DISCOURSE AND IDEOLOGICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE 2015 AND 2016 PRO-BIAFRA PROTESTS IN SELECTED NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS

Abstract

The Pro-Biafra Protests (PBPs) by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and other pro-Biafra groups for the rights of the Igbo and their secession from Nigeria gained widespread attention in Nigerian newspapers. Existing studies on the PBPs have examined discourse acts and (im)politeness strategies, particularly in digital communities such as Nairaland and Facebook, with little attention paid to discourse and ideological representation in newspaper reports. This study was, therefore, designed to examine the discourse and ideological reportage of the 2015 and 2016 PBPs in selected Nigerian newspapers, with a view to analysing the discourse and ideological underpinnings. Ruth Wodak’s Discourse Historical approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, complemented with Van Leeuwen’s Representation of Social Actors and Halliday’s Transitivity model of Systemic Functional Linguistics served as framework. The interpretive design was used. Four widely circulated Nigerian newspapers were purposively selected: The Punch,The Nation, The Sunand Vanguard. Sixty news reports on the PBPs between 2015 and 2016 were drawn from the selected newspapers (The Punch (9),The Nation (13), The Sun (20)and Vanguard (18)), covering a period when the protests were prominently reported in the print media. Data were subjected to critical discourse analysis. Six discourse issues, three representational projections and five ideologies were identified in the reports on the PBPs. The discourse issues identified were marginalisation of the Igbo, worsening economic situation, human rights abuse, injustice, corruption and unemployment. The three representational projections of the protesters were as freedom fighters, economic saboteurs and law-abiding citizens. These representations were explicated mainly through four transitivity processes: material, verbal, relational and behavioural; and eight discursive strategies: aggregation, functionalisation, differentiation, determination, genericisation, association, categorisation and collectivisation. The voices projected in the representation included those of the protesters, the reporter and the government. The reports in The Nation and The Punch newspapers projected the protesters as economic saboteurs, while those in The Sun and Vanguard depicted them as law-abiding citizens and freedom fighters. Five underlying ideologies – separatist, pacifist, liberationist, dissentist and indifferentist – were projected in the representation of the protests. While the separatist and the liberationist advocated a radical approach that would lead to self-determination, the pacifists proffered the milder approach of negotiation and dialogue. The dissentist ruled out the idea of self-governance, while the indifferentist was unconcerned about the status quo. The reports in The Nation and ThePunch newspapers featured more of the dissentist ideology, while those in The Sun and Vanguard tended towards the liberationist, pacifist and separatist ideologies. The discourse issues, representational projections and ideologies identified in the reports on the pro-Biafra protests reveal thestrategic management of the voice of social actors in the reportage of the protests.This, therefore, underscores the contextual relationship that exists between language and social practices