Political Persuasion through Cultural Appeal: An Analysis of Radio Commercials of the 2015 Election in Oyo State, South-West, Nigeria

IntroductionThe 2015 general elections in Nigeria were keenly contested at all levels. The battle field was clearly set on the mass media whose messages overwhelmed the audience. This shows that the media have taken responsibility for providing adequate election information in order to prevent a failed election (Aghamelu, undated) and ensure issue-based campaigns as agreed upon by the registered political parties in the Abuja Accord (Ibrahim, Ogwezzy-Ndisika & Tejumaiye, 2015). In fact, free and fair election is hinged upon adequate knowledge of the candidates, political parties and election policies by the electorates as facilitated by the media (Ojekwe, 2015). The ubiquity feature of radio was exploited by the aspirants to reach the masses, especially those at the grassroots.Right from the pre-colonial era, radio and its content genres (including commercials) have been recognized as being very powerful in conscious engagement of the target audience especially during electioneering process (Nwokeafor and Okunoye, 2013; Spenkuch and Toniatti, 2015 ;Ojekwe, 2015). It adopts theatre-of-the-mind, music and sound effects to bring the audience into active participation in the message creation and delivery. An advert that emanates from a good marketing research and purely original creative concept is bound to sell the brand effortlessly (Daniyan, 2005). This is why the 21st century political advertising messages have been consumerized. The political communication of the contemporary time is not dissimilar to purely business and commercial communication (Adolphsen, 2009). The reason for this is obvious. Unlike what it used to be, the electorates now have more choices at their disposal for a single post and rely on information to take voting decisions. This situation is not atypical of a multiparty state like Nigeria. Hence, the election featured more of "votes to persons rather than to parties, and swings of the electorate from one party to another in different elections" (EUEOM, 2011: 11). Considering the sportsmanship and businesslike calculations of an average politician, it is not unlikely that to win in an election, the candidate needs to win the electorate's mind. This is why contemporary political communication campaigns now adopt commercial marketing strategies and processes. One way of doing this is to identify and appeal to specific and general interests and needs of the electorate (Juwah, 2012). This model was glaring in the 2009 American presidential election (Adolphsen, 2009; Ojekwe, 2015) and Nigeria seems to be taking after that now.In Oyo State for instance, mere observation revealed that the 2015 gubernatorial race featured strong actors in the political scene of the state and those candidates recognized that. One very unique feature of the political radio commercials by the various candidates was an appeal to the indigenous language and cultural orientation of the people. Although it is quite unclear, how well those commercials were able to influence voting decisions; quasi-statistical senses (Littlejohn and Foss, 2005) reveal that those commercials were to a large extent memorable.This understanding is premised on how phrases from the radio commercials became talk of the town among radio audience in the state. The focus of this study therefore is to examine the style, the linguistic qualities and the various appeals used in the various radio commercials of selected gubernatorial candidates in the 2015 election in Oyo State.The study adopts content analysis design since that is the appropriate method for the analysis of media content (Wimmer and Dominick, 2011). Audience involvement theory was used to drive the study. According to Werder (2009), Herbert Krugman who propounded the theory in 1965 believed that persuasive communication depends on active message processing. The main thesis of the theory "linked message effectiveness with the audience's degree or lack of personal involvement with the message". …