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This article examines the discursive practices of coercive persuasion deployed by Nigeria's Minister of Information and Communications to justify the rebranding Nigeria campaign as a policy designed for value reorientation of the citizenry in the wake of the country's image crisis both domestically and internationally. Sampling data from select addresses and interviews of the country's chief image maker during the campaign, the study analyses some discourse structures and strategies in the public discourse, drawing theoretical insights from van Dijk's Critical Epistemic Discourse Analysis to re-examine and re-interpret meaning in relation to knowledge claims in the organised persuasive communication. The article demonstrates that there is artful management of information and construction of knowledge in the persuasive discourse largely to present an institutional version of reality in re/telling Nigeria's national identity narratives. The study concludes that the rhetorical means of controlling the discourse and managing the minds of the audience typify leadership practices of knowledge construction to achieve policy dominance given certain norms and conventions of nation branding practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the discourse/counter-discourse generated in/by Reuben Abati's treatise, proclaiming that some spiritual forces must have been responsible for presidential slip-ups characteristic of some successive Nigerian Presidents who have been operating in/from Aso Villa, Nigeria's seat of power. It juxtaposes the ideology (the presidents are not to blame for their gaffes) in Reuben Abati's treatise with the divergent ideologies embedded in the counter-discourses of two main rejoinders by Femi Adesina and Sonala Olumhense. It analyses the stylistic markers-cum-rhetorical strategies in the texts with the aim of uncovering or discovering their underlying ideologies. It applies Jeffries' Critical Stylistics, a model of Critical Discourse Analysis which postulates that to critically approach texts, there is need for the reader to engage some specific tools of analysis to get a clear sense of how texts may influence the ideological outlook of their recipients. It reveals that although the texts producers use language to configure realities and alternative realities relative to the workings of Nigeria's Presidency thereby demonstrating the ideational function of language, the texts are highly ideological and interestingly their ideologies are threaded through linguistic form and choice. Thus, it demonstrates that Critical Stylistics is a viable model to analyse texts with underlying ideologies, using stylistic tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]