NEWSPAPERS’ COVERAGE OF NIGERIA’S TREASURY SINGLE ACCOUNT POLICY UNDER PRESIDENT MOHAMMADU BUHARI

Abstract

The Nigerian treasury single account policy was enforced and made to be implemented by MDAs with a set deadline of 15 September 2015 by President Mohammadu Buhari. As important as the policy proposed, the researcher sought to ascertain the prominence, direction, depth, frequency of coverage and interpretations given to the TSA policy by Nigerian daily newspapers. Based on the Agenda Setting, Social Responsibility and framing theories, the study content-analysed 96 issues from four selected Nigerian daily newspapers over a period of two years. A multi-stage sampling technique was used for the study. This involved random sampling for the dailies and composite/Stempel (1952) sampling for the issues. The findings suggest that TSA policy issues were relatively
prominent in Nigerian daily newspapers, hence, agenda was fairly set for its implementation. The newspapers, in their social responsibility role, gave other interpretations to TSA policy beyond the anticipated. However, the policy lacked adequate coverage, in terms of frequency of reports considering the number of issues covered from August 2015 to August 2017. The study concluded that Nigerian newspapers were neither completely negative nor neutral in their coverage of TSA policy stories but in the same vein, were less supportive in their view of the policy