Understanding Political Communication in Nigeria

This book examines the inherent issues and challenges associated with political communication in Nigeria; from politicians‟ utilization of various media of mass communication for political campaigns including information campaigns which the authors classified as policy campaigns; the attempts by the government to use various strategies for direct and indirect controls of free flow of news and information and the impact of ethnicity, regionalism and political personality cults or social engineering strategies to corner and retain power for as long as is possible. The book also studies the use of political communication within the advertising industry, starting with the early days of the West Africa Publicity through the Lintas era to the present. The book‟s narratives of the emergence and utilization of the various social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram among others brought narratives of political communication processes into the 21st century. Of special interest is the policy/information campaigns discussed in the book. Information available on policy/information campaigns in Nigeria, and beyond suggests that many of the policy campaigns failed for one reason or the other. However, information campaigns such as the change over from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right-hand side succeeded because it was either the motorists obeyed the policy campaign or get killed in a vehicular accident. The motorist has no choice but to go along