Nigerian Politicians Research Articles

Critical Discourse Analysis of Interpersonal Meaning and Power Relations in Selected Inaugural Political Speeches in Nigeria

The paper discusses interpersonal meaning in two inaugural political speeches of Nigerian past leaders – President Olusegun Obasanjo’s “The New Dawn” (1999) and Alhaji Shehu Shagari (1979). The focus is on aspects of the Mood structure of the clause that emphasize meaning as exchange of information, goods and services between interactants, namely, the Subject; and the speech functions of the clause as propositions or proposals and vocatives. A total of 178 and 161 clauses were selected from the two speeches respectively and analyzed using Halliday’s systemic functional grammar (SFG) model and insights from critical discourse analysis (CDA). Our findings showed a deliberate oscillation between the use of singular Subject (I) and Plural Subject (We); rhetoric that in turns seems to take credit for positive achievement and divest responsibility for negative representations. The vocatives were also strategically positioned to assert solidarity, to ostensibly gain rapport and help to legitimize the power and hegemonic regime of the speakers. There was also high prevalence of propositions as against proposals giving the impression of more words and less action. The paper concludes that Nigerian politicians should be more committed to the proposals that offer goods and services to their subjects rather than making propositions that serve purely informative functions.Keywords: interpersonal meaning, critical discourse analysis, political discourse, power relations, systemic functional linguistics, inaugural political speechesUJAH: Unizik Journal of Arts and Humanities vol 14 (2) 2013

A Critical Discourse Review of Resistance Consciousness in The Language and Ideology of Social Change Project in Wole Soyinka’s Political Discourse

This paper discusses resistance consciousness in the language and ideology of social change project in Wole Soyinka’s political discourse. The discussion is aimed at examining Wole Soyinka’s text production strategies in his non-fictional writings. These writings weave a web of resistance ideologies that are enacted to instantiate social change on the political sphere of postcolonial states. This means that Soyinka produces texts aimed at instigating resistance consciousness in text consumers. The paper identifies the text production process for engaging the mind of the text consumer as semioticisation. The objective of Wole Soyinka’s non-fictional writings, therefore, is to arouse consciousness for social change through deliberate acts of resistance against the anti-democratic dispositions, especially among Nigerian politicians. In this paper, the critical discourse review of the resistance consciousness draws upon the theory and methodology of critical discourse analysis (CDA) propounded by Teun van Dijk (2002) and Norman Fairclough (1992) These theoretical approaches were complemented by Jacob Mey’s (2001) critical pragmatic theory and Michael A. K. Halliday’s (1985) systemic functional theory. The blend of the theories and methodologies gives the study an interdisciplinary outlook that facilitates the understanding of Wole Soyinka’s deployment of linguistic devices such as metaphor, lexicalisation, passivisation and intertextuality to produce political discourse (text) that arouses resistance consciousness for enacting social change.

The Politics of Issue-Based Political Campaign in Nigeria

This paper explores how Nigerian politicians respond to the flaws that dog political campaigns in a fledgling democracy. The paper identifies three flaws: (1) indiscriminate extension of the voting right to everybody of eighteen years and above (2) absence of balance and fairness in media practice (3) the obsession by the media to practice snippet journalism. The paper investigated how these flaws are implicated in politicians’ proclivity to run campaigns that are not issue-based. To accomplish the investigation, I theoretically sampled newspaper texts of2011 general elections in Nigeria. The texts were presented in a titled table. Critical Discourse Analysis was used to analyze the texts. Analysis provided a ground to hypothesize that indiscriminate extension of voting right to every person of 18 years and above in a fledgling democracy will lead to a situation where majority of the electorates will be naive to a degree that will make politicians to often see no reason to run intelligent, issue-based campaign.

Reward System in the Nigerian Political and Public Sector: The Call for a Paradigm Shift in the 21st Century

Reward system defined in terms of remunerations, salaries, wages, allowances, and fringe benefits constitute a dominant feature of political and public institutions in developed and developing countries. Nigeria as a social formation operates a reward system where civil servants and political office holders are remunerated through salaries, fringe benefits and allowances for performing legislative, executive and administrative functions. This paper is an attempt at examining political and other public servants salaries and allowances within the backdrop of its implications on human resource management, productivity and sustainable development of the country. The paper argues that because reward systems are highly skewed in favor of the political class in comparison to salaries and allowances in other sectors of the economy, Nigerian politicians have turned democratic elections into investment areas and opportunities and battle fields where money, private armies and thugs are employed to create enabling environments that guarantee returns on investments and accelerated access to primitive accumulation of wealth. Given the inequality in the Nigerian reward system between the political and other classes in the country, the paper argues that a paradigm shift aimed at the restructuralization of the reward system and the fight against corruption are inevitable for human capital development, productivity enhancement and sustainable development of the country in the 21st century

Money-Bag Politics, Rent-Seeking And Flawed Elections In Nigeria: A Theoretical Statement

