Language, responsibility and civility

• Published date: 14 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

POLITICAL campaigns are part of political competition and participation in which candidates and politicians sell their plans and programmes to the electorate so that they can vote for them in their bid to get power in any democracy . Manifestoes and press releases are part and parcel of campaigns and they are issued continuously till the deadline to stop them before elections by the electoral authorities come into force . The same goes for affirmations , clarifications and denials on matters raised by politicians who are contesting during campaigns in which civility and good breeding dictate should be done in moderate and polite manner without the use of abusive language . It is the misuse of language in the political arena by political competitors , leaders and politicians in general on the campaign trail or in government and power , that concerns us today . This is because words in language and culture are like broken eggs which all the force of the universe cannot gather together once the egg is spilt to the ground of human discourse , political campaigns or competition .I will illustrate with vivid examples and show how they offend decency and moderation in their state of use of language which I find offensive and almost inhuman if not outright wicked and very rude for civil discourse and campaigns

In Nigeria this week the campaigns degenerated to the state of health of the presidential candidates for the two major political parties namely the APC which is in power and the PDP . The PDP while reacting to allegations of corruption and state of health of its presidential candidate issued a nasty press release on purely personal health issues of the APC presidential candidate that I will not mention here because they should be un printable in any decent society . In the US the president , Joe Biden admitted he has kept classified documents in his possession which he should have turned over to government archives after his tenure as Vice President to Barak Obama and was played back his condemnation of his predecessor as ' irresponsible' when Donald Trump was alleged to have kept similar documents at his Mara Lago residence which was raided by the FBI last year . In the UK Prince Harry son of Diana former Princess of Wales and reigning King Charles 111 admitted killing many Talibans in Afgahnistan as he was taught by the army to regard them as a game on a chess board and not human beings and that he took cocaine some time while he was growing up . Let me...