From Habermas to Achebe: Ethical Issues of Political Discourse in Nigeria's National Assembly (2015-2017)

This paper examines ethical similarities shared by Jürgen Habermas and Chinua Achebe's respective conceptions of the public sphere. It juxtaposes the ethical discourse in Habermas and Achebe's public sphere with the discourse on the floor of the Nigerian National Assembly between 2015 and 2017. The paper adopted triangulation as its research method by complementing elements of qualitative research design with the quantitative. Using Habermas' theory of communicative action as its theoretical foundation, the study found that the Nigerian National Assembly operated as a group of individuals in the public sphere that impose policies and laws that emerge from their private interests on the masses. It concludes that political communication in the National Assembly is unethical as it violates the recommendations of both Habermas and Achebe's conceptions of the public sphere as an open space for democratic dialogue.