Othering and framing in President Tinubu’s state of the nation address on the abrogation of the subsidy regime

This study employed Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate Othering and Framing as linguistic strategies deployed in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 31 July 2023 State of the Nation Address. Situated in the domain of political rhetoric, the research addressed how dominant political actors discursively legitimise high-stakes policies and socially disruptive programmes by constructing an ideological scapegoat. The sociocognitive models of van Dijk and the three-dimensional approach of Fairclough are the frameworks used to examine how the regime utilised language to constitute a strict binary opposition: the virtuous, suffering Self (Government/Citizenry) versus the avaricious, anti-state Other (Smugglers/Cabals). The focus was placed on strategic lexicalisation (naming/labelling) and pronominalisation. It hypothesised that President Tinubu strategically framed the subsidy removal not as a painful structural adjustment, but as a moral and necessary crusade against a powerful, illicit elite. The findings demonstrated that this discursive tactic served to effectively divert public scrutiny from systemic economic flaws and simultaneously consolidate executive power by forging a unified nationalist alignment with the populace. This study concluded that the communicative success of this policy is inextricably tied to the potent linguistic construction of a visible enemy, reinforcing the profound ideological function of political discourse in postcolonial state.