The Correlation between Social Violence and the Comments of Nigerian Politicians during Electioneering Campaigns: A Political Marketing Study

Abstract

This study undertook a critical appraisal of the utterances and speeches of some Nigerian leaders/politicians during electioneering campaigns and their correlations to the level of social and political crisis witnessed in the country so far. It was motivated by the high level of violence and social crisis that greeted the 2011 general elections and the intractable social crisis in the country since independence. The objectives of the study therefore included to: ascertain the degree of correlation between the negative comments and the violence that followed the 2011 presidential election in Nigerian; determine the degree of correlation between the negative comments and the heightened insurgency social crisis in the country; and examine the potency of political marketing tools as panacea for the problem. For the methodology, our primary data were sourced through opinion survey of Nigerian masses views on the comments/speeches by Nigerian politicians during the 2007 and 2011 electioneering campaigns. The data were statistically analyzed with Likert’s 5-points scale and Spearman’s correlation coefficient. Results obtained show a high degree of correlation between those negative comments and the political/social crises in the country since then, and that political marketing strategies packaged and professionally delivered by public relations experts would serve as effective panacea for such problems in future.

Key words: Political violence, social violence, negative comments, electioneering, political marketing.