Joe Trippi, currently advising former Sen. John Edwards's (D-N.C.) 2008 campaign, designed a text-messaging campaign for opposition Action Congress Party candidate and then Vice President Atiku Abubakar....

...He was just one of many Washington consultants and lobbyists hired by Nigerian politicians to meet with policymakers here or campaign across the Atlantic. Abubakar and former President Olusegun Obasanjo, through the West African country's government, each spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the months preceding the vote on such services.