A loud whir filled the back of a print shop in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, as machines churn out grinning faces of presidential election front-runners on posters, flyers and food packaging.
Workers poured cassava flour into blue-and-green bags sporting the governing All Progressives Congress party’s acronym and stashed them next to a pile of red-and-green opposition rice packets. The advertising campaign season is in full throttle.
The run-up to a vote is usually a chance for small businesses like Shimatex Prints to cash in on election paraphernalia ranging from hats and flip-flops to tissue boxes and cooking oil labels.
Photo: Reuters
However, business has been slower than usual ahead of the Feb. 25 vote, as candidates have hinged more campaigning on social media.
“Printing-wise [there is] not much difference in our orders,” Shimatex Prints CEO Joel Mtsor said, recalling busier periods around 2011, 2015 and 2019 polls.
“A few souvenirs, a few campaign materials, a few billboards, but the impact on the print industry is not as good as it was,” he said.
Nigerians are to vote for a new leader to replace President Muhammadu Buhari amid growing insecurity and economic hardship. The three front-runners have promised to reduce living costs, boost growth and tackle rising levels of violence.
As Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria is home to tens of millions of Internet users, prompting candidates to compete for voters’ eyeballs across popular platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.
Social media has been a key campaigning tool ahead of a poll in which almost 40 percent of registered voters are 34 or younger, electoral commission data showed.
However, not everything has moved online, as parties still commission political regalia for rallies and other in-person campaign events.
At a printing mall in Abuja’s business hub, workers pasted party logos on baseball caps and sew candidates’ portraits onto T-shirts. Bold political slogans flashed from white scarves hanging in the background.
“It is what we want ... the most craziest of orders for a printer is a good job,” print shop owner Opeyemi Osho-Arilomo said.
The US and the Philippines plan to announce new sites as soon as possible for an expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which gives the Western power access to military bases in the Southeast Asian country. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr last month granted the US access to four military bases, on top of five existing locations under the 2014 EDCA, amid China’s increasing assertiveness regarding the South China Sea and Taiwan. Speaking at the Basa Air Base in Manila, one of the existing EDCA sites, US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the defense agreements between the two countries
‘DUAL PURPOSE’: Upgrading the port is essential for the Solomon Islands’ economy and might not be military focused, but ‘it is not about bases, it is about access,’ an analyst said The Solomon Islands has awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to a Chinese state company to upgrade an international port in Honiara in a project funded by the Asian Development Bank, a Solomon Islands official said yesterday. China Civil Engineering Construction Co (CCECC) was the only company to submit a bid in the competitive tender, Solomon Islands Ministry of Infrastructure Development official Mike Qaqara said. “This will be upgrading the old international port in Honiara and two domestic wharves in the provinces,” Qaqara said. Responding to concerns that the port could be deepened for Chinese naval access, he said there would be “no expansion.” The Solomon
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS: The US destroyer’s routine operations in the South China Sea would have ‘serious consequences,’ the defense ministry said China yesterday threatened “serious consequences” after the US Navy sailed a destroyer around the disputed Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea for the second day in a row, in a move Beijing claimed was a breach of its sovereignty and security. The warning came amid growing tensions between China and the US in the region, as Washington pushes back at Beijing’s growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway it claims virtually in its entirety. On Thursday, after the US sailed the USS Milius guided-missile destroyer near the Paracel Islands, China said its navy and
Seven stories above a shop floor hawking cheap perfume and nylon underwear, Thailand’s “shopping mall gorilla” sits alone in a cage — her home for 30 years despite a reignited row over her captivity. Activists around the world have long campaigned for the primate to be moved from Pata Zoo, on top of a Bangkok mall, with singer Cher and actor Gillian Anderson adding their voices in 2020. However, the family who owns Bua Noi — whose name translates as “little lotus” — have resisted public and government pressure to relinquish the critically endangered animal. The gorilla has lived at Pata for more
RSS