In Nigeria, it is all about entertainment: A functional analysis of the 2019 presidential campaign commercials of APC and PDP

A functional analysis of 58 political commercials of APC and PDP aired on four purposively selected national television networks in Nigeria (NTA, AIT, TVC and Channels) during the 2019 presidential election campaigns reveals the dominance of positive communication with acclaims (81.24 per cent), while attacks and defences were a mere 16.41 per cent, and (2.36 per cent), respectively, despite the tightness of the race. The data were coded by two experienced coders with no political affiliation using content analysis with an inter-coder agreement score of 0.82 on Cohen’s kappa . Further findings of the study revealed that the two leading candidates were more focused on character (53.84 per cent) than policy issues (46.16 per cent) which corroborates critics’ concerns for the absence of issues during the campaigns. This also validates the development-gap hypothesis of political campaigns in developing democracies. Also, our data revealed the overwhelming entertainment structure of the commercials with music and dance accounting for 87.46 per cent and 70.69 per cent of the total duration of the commercials, respectively. Crowd motif was prominent as a popular building strategy, while images of presidential/vice-presidential candidates were present in 61.40 per cent of the commercials. Our data confirm the overwhelming entertainment and celebratory nature of political campaigns in Nigeria and validate the argument for policy-focused campaigns as Nigeria struggles with socio-economic and development issues that require deep policy thought and approach. It is recommended that political campaigns in Nigeria be structured as serious state matter which requires deep thought on policy issues and how to improve the living standards of the people – and not mere political entertainment designed to attract votes. It is also recommended that political parties differentiate themselves as distinct political alternatives to the electorate, rather than appear indistinguishable from one another.