Framing the National Question: The Role of Nigeria's Media and Political Elites

Abstract

The study focused on the role of the media and political elites in framing the National Question 
in Nigeria. The research adopted the survey design format predicated on the use of primary 
sources of data. The population of this study comprised of politicians, their media advisers and 
government press officers; media gatekeepers, (e.g. political news editors and the columnists); 
political/media scholars and informed members of the public. The first stage of the sampling 
technique involved the use of a structured questionnaire to elicit information on the attitude of 
Nigeria's media and political elite to the National Question. The second stage included selected 
interviews while the final stage focussed on triangulation and analysis. The findings revealed 
that Nigerian politics has become increasingly reliant on the media in recent years, thereby 
making the media an essential and unavoidable tool for communicating and promoting political 
messages and activities. It also revealed that most of the issues and arguments about the 
National Question are largely framed and shaped on media platforms which the political elites 
have found to be veritable marketplaces of ideas and contestations. Findings also demonstrated 
the importance of the role of media elites in defining the long-term political and democratic 
culture in Nigeria since they offer their political counterparts the avenue for articulating their 
notions and understanding of national questions. Another critical result was the nuanced yet 
unmistakable evidence of a significant divergence of attitudes to the national question among 
members of the northern elites when compared with their southern counterparts. The study,
therefore, recommends that further scholarly efforts should be invested in continuously 
interrogating the role and impact of the media in shaping the character of politics in Nigeria, 
so as to monitor and mitigate the potentially deleterious effects of mediatization of politics on 
the democratic structure and health of the Nigerian society.