Rhetoric in action: Dissecting discourse strategies in Peter Obi’s speech at Chatham House in the United Kingdom on Tuesday, 16 January 2023

Abstract

This article inspects the discursive strategies deployed by Peter Obi, a former governor of Anambra state and the presidential candidate of the Labour Party for the 25 February 2023 general elections in Nigeria, in the address he delivered at Chatham House in the United Kingdom on 16 January 2023, which he entitled ‘Policy and Institutional reforms at the heart of 2023 general elections in Nigeria’. This study is anchored on Teun A. Van Dijk’s (1998) ideological square model of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The study aims to reveal the discursive strategies deployed by Obi, which leapfrogged his party from its former place of obscurity in the Nigerian political firmament to a place of limelight and popularity. The data for this study is Obi’s speech at Chatham House, United Kingdom. The findings of this study reveal that Obi deployed the discursive strategies of populism, actor description, and positive self-presentation more than other discursive strategies to win the hearts of Nigerians, especially the youth. The study also reveals that the ideology pursued by Obi is ‘Change from old Nigeria to a new Nigeria’.