From Mustapha Adamu, Kano
A group, Social Media Awareness and Promotion Development Association ( SMAPDA) has lamented how lots of TikTok users from Northern Nigeria are battling with poverty, despite their potentials and opportunities within the platform.
Speaking at the opening of a two-day seminar for Northern skit makers, held in Kano on Friday, founder of the SMAPDA, Sharfaddin Bature expressed displeasure at how the TikTok influencers misuse the video-sharing platform.
Bature noted that despite the large user base, TikTok is often misused in the Northern region, promoting crises, divisions, and hatred among young people.
He said SMAPDA, as an association of Northern influencers, serves as a catalyst to change this narrative by encouraging positive and impactful use of TikTok for better influence.
“TikTok is the most used social media platform in Nigeria, with an estimated 23 million young Nigerians, ranking 17th globally. Northern Nigeria has an average of 15 million users, spread across thousands of influencers from the 19 northern states.
“However, despite this large user base, TikTok is often misused in the region, promoting crises, divisions, and hatred among young people.
“Unfortunately, it is only in Northern Nigeria where you will ses an influencer with millions of followers but battling to get food to eat. This is contrary in our counterparts of Southern region.
“TikTok user in southern region of Nigeria have vision, ambition and plans. If you engage a TikTok influencer with just 300,000 followers for advert, he will tell you something that will astonish you because they have ambition and target”, Bature said.
He explained that to address the situation and promote the business, SMAPDA, as an association of Northern influencers, serves as a catalyst to change the narrative by encouraging positive and impactful use of TikTok for better influence.
“That is why we decided to organize this programm to invite the TikTok users with different content ideas to form a platform in order to change the narrative in a bid to move the north forward.
“This seminar is aimed at creating awareness and sensitize the TikTok influencers on the opportunities within the platform that would make difference in their socioeconomic life and by extension the society at large.
“These influencers are not carried along among the stakeholders in the society, especially the North. None of the Ulamas and the traditional rulers and even the government engage them to show them how to positively impact our society.
“These people are always abused, criticizes and castigated without guiding them on how to do the right thing”, he said.
Furthermore, Bature said the maiden seminar would be organized annually in a bid to improve and promote the use of TikTok in Northern Nigeria.
The participants at the seminar promised to use the knowledge and awareness created towards improving their skit making
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