This chapter examines Nigerian online journalists' reception of Donald Trump's shithole remarks through a content analysis of 126 articles published online by 12 leading Nigerian newspapers, from January 2018 to January 2019. The chapter argues that Trump's shithole remarks engendered mitigated reactions from the Nigerian public, particularly from Nigerian online journalists. The greatest portion of these journalists' articles (over 68.73% of what they published online) hastened to endorse Trump's insult rhetoric and gloomy description of their country, presenting Trump's comment as a vivid depiction of the Nigerian socio-political and economic reality. In their articles, Nigerian journalists mainly used Trump's insult rhetoric as a tool to lambast the Nigerian leadership and lament the degradation of living conditions in their country. One thing that unfortunately remains evident and relatively deplorable in their reactions is the fact that little attention was given to the one-sidedness and exaggeration in Trump's comments. Based on such a premise, the journalists' endorsement of Trump's comments were in themselves one-sided and exaggerative, as they deliberately overlooked the positive facets of life in Nigeria and sounded as if Nigeria is all about negativities and doom.

Democracy, as the argument goes, has assumed a media character in the midst of mediatization of global politics. This has become more glaring in media coverage of politics vis-a-vis elections. In a way, it has fundamentally ignited the debate on media imagery and projection of power. Overall, the coverage to a large extent is particularistic in a sense as western media re-enacts the social realities of the global south to western audience. This chapter therefore argues that at the very core of this pattern of western media coverage of the global south, specifically, African elections, lies the positionality of issues and the commercialization of political contents. A recurring decimal of this coverage of African elections is the dominance of commercial contents over political journalism, mediatization, democratization, and political contents. The chapter also extrapolates the degree to which western media position African elections in a commercialized way and the implications of such media construction on political communication.

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