The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) while addressing delegates of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in Rivers State said that those who wanted to protest against bad governance in the country could go ahead while he and his colleagues would be eating. This video went viral and caused outrage among Nigerians. This research investigates audience perception of Senator Akpabio’s “Let them protest while we eat” comment which went viral on social media and how this statement influenced people’s perception of the current Administration in Nigeria. The Survey research method was used to study 384 respondents derived using the Cozby’s table. The study was anchored on the Perception theory. The objectives of study are to ascertain the frequency of exposure to “Let them protest while we eat” comment on Facebook by COOU students, to ascertain their perception of the comment, to ascertain whether respondents reposted the comment to their friends and to ascertain whether exposure to the comment on Facebook influenced them to support the End Bad Governance protest in the country. The result showed that respondents were very highly exposed to Akpabio’s “Let them protest while we eat” comment on Facebook and they had negative perception of the comment as they saw it as a mockery of the plight of Nigerians and insensitivity to the suffering of people in the country. The study recommended among others that Senator Akpabio and other elected officials should use the social media to promptly correct wrong impressions and apologize for insensitive comments as damage control in order not to incite the public into more protests. It is also recommended that Public Relations strategies should be effectively utilized by the current Administration so as to calm the nerves of the suffering Nigerians.
