BBC Media Action Exposed: Leaked Docs Reveal UK Government Funded Radio Drama ‘Story Story’ To Influence Nigerian Voters

An explosive investigation by The Grayzone has revealed that BBC Media Action, which portrays itself as the “charitable” arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), has been operating as a foreign information warfare extension of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the parent agency of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6), with Nigeria among its key targets.

According to leaked internal documents published by The Grayzone, BBC Media Action boasts that 40 per cent of the listeners of a radio programme called “Story Story“, which it produced in Nigeria from 2004 until 2017, were convinced to vote differently by simply listening to it.

During the radio drama’s 13-year production run, over 26.5 million listeners were reached across West Africa primarily in Nigeria, and the show was once graced with the on-set presence of Queen Elizabeth II during a state visit to Nigeria. According to The Grayzone, BBC Media Action’s internal documents boast that its behavioural influence operation was so successful that 32 percent of Nigerian “Story Story” listeners “did something differently” as a result of listening to the show, and 40 percent of them were persuaded to vote differently in the country’s elections.

An excerpt from the BBC Media Action internal documents reads:

“We know that, compared to those unexposed, people exposed to our programming are more likely to: have higher levels of knowledge on governance issues; to discuss politics more; to have higher internal efficacy (the feeling that they can do something); and participate frequently in politics.”

Interestingly, upon going through its Nigeria YouTube channel, it emerges that in 2013, shortly before the official launch of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the coalition of opposition parties in Nigeria during the Goodluck Jonathan administration, BBC Media Action put out explicitly political messaging clearly intended to convince its audiences to vote out the incumbent. At the time, despite an annual GDP growth rate of 6 percent and the largest economy in Africa at $509bn, BBC Media Action put out the video below, falsely inferring that Nigeria was economically depressed under the incumbent, who should be voted out.

12 years later, with Nigeria’s economy having shrunk 63 percent to $187bn following the success of this political messaging in the 2015 election which saw Muhammadu Buhari defeat Goodluck Jonathan, an examination of the same YouTube channel shows that no such partisan political programming has been created since 2015.

In another video from the same channel, a Nigerian voter interviewed by the BBC Media Action Nigeria team, testified that he had previously voted “wrongly,” but after listening to “Story Story,” he began voting “the right way.”

Speaking in 2017, Deji Arosho, Head of Production and Training at the BBCMA Nigeria, hinted at the explicit political interference of “Story Story.” In his words,

In the run-up to the last national elections in 2015, the drama centred on local elections but reflected what was going on nationally. We encouraged the audience to think about the bigger picture and the importance of peaceful participation in democracy while maintaining our neutrality – it worked.

Over the past year, West Africa Weekly has reported on the existence of extensive and longstanding UK and US-led foreign political interference operations across the region, particularly in Nigeria. In February, it emerged that a clandestine NGO called the Centre for Information Resilience, which was founded by 2 FCDO veterans and funded by a joint UK-US government subvention, attempted to stage a takeover of Nigeria’s entire journalism space using monetary inducements and expensive getaways for prominent Nigerian journalists, who were tasked with smearing any Nigerian voices not aligned with the UK’s geopolitical interests as “Kremlin-sponsored” or “Russian-backed.”

The documents leaked to The Grayzone reveal that the goal of the operation, which is “driven by a social and behaviour change communication approach” is to deploy “psychology, social psychology, sociology, education and communication” to find and exploit “the specific factors that can be influenced by media and communication that could lead to changes in behaviours, social norms and systems” in foreign countries.

In other words, BBC Media Action according to its own documents, is tasked with waging psychological warfare in foreign theatres, using targeted behavioural approaches to drive action among target audiences in foreign countries including Nigeria – audiences that are not allowed to intervene in British politics the same way.

West Africa Weekly will monitor the story as it develops.

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About The Author

Mayowa Durosinmi

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M. Durosinmi is a West Africa Weekly investigative reporter covering Politics, Human Rights, Health, and Security in West Africa and the Sahel Region

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