Here’s why politicians are shoving those provocative documentaries and adverts in your face

by Adedayo Ademuwagun

The daisy girl advert run by Lyndon Johnson’s campaign in 1964 is probably the most famous mudslinging ad in history.

Johnson ran against Barry Goldwater in that year’s US presidential election. His team put a scary ad on TV to portray Goldwater as a nuclear war extremist who’s a danger to the American people.

The ad featured a little girl counting daisy petals. Then after a countdown to zero, the image of the girl was replaced by a cloud of nuclear blast, suggesting that Goldwater would plunge America into a nuclear war if he becomes president.

The ad basically implied that if you vote Goldwater, the Soviets will drop a nuclear bomb on your child. It horrified a lot of people and Goldwater fuelled it because he refused to shut up about war and destruction. Of course he lost the election.

The daisy girl ad was the first of its kind at the time. TVs were new and campaign ads used to feature mainly jingles. They weren’t as negative and ruthless as they are today.

Today it’s been more than half a century since the Johnson ad and mudslinging is the norm in political campaigning. The Johnson ad didn’t even mention Goldwater by name, but today’s messages are a lot more explicit and direct than that. Obama was called a Muslim who’s a threat to the American people and Buhari has been called an old, cruel extremist who’s about to die.

Campaigns these days call out targets on their views, their records and even their personality. There’s been an upward trend in the use of negative advertising in politics. This year’s election in Nigeria especially proves that.

In the last two years in the buildup to this election alone we’ve seen an unprecedented amount of mudslinging in the media from both sides. The opposition have sponsored negative messages about the president’s current record to ruin his image, and the president’s camp has counterattacked with various ads and documentaries to reverse Buhari’s impressive popularity. It’s been very provocative.

Perhaps mudslinging is more pronounced today because of the internet and social media. Four years ago when the last elections were held in this country, fewer Nigerians used social media. Things have changed today and a lot more people are engaged in the campaigns and campaigners have a wider audience to reach. Social media has broadened the means by which voters gain information about the election, the candidates and everything in between.

Politicians usually place negative ads in the media to try to manipulate the way people think about their opponent and essentially tarnish their opponent’s image. The objective is to instil fear, anxiety or anger in the voters in order to cloud their judgement in their own favour.

The use of images and sounds often makes a negative advert effective, because they get people’s attention and provoke strong emotion.

This year for example, an ad began running on TV targeting Buhari. The ad features pictures of two little girls and the pitiful voice of a girl appealing to Buhari to save her mother’s life. Then there’s a male voice-over explaining the context of the issue and saying some inflammatory things about the former military head. They’re obviously referring to Gladys Iyamah, a woman who was sentenced to death when Buhari was the head of state.

The ad does two things. First it tries to infuriate viewers and incite them against Buhari. Then it tries to plant doubts in their mind about the man’s present character.

Kelvin says, “It was touching to see the poor girl begging for her mother’s life. I wonder where they got that footage from. I know the people who produced this ad were trying to manipulate me with the ad, but it’s hard to not feel compassion for the poor girl. But that will not stop me from voting Buhari on March 28.”

People often criticise politicians for attacking each other instead of selling themselves. It turns people off and disinclines some people from voting.

“I think it’s manipulative and immoral,” says Ijeoma, “but it works anyway otherwise campaigners won’t keep doing it. If the politicians keep painting each other as terrible people, then which of them are we going to vote for?”

Jumoke says, “I think it’s good for us to learn more about the bad sides of the people we intend to vote. We need to know the good and the bad. Politicians often hide the bad, and so mudslinging is sometimes useful in that it exposes voters to the real side of the people running for office so that the voters can make correct choices.”

But sometimes mudslinging backfires especially if it’s just plainly stupid.

For instance, Fayose’s advert about Buhari received a lot of bashing online this year, so much that even the president’s campaign team denounced it. The advert compared Buhari to past heads of state who died in office and implied that Buhari too will die in office if Nigerians vote for him. It’s like when John McCain put out an ad in 2008 accusing his opponent Obama of planning to have sex education taught to kindergarten kids. It backfired, and Obama won the election anyway.

Voters would probably prefer to know how Buhari will fix the economy than be told that Jonathan is destroying the economy. They’d probably prefer to know how Jonathan will address corruption than be told how depraved Tinubu is.

But that’s just the nature of politics. Politics is amoral. The main thing is to win and take power, and everything else is pretty much on the back burner.

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Connect with the writer via Twitter: @_Adedayo_

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