Coercive persuasion in the rebranding Nigeria campaign discourse

This article examines the discursive practices of coercive persuasion deployed by Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Communications to justify the rebranding Nigeria campaign as a policy designed for value reorientation of the citizenry in the wake of the country’s image crisis both domestically and internationally. Sampling data from select addresses and interviews of the country’s chief image maker during the campaign, the study analyses some discourse structures and strategies in the public discourse, drawing theoretical insights from van Dijk’s Critical Epistemic Discourse Analysis to re-examine and re-interpret meaning in relation to knowledge claims in the organised persuasive communication. The article demonstrates that there is artful management of information and construction of knowledge in the persuasive discourse largely to present an institutional version of reality in re/telling Nigeria’s national identity narratives. The study concludes that the rhetorical means of controlling the discourse and managing the minds of the audience typify leadership practices of knowledge construction to achieve policy dominance given certain norms and conventions of nation branding practices.