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“Sharia Or Death”: The Mass Mediated Hegemonic Rhetoric Of Theocratic Populism In Nigeria’S Muslim North, Farooq Kperogi

Faculty and Research Publications

This paper explores the genealogy and contours of theocratic populism in Nigeria’s Muslim North from 1999 to2007. It examines the mass-mediated rhetorical articulations of Islamic theocratic populist politics in the region while laying bare its motivations in a religiously plural polity such as Nigeria. It argues that the introduction of Sharia laws in Nigeria’s Muslim majority northern states was a populist response by a traumatized hegemonic power bloc in Nigerian politics — which had hitherto taken for granted its right to dominate the social and politicalspace —to regain its political and discursive high ground against an emergent, competing power bloc. …