Campaign Language and voting pattern in Nigeria, 2015-2019

Abstract

In recent times, the use of political campaign has become increasingly in Nigeria. Campaign of several candidates has filled the media, which seems to be a clear distinction from election campaigns in the past, in which the focus was mainly on political rallies and speech. This lead me to seek understand the effectiveness of political campaigns in shaping the voting pattern in Nigerian voter. I examined political campaigns of both People Democratic Party and All Progressive Congress. Language is as old as mankind and is a tool employed by man to communicate and interact effectively within and outside his political system. Consequently, language is also the instruments used by politicians to canvass support during electioneering campaign by using vocabularies to inform, persuade and to entertain the minds of the masses on topical issues. Again, words are the “currency” of power in elections, in a bid to erode the ground upon which their opponents could be standing, politicians in Nigeria more often than not, employs unwashed and vulgar languages. This study adopted descriptive research elections. The game theory which views politics as a game of word was adopted as a theoretical framework for the analysis. Our finding in this study is that the use of “language” incites zero sum politics in Nigeria with a multiplier centrifugal effect on the electorate. The paper will therefore recommend that politicians should use modest and plain language in canvassing for votes from electorate.