Benson Oke

Clamour for Political Restructuring in Nigeria Benson Oke

The clamour for restructuring Nigeria has been a recurring decimal in the Nigerian body polity. The agitation has been dominating the public domain for some years and this issue has been publicised through the use of digital, electronic, and print media. This study therefore examines the extent to which two Nigerian dailies cover and portray the clamour for restructuring Nigeria. The research design used for the study was content analysis. The data for the content analysis were derived from a sample of 121 issues of the two purposively selected Nigerian Daily newspapers namely: the Nation and Punch, from a population of 848 issues covering the period between January 2016 and February 2017. The results of the study showed that there was a significant coverage of the clamour for restructuring by the two newspapers. The portrayal of the issue was generally positive. The conclusion is that captioning or displaying restructuring stories on front pages, and editorial columns, contributed to public participation via opinion articles and ultimately aided the clamour for restructuring Nigeria. It is recommended that the media should give the same attention to other issues facing Nigeria.