The history of Nigerian politics is replete with money-bag politics. Although, there is hardly any country in the world where instances of bribery or political corruption are not present in their national politics, researches on Africa’s postcolonial history, have however shown that, in Africa, corruption is an institutionalized and a systemic practice affecting not only the postcolonial state itself, but also the majority of the citizenry. Using Nigeria, as a case study, this paper argues that since the 1964/1965 Western Region elections to the 2007 general elections, there has hardly been any election conducted in Nigeria without associated cases of corrupt practices such as vote buying, ballot snatching, election rigging, election violence, political and legislative lobbying etc. The aftermath of this or its cumulative effective, is better seen when the number of years spent by Nigeria under the military is weighed against the number of years it spent under civilian administration. Using the peripheral political economy approach, this paper opines that the problem of flawed elections in Nigeria should be traced more to the nature and character of the Nigerian colonial state, prebendal politics among Nigerian politicians, imperial capitalism, primitive accumulation of capital as well as the nature and character of class contestations among various interest groups in contemporary Nigeria . The paper adds that the fierce struggle for state powers and the accompanying prosecution of elections with illicit money, is an indication of the peripheral nature of Nigerian politics.

'On a Mission' with Mutable Mobiles

The task of economic planning in new nation of Nigeria in early 1960s tested limits of economic technologies: its recipes for development, its possibilities of measurement, and from differences in political economy. These dimensions of problem beset not only Nigerian politicians and civil servants but an array of international experts: each their own mission to make new economy. This story of mutable mobiles is revealed in detailed diary entries of economist Wolfgang Stolper - a man on a mission, for he was charged with making the plan. This first Nigerian economic plan was a mobile document that cycled around a changing circle of civil servants and politicians and only gathered powerful allies amongst them because of mutability its elements. This mutability rested a combination of decentralized knowledge and regional democratic preferences. And, to make a plan that would gain acceptance outside centre of calculation, these local facts and choices had to be made consistent with each other and with projected future of economy as a whole. This is where economic theory came in: it created a consistency between current and future economy so that future facts - fictions - and current facts made good travelling companions for each other in their circulations around political and economic community.

One message, many tongues

The essay sets off by arguing that since the 1950s, there has been a growing enthusiasm in political advertising discourse. This was because political advertising became prominent as an effective communicative and publicity tool in the 1952 U.S. presidential election campaign when Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed its instruments to win the most prestigious and highest political post in the U.S. (Reece 2003). Since that time, several rhetorical strategies have been adopted by politicians all over the world to cast and communicate political messages to their various audiences. Most previous research efforts appear to be in the monolingual or L1 settings (e.g. Chilton and Schäffner 1997; Obeng 1997). In this study, we examine how Nigerian politicians demonstrate their bilingual creativity in an innovative manner, employing linguistic facilities to publicise and sell their political programmes, especially in the use of media multilingualism, a novel persuasive strategy that has come to characterise political campaign texts. Specifically, we consider this recent phenomenon in Nigerian political discourse in which political candidates ‘marry’ and exploit the resources of both the exogenous (English) and indigenous languages (and sometimes along with pidgin) in the same campaign texts in order to woo voters. So the term ‘media multilingualism’ here is taken to be the variety of code-mixing and codeswitching in written political texts. The paper thus examines inter/intrasententially code-mixed facts found in the written campaign texts and discusses their functional implications especially as part of the discourse strategies deployed by the politicians to elicit support and woo voters to support their candidatures. Relevant literature on codeswitching and theories (e.g. Speech Accommodation Theory) that provide theoretical underpinning for the study are reviewed. An attempt is also made to demonstrate that codeswitching in political discourse is an interpersonal strategy that can be used to create, strengthen or destroy interpersonal boundaries, and thus it functions as a discourse strategy for pragmatic and strategic purposes (Wei 2003). The framework for analysis follows the insights provided in Rational Choice Models (RC) as seen in the works of Myers-Scotton (1993), Myers-Scotton and Agnes Bolonyai (2001) and Wei (2003). The essay concludes by presenting a summary of some important analytical observations that arose from the study. It also suggests that a similar pattern is bound to occur in political discourse found in other L2 contexts. The data set for this work came from selected political texts produced during the 2003 governorship and presidential elections campaigns in Nigeria and sourced from selected Nigerian national newspapers.

