Abstract
The Nigerian Governors’ Forum election crisis of 2013 has resulted in the polarization of the Forum into two factions. The Forum which has become a powerful lobby has come to assume a strategic importance in the process of deciding who governs in Nigeria. While researches have addressed several issues in the coverage of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) election crisis, the focus of the press is in the reportage of the events that transpired during and after the election is not known. Based on framing theory which argues that how the media focus on and report issues is how the issues are understood, the study content-analysed 81 stories from five national dailies. The study was guided by four research questions in a multi-stage sampling technique. The findings suggest that, overall, the newspapers’ coverage of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum election crisis failed to promote peace building process but encouraged the escalation of the crisis. The study concludes that pessimistic leads, headlines and phrases with negative undertones in newspaper reports tend to heighten crisis, and that the calm situation that prevails amidst prolonged misunderstanding do not in any way translate to peace. It is contradictory that the press which is out to promote the de-escalation of crisis is found to whip up sentiment, provoking further crisis instead. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s1p315
Highlights
The influence and power of the press in building, unifying or destroying a nation state, a complex multi-cultural and multi-linguistic society such as Nigeria is all possible with its framing (Tejumaiye, 2005)
The primary objective of the study was to analyze the implications of the newspaper reports of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum election crisis of 2013 with a view to ascertaining whether the messages inherent in the reports aimed at peace building or escalation of the crisis
Majority of the stories on Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) election crisis were sourced from reporters who accounted for 77.78 percent of the sources
Summary
The influence and power of the press in building, unifying or destroying a nation state, a complex multi-cultural and multi-linguistic society such as Nigeria is all possible with its framing (Tejumaiye, 2005). How newspapers present any conflict issues should be a thing of concern to the media in general and newspaper operators in particular. This perhaps explains the importance of newspapers in the reportage of elections and electoral crisis which has over-bearing implication on the governance of any nation. One of the events that require the attention of research in examining how the press mediated election issues is the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) election crisis of May 24th 2013. Disagreement on the election result snowballed into crisis which continued to linger
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