Redefining Political Terrorism: Nigerian Media and the Crisis of Democratization

Abstract

In Nigeria, there is little dispute about the power and role of the media as agenda-setting agency. What is subject of disput is whose interest the agenda ultimately serves - the elite or the masses? Despite the avalanche of evidence that Nigeria’s electoral processes had not met the least benchmark of credibility since the country returned to civil rule in 1999, political analyses and advertising in the media tended to gloss over previous electoral flaws in their quest to ascribe invincibility to political elites. The effect of this is that the political elite are emboldened in their brazen manipulation of the electoral processes, which is a terrorism of sorts. While there is claim of balance between the media’s commercialistic interests and public good, evidence suggests that Nigeria’s political elite have used the instrumentality of the media to rewrite and embellish their political fortunes. This paper examines the mechanisms of political terrorism within the context of elite-media convergence and argues that the consolidation of democratic governance in Nigeria entails the dismantling of all the operational pitfalls that fuel and sustain political terrorism in all its ramifications.