By Fortunate Ahimbisibwe
As expected Andrew Mwenda was at it again, abusing what he calls opposition radicals.
This time he even sank to his lowest and called Bobi Wine, empty headed. At the height of his career, Mwenda was abusing President Museveni for being autocratic, corrupt and attempting to turn Uganda into a monarchy-Rwakitura Kingdom, he called it. Towards the end of his career, he has turned his guns on Besigye and now Bobi Wine. For what reason??? For challenging Museveni. Is that journalism, social criticism, business or madness?
Intelligent Mwenda uses numbers to drive his arguments home. The same numbers work against his favour in his own backyard, Facebook.
There is an interesting statistic about Mwenda’s posts.
As a researcher in waiting, I tried make a quantitative analysis of the impact of Mwenda’s posts and how they are likely to influence or shape public opinion.
I was relieved to find that they do not according to his Facebook audience.
While Mwenda has 72,000 followers on Facebook, he normally gets an average of between 700 to 1500 likes and usually between 300 to 700 comments. In real terms, this means that only 1.5% of Mwenda’s followers like or comment on his posts. It’s worth noting that 80% of the comments are insults.
Mwenda should do some soul searching because his rants are not attractive as Bobi Wine’s appealing political rhetoric. With 72,000 followers, one would expect atleast 5000 to 10k reactions if these posts were making alot of sense. 1000 which translates to 1.3% is way below average. In academics, this cant be graded, it’s a no-show!
This says alot about the quality or influence of these posts, And the more reason people tend to ignore them.
Mwenda laughs at FDC for getting 6000 votes out 29,000 voters yet he gets less than 3% reaction from his own followers on his Facebook followers that he writes for. Voter turn up is a sticky issue in Uganda, in 2016, M7 got 5.9m votes, KB 3.5m out of 15.5m registered voters.
In politics, the winner takes it all, FDCs Mwiru is going to Parliament. NRM’s candidate lost inspite of Museveni’s pleading to send him a sleeping MP. But still, Mwenda finds a reason to crucify FDC.
In conclusion, Mwenda’s elitist whimpering is pointless in Uganda today. People are dissatisfied with Government and thats evident everywhere you go. Only NRM MPs and perhaps Mwenda are happy with whats happening in the country.
With Bobi Wine’s tested following accross the country and Mwenda’s Facebook delusions of grandeur, even a blind man can see who is more empty headed between the two.
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