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

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.