Personality factors influencing politicians' attitudes toward wellbeing of citizens

PurposeTo examine how personality dispositions of Nigerian politicians predict their attitude to the wellbeing of citizens.Design/methodology/approachA survey research was embarked that engaged 185 political aspirants to various electoral positions in the 2003 Nigerian elections. Respondents were administered a standardized psychological instrument that measures four personality attributes – needs for achievement, affiliation, dominance, and autonomy. They also responded to another standardized instrument that measures attitude to wellbeing of people.FindingsHierarchical multiple regression analyses conducted showed that gender and age are significant predictors of politicians' attitudes to wellbeing of the people. Male and younger politicians are more favorably disposed to people's wellbeing than female and older politicians. Among the personality attributes only need for achievement significantly accounted for variations in attitude to people's wellbeing. Specifically, the lower politicians are in need of achievement the more favorably disposed they are to people's wellbeing.Research limitations/implicationsThe research participants are not completely representative of politicians in Nigeria because the sample was drawn from the Southwest only. In addition, the personality attributes examined are not exhaustive as there are other possible attributes that could predict politicians' attitudes to citizens' wellbeing. There is also a limit to which results on attitude can be used to predict actual behavior of politicians to people's wellbeing.Practical implicationsThe study demonstrates the need for psychological tests in Nigeria's electoral process. It demonstrates that personality attributes of politicians could be assessed and used to predict their concern for citizens' wellbeing. It is opined that, where politicians are more concerned with the citizens' wellbeing, it could enhance the sustainability of democracy in Nigeria.Originality/valueThe paper demonstrates a dimension of psychological testing in Nigeria's electoral process.

Participatory Democracy and Communication of Development: A Case Study of Political Campaign Advertisements in Nigeria’s 2003 Election

The improvement in the quality of life of the people is the centrepiece of development and proponents of the dominant paradigm in development communication identify a participant lifestyle as a prerequisite for modernity. With this background in mind, the paper examines attempts by Nigerian politicians particularly those seeking a second term in office, to influence voting behaviour in the run off to the 2003 elections. Fully conscious that the active participation of the electorate would determine their electoral fortunes, they resorted to dividends/continuity advertisements where they chronicled their attempts to add value to the lives of the people in specific and graphic ways. This paper critically examines these adverts and charts a road map towards making participatory democracy a more effective harbinger of development.

Marketing without and with marketing boards: the origins of state marketing boards in Nigeria

Since their inception, Nigerian marketing boards have been used to serve various interests and purposes, hardly any of which have benefited the producers. They originated in the Second World War and were perpetuated after the war by a Labour government so that they might play their part in ‘meeting British needs’, to cite the title of a forthcoming study by Mike Cowen and Bob Shenton. Nigerian politicians found them a ready‐made instrument for taxing farmers, enriching themselves and financing their political activities. Their pricing policies discouraged farmers from producing export crops, thus rendering the boards redundant though not, regrettably, ensuring their abolition. Nigeria is fortunate in that, until recently, marketing boards have not bought food for sale in domestic markets and have no monopoly, in form or in fact, over the purchase of crops, other than cotton, for sale within Nigeria. Discussion of the Nigerian marketing boards has tended, rightly, to focus on their monopoly of the legal export of certain crops, on their pricing policies and on the use to which governments put the funds which they derived from the trading profits of the boards. Less remarked on, the boards also structured the internal marketing system for the commodites they export. Indeed, when the commodity marketing boards were established in 1947 the main justification given was the need to change the internal marketing system for export crops, ostensibly in the interests of protecting the producer from the ills of middlemen in an unregulated market. These arguments for state intervention in, and regulation of, produce marketing, in Nigeria as elsewhere in Africa, have found sympathy among socialists who have been all too willing to take statism as at least offering a foundation for socialism. This article examines the provenance of the marketing boards and of the arguments which justified their inception during the crisis of the colonial economy in the 1930s.

Dissidence and the African Writer: Commitment or Dependency?

The underlying logic of African struggle for independence from European1 rule and subsequently from neo-colonialism in all its manifestations was (and is) that European intrusion into African life was inhumane and disruptive. European enslavement of Africans bespoke a denial of African humanity, and European colonization of continent denied Africans right to follow developmental course charted by their past experiences as most consistent with their values and aspirations; it pointed them instead along courses dictated by European selfinterest. The same logic indicates that successful struggle for African selfdetermination would lead to a resumption, as much as consistent with new realities, of march halted by European incursion, and that it would be supremely ironic if self-determination was followed by an acceptance of new, Europeanimposed orientation (mental, social, or political) as unimpeachable. The African claim to self-determination is not predicated on a supposed intrinsic superiority of African ways to European ways, but on principle that for good or ill every people must be free to exercise ultimate control over its destiny. At height of campaign for independence, Nigerian politicians, for example, defiantly demanded from Britain the right to govern or misgovern ourselves. In that formulation was a denial of any right to any people to intrude into private lives of any other people under any pretext and an affirmation of rights of any people to freely conduct its own affairs and requisite internal (even internecine) debates without sort of outside interference that colonization represented. Self-determination, of course, does not suggest isolationism, nor is it incompatible with new internationalism that existence of United Nations and other regional associations of sovereign nations symbolizes. Thus, even though there has been a repudiation of colonialism, economic, political and historical factors necessitate a new order of mutual involvement between Africa and rest of world. In other words, while old relationship between Europe and Africa was based on exploitative self-interest, new, to a significant degree, is based on mutual interests. There also exists, however, a residual patronal instinct that finds expression in a watchfulness to ensure that tenderfoots who succeeded to power in newly independent African countries do not destroy legacy of civilization that colonizers bequeathed them. This watchfulness has often