LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 23:9 September 2023
ISSN 1930-2940

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Human Cloning in Nigeria Political Space:
A Pragmatic Analysis of Selected Online Article on the Buhari/Jubril Dilemma

Oluwaseun Amusa

Abstract

The online space has continued to be a platform for not only private and mundane discussions, but also a tribune for voicing critical political and national opinions. Nigerians and the international community have employed online media, as well as other media platforms to articulate their thoughts on the claims which favoured the possibility of the demise of the immediate past president of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari, after a prolonged illness in the year 2007 and the ploy of a Jubril of Sudan clone in his place. This study examined the pragmatic strategies employed in the online articles on the national dilemma caused by the Buhari/Jubril claims and refutals, in response to the lacuna in the literature on such analytical investigations on the subject. An online article titled, “Buhari: The real, the fake and the dead” authored by a Nigerian writer, Tunde Odesola retrieved from the online page of The Punch Newspaper on December 3, 2018, served as data for the study. The article was analysed using insights from the Stance Theory and the Pragmatics in general. The analysis revealed eight pragmatic strategies utilised by the writer, namely Biblical allusion, evaluative stance and positioning, epistemic stance and evocation of sarcasm, metaphors, and derogative labelling as anti-Jubrilist positioning, epistemic stance, and evocation of (dis)alignment, antithetical evocations, evaluative stance and berating, evaluative stance and justifying. These result in a pragmatic reconstruction of the readers’ views on the issue.

Keywords: Buhari, human cloning, Nigerian politics, pragmatic strategies, stance theory, online space.

Introduction

The online space has continued to be a platform for not only private and public discussions, but also a tribune for voicing critical political and national opinions. Nigerians and the international community have employed online media, as well as other media platforms to articulate their thoughts on the claims which favour possibilities of the demise of the incumbent president of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari, after a prolonged illness in year 2007 and the rumour of a Jubril of Sudan clone in his place. Arising from the situation was the emergence of at least two extreme factions of public opinion: the pro Buhari/Jubril faction spearheaded by a popular ethnic leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), and Buhari/Jubril rebuttals spearheaded by popular journalists, newspaper columnists and other Buhari loyalists.

Many linguistic studies have investigated the way communication is done in the online media in Nigeria covering different scope including humour (Taiwo, Odebunmi and Adetunji, 2016); terrorism (Chiluwa and Adetunji 2013; Chiluwa and Odebunmi 2016); news reportage strategies (Arrese and Perucha 2006; Chiluwa 2011) and the political discourse in Nigeria (Opeibi 2005, 2009, 2011; Adegoju and Oyebode 2015; Omidiora, Ajiboye and Abioye 2020; Chiluwa, Taiwo and Ajiboye, 2020); Stance taking (Biber, and Finnegan,1989). From the foregoing, it is evident that no known linguistic investigation has been done on the discussions of cloning in the Nigerian political arena and especially on the rumoured cloned substitution of former president Buhari.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Oluwaseun Amusa
Department of English Studies
Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko
Nigeria
iamseunamusa@gmail.com
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