Oath as a Strategy for National Security: An Appraisal of The Nigerian Political Oaths of Administration

Abstract

This paper appraised the Nigerian Political Oaths of office designed as security measures 
to guide, and checktakers in order to uphold the rule of law and maintain order in the 
society. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the Speech Act theory,were synthesized to 
consider how committing or limiting the vocabularies employed in formulating the texts of 
Nigerian oaths of offices are.Two oath texts – Oath of office of president and governor 
were purposively sampled for critical examination. Findings revealed that self-assertive 
expressions such as‘ will be faithful?, ?will discharge my duties?, ?will abide by?, deployed 
to demonstrate willingness and obligation are harped upon in the texts to the neglect of 
options that are germane to enforcing the translation of those promises into concrete 
actions. The paper opined that it should be included in the oaths taken that oath 
defaulters be prosecuted or impeached to serve as punitive measures.