recruits are young university students looking for employment.

“Upon joining university, I noticed that some of my peers were engaging in paid work for politicians. Encouraged by their actions, I ventured into political blogging,” said Onyonka.

“I have continued with this pursuit to this day as I have not found steady employment since completing my studies.”

Two other Kenyan bloggers who worked for rival presidential candidates said they were pressured into signing contracts and nondisclosure agreements without being allowed to review them.

“The only thing I knew was how much money I would earn, and that was enough incentive for me to sign,” Joab (not his real name) told AFP Fact Check.

The pair also mentioned receiving new phones with pre-registered lines and laptops.

Doctored front pages

From bots and trolls to sock puppets and AI-generated content, online mercenaries have a large set of tools at their disposal to create havoc.

One simple but effective tactic involves creating doctored front pages with made-up scandals about political candidates. AFP Fact Check has debunked several of them including here, here and here.

Promoting these lurid hoaxes on platforms like TikTok can hugely influence voters’ decisions in Kenya and Nigeria, which together boast an estimated 100 million online users.

“We circulated fake newspaper covers with sensationalised political stories that portrayed our rivals negatively,” said Kenyan blogger Joab.

“Similarly, bloggers from the opposing camp shared front pages conveying falsehoods about our candidates.”

Joab told AFP Fact Check he had been recruited to promote Odinga’s candidacy between 2019 and 2022.

As part of his role, Joab had been instructed to “troll Odinga’s opponent, Ruto, using any means, including tarnishing his reputation”.

“For three years, I was generously paid for my services. However, when Ruto was declared president, it marked the end of my employment. If Raila [Odinga] had won, I would still have a job,” he said.

According to Joab, the team operated from a centralised base in the upscale Runda neighbourhood in the capital Nairobi.

He alleged that the unit was run by self-described political strategist Pauline Njoroge.

Njoroge denied that she had held a leadership role.

“I was among the many bloggers who supported Raila, I did it in a personal capacity and never led any team,” she told AFP Fact Check.

Hashtags and fake profiles

Hashtags are another key tool in the so-called “commodification” of influence.

During Kenya’s 2022 election campaign, sponsored hashtags like #RutosLyingTongue and #RailaHatesMtKenya featured prominently on social media platforms.

Joab and fellow Kenyan Bazenge told AFP Fact Check they had masterminded the creation of these trending topics.

“We executed a well-coordinated campaign, promoting hashtags and narratives that portrayed our candidate in good light while projecting his opponent as ill-suited for leadership,” Bazenge said.

“Ruto campaign team’s agenda was to portray Odinga as a violent man who would sink Kenya into poverty and destruction.”

The bloggers also admitted to setting up imposter accounts with the aim of pushing false content about their candidates.

“I created social media profiles using female names and images of celebrities, which attracted people to the accounts,” Joab said.

Bazenge said he too had fabricated “multiple fake accounts, especially on X”.

Fake accounts and so-called fan pages of individual candidates also mushroomed in the lead-up to the Nigerian election.

“Hiding the identity of a user can enable that person to make outlandish claims with less likelihood of offline retribution under Nigeria’s legal framework,” the Abuja-based Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) noted in a 2023 election study.

Data analysis showed that numerous Facebook accounts were created or changed their names to reflect political leanings ahead of last year’s poll.

AFP Fact Check debunked several posts from a page called “Dr Yusuf Datti Ahmed Fan Page”. The account – named after the Labour Party’s vice-presidential contender – repeatedly shared claims from a website promoting misleading content about the APC’s Tinubu and Nigeria’s electoral commission.

The page has since rebranded itself as “Igbo Times Magazine”, matching the name of the site it was linking to.

Similar pro-Labour websites pushing false content included Fabulous International, Parallel Facts and Reportera, while Podium Reporters promoted Tinubu’s candidacy.

APC campaign spokesman and current aviation minister, Festus Keyamo, frequently shared links from Podium Reporters.

Threat to democracy

Analysts warn that political disinformation, coupled with voter apathy and low turnout at polling stations, poses a threat to Africa’s democracy.

“The disinformation campaigns exacerbated social divisions and instilled resentment and fear among citizens of the two nations,” said Sylvia Makinia, the deputy editor of the Kenyan branch of the Africa Check organisation.

Joab said his pro-Ruto team had distributed “leaflets containing hateful messages in specific regions intending to incite ethnic groups to turn against each other” in Kenya.

Disinformation also stirred ethnic tensions in Nigeria, leading to violence in some parts.

Public figures play a key role in ensuring that this type of potentially harmful content pushed by bloggers has an even wider reach.

Our investigation revealed the involvement of notable personalities in long-standing political influence operations.

Repeat offenders include Nigerian politician Femi Fani-Kayode who has a long history of promoting inflammatory allegations, many of which were debunked by AFP Fact Check.

In Kenya, seasoned political operator Mutahi Ngunyi is considered instrumental in helping spawn the “influence-for-hire” boom.

Ngunyi was behind the so-called “tyranny-of-numbers” conspiracy in 2013, which argued that Kenyans voted solely along ethnic lines, thereby condemning candidates from minority tribes to automatically lose any poll.

He continues to regularly share disinformation with his millions of social media followers.

Dennis Itumbi, a former ally of Kenyan ex-leader Uhuru Kenyatta who now works as President Ruto’s digital strategist, also frequently pushes misleading claims.

AFP Fact Check debunked a video he alleged showed crowds chanting Ruto’s name at a rally hosted by Odinga. Analysis revealed the audio had been added to the original footage.

As Kenya and Nigeria already gear up for elections in 2027 and 2028 respectively, the mercenaries told AFP Fact Check they were hoping to profit again from politics.

Joab said he was in talks with “some political actors” regarding their 2027 campaigns.

Bazenge also confirmed his continued “engagement” with Ruto’s administration.

“We benefit financially from elections,” he said. “Although in public politicians will deny our association, they generously remunerate us through intermediaries for our services.”