The impact of media political campaign of voting choice of the electorate in Nigeria. A study of Owerri municipal council in Imo State Nigeria.
The media political campaign often takes place during election period. The campaign comes before the election. It is an avenue for the candidates to sell or advertise their persons and electoral promise coupled with party manifestoes before the election date. And in order to reach the electorates, the politicians make use of the mass media, which is an agent of dissemination of information to the grassroots level.
Constant relaying of information about candidates and their political intentions and positions they are aspiring to occupy.
The major purpose of this media political campaign is to influence the voter’s choice of candidate or candidates during the elections.
In Nigeria, the mass media are saddled with the responsibility of informing, entertaining and educating the public. They also act as watching on the socio political machinery. These responsibilities out across all facets of life including polities and political decisions. It is often argued that the degreed of people’s participation in politics, depend on the information, which they get from the media.
Harold Laswell believes that “man has always needed something to watch over his environment and report to him on dangers, discoveries, opportunities, opinions, facts, decisions, changes and current trends. Something to entertain people on a broad scales something to broaden trade, commerce politics.
Beside, some experts as the informer and manipulator of mass opinion often describe the medeia, because they are the major sources of social and political information. What seems to give credence to the above claims is the prime places which governments, political time. They believe that the media can establish new attitudes or change
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existing forms of behavior, through there various programmed disseminated to the mass audience.
Again, the axiom “if the media says so, it must be true” and that the pen is mightier than the sword, typify the power of the media in the socio-political and economic existence of a nation. “To a large segment of the world’s population, the media portrays reality. Many people are not able to see that the media are not infallible”. No wonder, the third world countries, concerning Africa. They claim that such information are time-bombs, and if uncontrolled, may bring down the fragile political walls of the African countries, just recently, Kalu Ndukwe Odiba (1999) echoed in his seminar paper: “the mass media and opinion formation”, presented in a workshop organized by the academic staff union of polytechnics, bida chapter, that “the level pf political awareness, responsibility and participation in any given democratic society, depends largely on the public will, the media examine the political policies and programmed of the ruling class, educates the masses, motive, mobilizes and when necessary manipulates them into active participation or otherwise in the political programmed. Although he admitted that dissemination of information through the media does not equal acceptance by the masses, he emphasized that the media influence in modeling people’s political decision and behavior would remain unquestionable. It is believed that one of the underlying principles behind massive establishment of house, during political times is the indispensable foes of the media in selling political ideologies, education, propaganda and publicity.
In discussing the role of the Nigeria mess media during the 1979 general elections in Nigeria, Adoeoye Akinnsanya noted that.
“The press in both a product as well as a producer of mass opinion. He explained that the press is a product in the sense of their editorials, and a producer of opinion in the sense that they have been used to influence direct public opinions”.
Lucian Pye added that, “the mass media are amplifying factors in the society. They inform the people of the political behavior and misbehavior of these in power and thus, their power is amplified by making it possible for the people to determine the fate of the politicians in future elections” On, his arrivals back home in 1935, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe (late), one of African’s most glamorous politicians and Journalists noted that: “There is no better means to arouse African people than by the power of pen of the tongue”. By power of the pen, Zik meant of the newspaper and magazines while the tongue represented radio and television. It is against this background that many political parties and politicians commit large human and material resources on multiple media, political campaigns, at times, without proper analysis and understanding of the extent to which political campaigns through the mass media influences electoral decisions.
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