Twitter has become an important tool for Nigerian entrepreneurs, politicians, actors, and musicians to reach thousands of members of their target audience directly. Amongst those who have maximized the use of this tool are @PastorChrisLive (1,097,964 followers), @DonJazzy (423,710 followers), @GenevieveNnaji1 (204,388 followers), and @ElRufai (112,457 followers).

A close look at some other lesser known "celebrities" though begins to unfold a weird pattern of massive following. @IAM_Kcee for example, has 109,645 followers, @SinaRambo (69,939 followers), and even one @AnthoniaOrji (182,601 followers). Forensic scrutiny of these accounts however exposed the trick of buying followers.

This leads us to check back on all the other accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, and we are sorry to have to disappoint all you Davido fans, and all Don Jazzy fans. After digging past a few thousands of their most recent followers, the horde of dummy (computer generated, non-interactive) followers surface.

These dummy followers may seem useless to the average "tweep", as they neither read, nor retweet any tweets, but in some way, they do have their advantages. Some brand interested in improving their Social Media outlook like MTN, or PEPSI, for instance, may end up paying millions of Naira to a Nigerian artiste with hundreds of thousands of unsuspected dummy followers. Now, some individuals such as one @OloriSupergal and @AnthoniaOrji (who has actually threatened me for trying to expose her) are obtaining money from the unsuspecting public, by posing as Social Media Marketers after purchasing between 35,000 to 160,000 dummy followers. It's nothing short of fraud! BEWARE!

*For clearer view of more Screenshots showing the the computer generated followers, visit: http://thediaryofabadman..com/2012/10/the-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dummies.html

hmmn, noted!

Naija wil alwaz suprise u with tricks.if don jay cud do dis,them itz a shame.

don Jazzy does it to appear perhaps more influential than D'Banj, but what scares me are those people that buy 150,000 followers when they actually have only 400 real followers, then they collect money from brands to market their products on Twitter.

Imagine paying N100,000 a month to someone, thinking that they are going to market your product or service to 150,000 people daily, not knowing you're only reaching their 400 friends. It is 419.

This is serious...