Challenges of Muslim Actors in Nigeria’s Political Communication: A Case for Islamic Agenda Setting

Abstract

In Political Communication, three actors, the media, politicians and audience or readers, engage in interest-driving interaction. Each of these actors engages in receiving and interpreting political messages, which influence its political decisions. The media is the actor that dish out the messages and often, in Nigeria, these messages influence public policy formulation and other political matters. For the fact that every media outfit is formed to protect certain interest or ideology, most of the messages disseminated by the media in Nigeria are not favouring the interest of the Muslims, largely because most of the media actors are not Muslims. It is on this basis; this paper examines the challenges that Muslims face in Nigeria’s Political Communication vis-a-vis the demand on Muslims to understand the pressing need for investment in media industry to enable them set the agenda that would not only portray the religion of Islam and Muslims in good light but formulation of public policies in favour of the former and the latter. Content analysis was used in generating and analysing the data for the research where the existing literature were content analysed to determine the challenges Muslims and Islam face in Nigeria’s political communication and how those challenges can be addressed. Specific examples on the impact of Daily Trust newspaper’s coverage of Muslims and Islam were drawn. In order not to be taken over by flukes, the paper adopted the Agenda Setting Theory as guide. The choice of this theory was influenced by the fact that media is free in Nigeria and it sets agenda to favour the interest, ideology and disposition of its owners and practitioners. Therefore, this paper, among others, recommends the need for investment in the media industry by wealthy Muslims for the faithful to have adequate representation and voice in the Nigeria’s political communication.