Political Advertising and Electioneering in Nigeria: An Analysis of 2015 General Election Newspaper Advertisements

Abstract

This is content analysis of political advertising during Nigeria’s 2015 general election with a view to ascertaining the following: The extent to which the ads fanned religious sentiments, the scale with which the ads resorted to personal attacks, the level to which the ads employed ethnic/tribal/regional/tendencies, the degree to which the ads adopted hate messages, the magnitude to which the ads embraced issue-based approaches to the campaign and finally, the scope to which the ad copies complied to the APCON code on political advertising. The ad copy constituted the unit of analysis while the period of study covered January to March, 2015. Two newspapers namely: The Guardian and The Punch were studied giving off a total of 240 issues. A census sampling procedure was undertaken while the major parameter for coding was the frequency of occurrence of the identified categorisation scheme. The results of the study showed that 63% of the ads dealt with non-issues. Regarding issue-based ads, socio-cultural issues constituted the majority. Of the non-issues analysed in the study, neutral (celebratory) messages were as high as 44.42% while personal attack ads amounted to 41.04%. However, religious, ethnic and sectional sentiments and violent/hate messages occurred at 6.23%, 3.89% and 1.82% respectively. The conclusion of the study is that political advertising in the two Nigerian newspapers was largely non-issue based and still some marks off compliance with APCON code on political advertising. These findings have serious implications for journalism and political advertising practice in Nigeria necessitating the recommendations made herein.