Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Jonathan's campaign videos

Solomonsedelle points us to wonderful teaching material in his Nigerian Curiousity blog. He offers some commentary on the upcoming elections and he gives us links to some of Goodluck Jonathan's campaign videos. For most Americans, the video in English will be most useful. There are links to others in Yoruba, Hausa, Ijaw, and Igbo. The English video gives us a great opportunity to ask our students to identify what values and policies Jonathan wants to represent his campaign.

GOODLUCK JONATHAN'S CAMPAIGN VIDEOS

Goodluck Jonathan, has released a series of music videos as part of his campaign strategy. The videos, available on YouTube, feature different musical genres. This approach is in keeping with Jonathan's attempt to distinguish himself from other politicians by appealing to the youth vote. In that vein, he opened a Facebook page, announced his campaign to his Facebook fans and now has issued videos on youth-geared YouTube. Furthermore, Jonathan's main video, which is in English, is reminiscent of youth-oriented music and political videos being created by Nigerian musicians and youth groups, such as Light Up Nigeria…

The overwhelming majority of Nigeria's 150 million citizens are under the age of 35 and… 83% of young adults polled plan to not only register but vote in the upcoming elections…