“Those Speculating About My Health are Mischief Makers”: Contextualizing Newsreaders’ Comments on President Buhari’s Illness

Abstract

President Buhari’s illness has become a subject of political interest in Nigeria that is divergently represented in the local news media and variedly reacted to the public. Premium Times – one of the country’s famous private online newspapers had published a news story about the President’s telephone conversation with his Media Advisor with the headline, “Those speculating about my health are mischief makers”. This story received 250 comments from readers within three days of publication, thus signifying public anxiety over the President’s illness. In this study, we analyzed the 250 comments to establish the tones of public opinion on the President’s illness in relation to the country’s current issues with governance. Each comment, taken as a unit of analysis, was coded into operationalized categories of “Favors the President”; “Disfavors the President” and “Neutral to the President” to determine their relative incidence. The reasons indicated for the tones of the comments were coded into a variety of contextual categories such as “Discontent with economic recession”; “The Acting President (Osinbajo) is doing better”; “Buhari is needed for the success of anti-corruption policy and institutionalization of good governance in Nigeria”; “Empathy towards the President”; “Cultural aversion towards the President”. A Residual category was created and tagged “Others” to accommodate comments that do not fit into any of the afore-mentioned categories. Findings reveal that majority of the comments took the unfavorable tone, with cross-tabulation revealing “discontent with economic recession” the most as reason. The next closely indicated reason for unfavorable comments is “Cultural aversion to the President”. Minority comments that favored the President were largely appended to “Buhari is needed for the success of anti-corruption policy and institutionalization of good governance in Nigeria” as reason for the tone. Placing these results in a broad context, this study concludes that online news media hold a vestige of becoming more successful than the traditional print in stimulating governance debate, enhancing political participation and visibility of public opinion, and bridging the gaps between the government and the public in Nigeria.