Power Dynamics in Nigeria’s Political Rhetoric: A Critical Analysis of Presidential Election Campaign Discourse

This article critically examines discursive expressions of power by Nigerian political actors during campaigns. Specifically, selected speeches delivered by three major presidential candidates in different parts of the country were critically analysed. The data comprises eighteen (18) speeches circulated from September 2022 to February 2023. The study draws insights from Fairlough’s approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) for its investigation of politicians’ use of linguistic resources of metaphor, pronominal, pidginisation, code switching, naming, among others to project self/in-group as powerful actors and others as uninfluential. These constructions of power were achieved through deployment of discursive strategies of appeal to emotion, negative framing of the opponent, criminalisation of others, self-promotion and polarisation. The study concludes that politicians’ campaign speeches were influenced by underlying ideologies of welfarism, collectivism, and supremacism deployed to present self or opponents as powerful or powerless actors in Nigerian political landscape. Considering these findings, the paper recommends that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), creates awareness among voters on politicians’ ideological framing of power in campaign discourse. This is expected to help citizens make informed choices in future elections.