Weaponizing Music for Political Contestation and Rivalry in Nigeria

This chapter examines the performative turn in Nigeria's political landscape through an analysis of YouTube videos involving three leading politicians in the country. It argues that Nigerian political actors use dance and music as strategies to wield power. The videos analyzed are the “Conqueror Dance” of Olusegun Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president; the “Elephant Dance” by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC); and Senator Dino Melaye's “Ajekun Iya Ni Oje.” The authors employed the critical discourse analysis as the conceptual framework and drew on Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional model as the analytical framework to examine the messages inherent in the songs, thus providing insight into the way Nigerian politicians use musical performances to propagate political inequality and abuse of power. The findings suggest that political actors in Nigeria employ tropes as performative devices to entrench mockery, intimidation, threat, vainglory, name-calling, political war and conquest, and imperialism.