APC DATA BOYS TO DOLLAR BOYS: How El-Rufai’s Exit Revived APC’s Social Media Army ~By Mohammed Bello Doka

For 18 long months after Tinubu’s inauguration, the mighty APC digital warriors — those fearless “data boys” and their equally relentless sisters, the “data girls” — were abandoned like broken SIM cards. The soldiers of hashtags who once trended Tinubu to Aso Rock were reduced to hustling for scraps, writing “Dear sir, remember us” tweets, and even threatening to march to the Villa to demand the basic dignity of recognition.

Imagine it: warriors of propaganda, reduced to begging. The once-feared “APC Twitter dragons” became house lizards, scrambling for survival.

Then, from nowhere, came Nasir El-Rufai — the unlikely messiah of Nigeria’s digital battalion.

Nasir El-Rufai televised outbursts in January 2025 — his thunderous complaints that Tinubu betrayed him, that the government was incompetent, that all was falling apart — landed like a bomb in the APC camp. When he finally stormed out of the party and joined the SDP, suddenly the APC remembered: “Ah, don’t we have data boys and girls? Quick, revive them before El-Rufai tweets us out of relevance!”

Billions were released like manna from heaven. Neglected influencers were dusted off, summoned back, and fattened on the payroll. Men who once begged for “data” suddenly found themselves strategizing digital ambushes with Aso Rock’s blessings. Women who were ignored now became indispensable “content generals.”

The Progressive Digital Summit at the State House sealed the deal. Once orphans of the system, the APC’s media army were now adopted, baptized, and placed on retainer. Hashtag contractors turned into payroll professionals overnight.

Let’s be honest: if El-Rufai hadn’t walked away, these data boys and girls would still be wailing online about neglect, scraping likes to pay for airtime. His exit gave them a lifeline, relevance, and most importantly — funding.

Today, the industry has grown far beyond the ragtag “data boys” of campaign days. It now proudly boasts of data boys, data girls, data men, data women — and yes, even data legislators. Serving and former Senators and Reps now moonlight as hashtag warriors, turning governance into thread-making contests. The once narrow trade of trend-setting has blossomed into a full-fledged digital patronage economy.

And while developed nations are locked in the race for Artificial Intelligence supremacy and the scramble for rare earth minerals, the so-called Giant of Africa has discovered something far more “innovative”: the hashtag race. Easier, cheaper, and infinitely more rewarding than science or technology, Nigeria has perfected the art of trending as survival strategy. Forget AI — in Abuja, the algorithm is king.

Even the so-called overseas influencers, long stranded abroad and completely out of touch with the national cake, suddenly found a new feeding bottle. From the comfort of their foreign apartments, they discovered that hashtags pay better than hard work, and Abuja stipends travel faster than DHL. Now, men and women who once ranted about “diaspora patriotism” have mastered the art of midnight praise-singing for their daily bread.

Not to be outdone, a fresh crop of former senators, forgotten ex-ministers, and retired governors have also joined the digital feast. One senator — remembered only for distributing transistor radios as constituency projects — now spends his twilight years praising “renewed hunger” and glorifying “packaged desperation” as though starvation were an achievement. Their desperation to trend is the final comedy in Nigeria’s endless circus of relevance.

So, perhaps every trending pro-APC hashtag should carry a little footnote:

“Brought to you by the Exit of El-Rufai.”

Because without him, the once-proud digital army would still be stranded in the wilderness, crying for data while the Villa scrolled past.

Mohammed Bello Doka is a retired data boy who now wages his battles behind a keyboard, sprinkling sarcasm between fine lines and grinning at the absurdities of power. He can be reached at bellodoka82@gmail.com.