Assessing Grassroot Participatory Democratic in Nigeria by Daily Trust and Punch Newspapers: 2001 - 2012

Abstract

Popular participation is the most essential component of democracy. Most importantly absence of political enlightenment and awareness about the essence of democracy in our political developments is quite deficient in Nigerian political psyche. Opportunities for grassroots democratic participation are not provided by many newspapers outlets. These papers do not devote ample attention to issues that border on the interest of common citizens because of lacking of adequate awareness from the media in their coverage and agenda setting function. Two newspapers, Daily Trust and Punch both were papers located polar apart in North and Southern part of the country were studied. The research methodology used was content analysis. The study covered a period of 12 years (2001-2012), appraising them in terms of grassroots participation as per the coverage of the two newspapers. Grassroot participation is underreported by both newspaper. Daily Trust underreported agriculture and education vis-á-vis Punch inspite of the fact that North is acclaimed to be an agricultural area as well as the seeming awareness that North is more disadvantaged than the South educationally. Both of them underreported environmental issues inspite of seeming problem of desert encroachment. The papers recommended that efforts should be made to improve literacy and educating of specialist reporters.