Political humour is a recurring element in print media and other genres, touching various areas of Nigerian political discourse. A number of research studies have investigated political humour in contemporary Nigerian political discourse. The political humour deployed in responding to some prominent political events in 2016, however, is relatively unexplored. This current endeavour, therefore, attempts to examine the pragmeme of humour in selected 2016 political events that are remediated in political cartoons. These include political matters such as Nigeria’s 56th Independence Anniversary, the crusade against corruption, which Muhammadu Buhari commenced when he became the President of Nigeria, and the alleged 2016 budget padding scandal that rocked the House of Representatives. The frameworks for the study comprise Flamson and Barrett’s Encryption Theory of Humour and Mey’s Pragmeme Theory. The six political cartoons that were subjected to discourse interpretations were culled from Aprokotoons Media, Nigeria’s foremost internet-based cartoon journal with a large collection of relevant cartoon resources for print and electronic media. The results revealed that audiences who were well informed on these political activities were able to decrypt the cartoons because they shared the same key political knowledge as the cartoonist. Thus, honest laughter is produced, but on the other hand, the cartoons’ essential features are subordinated to the pragmeme of humour of idle campaign promises and Nigeria’s hopeless condition at 56; self-centred leadership, lawmakers who are lawbreakers, and that the worst form of corruption is selective justice. Hence, these findings enhance the public perception of the country’s political actors, and underscore the need for rethinking the sensibility of political acts, promises, and decisions.

This article investigates metaphors in newspaper reports that border on mergers and acquisitions within the 2005 recapitalisation exercise in Nigeria. It considers conceptual metaphors used in depicting mergers and acquisitions among Nigerian banks and how they are deployed by journalists in shaping readers’ perception of the mergers and acquisitions activities. Data for the study comprise thirty purposively sampled articles on recapitalisation published between year 2004 and 2006, in three selected Nigerian newspapers: Business Day, The Punch and ThisDay, which had relevance, wide circulation and adequate reports on economic issues in Nigeria. Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory provides the theoretical perspective for the data analysis. The study reveals two conceptual metaphors: MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS AS WAR and MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS AS CONNUBIAL RELATIONS. The metaphors of war influence readers’ perception of the mergers and acquisitions exercise as a corporate management task that is highly indispensable, confrontational and susceptible to aggression considering the appalling state of the Nigeria banking sector and the huge recapitalisation funds required of individual banks. While the connubial metaphors offered readers a perception of an important exercise that entails due process, cooperation, and togetherness in achieving the stipulated recapitalisation funds. Metaphors perform multifarious functions in the construction and comprehension of financial issues. They are not the consequence of genus, but the sequence of motivated cognitive devices used by Nigerian journalists in rendering contemporary Nigerian issues.

The paper examined the discursive structure of waka chants as performed by Islamic clerics among the Yoruba Muslims at the event of fidāʼu. This attempt considers waka chants as pragmeme, with particular attention on the language and extra-linguistic cues deployed within the chants, and how the entire situational contexts which condition the waka chants regiment the language use. Eight documented waka chants in honour of some deceased Muslims in South-western Nigeria were sampled. The waka chants which were mainly in the Yoruba language as rendered by Muslim clerics were transcribed and translated to English language for the purpose of analysis. With insights from Mey’s theory of pragmeme, the paper ascertained that waka chants at the event of fidāʼu possess inherent pragmatic forces beyond their invocation to elucidate sermons and lives of a deceased Muslim. Such chants, this paper argues, perform socio-religious actions which are of immense benefits to the living.