News

September 24, 2015

2015 presidential election, most-keenly contested poll in Nigeria — Study

By Daniel Eteghe

The 2015 Presidential election in Nigeria has been described as the most closely and keenly contested election in the history of the country.

Voters

Voters

This is just as the campaign organised by the various contestants thrived on high level strategic approaches, tactics and demagoguery as well as political advertisements that could pull down their opponents in the presidential race.

A study of University of Lagos Postgraduate Students’ Group of newspaper coverage of the 2015 Presidential Election by Nigerian newspapers showed that the tempo of the political atmosphere in the country before and during the election was very high which prompted attention from the international community that gave rise to the signing of a peace pact between the two major contestants, General Muhammadu Buhari and President Goodluck Jonathan in the race on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, respectively.

According to the study, due to the intensity of the contest during the election periods, most Nigerian newspapers gave a lot of space and prominence to the reportage of the election, in spite of issues as fuel scarcity and insecurity which also competed for attention.

The study made use of three national newspapers including The Punch Newspaper, Vanguard Newspaper and The Sun Newspaper that gave a lot of prominence in the reportage of the 2015 presidential election.  is the highest election and perhaps a major nucleus for other issues (both good and bad) on the land, then it can only be given the greatest prominence,” the study revealed.