This study examines the 2023 election manifesto of the APC presidential candidate. The objectives of the investigation are to analyse the pragma-discourse features in the election manifesto used by the APC presidential candidate to present himself positively and others negatively, examine the speech acts in the election manifesto through which the APC candidate presented his political agenda, describe the ideologies that influenced the policies of the APC candidate and reveal the covert meanings in the election manifesto expressed by the APC candidate. The pragma-discourse features used in the manifesto of the APC candidate are transitivity processes (material, mental and verbal), sentence types (simple and complex), cohesive relations (reference, additive and adversative conjunctions), deixis (temporal and spatial), inversion, and thematisation. The APC presidential candidate employed these features to present himself positively and other political opponents negatively. The dominant speech acts observed in the election manifesto are commissive and assertive. Bola Ahmed Tinubu employed commissive and assertive speech acts. The commissive speech act conveys the APC candidate’s plans in the election manifesto. The Assertive Speech Act states the policies and reforms of the APC candidate as well as his political opponents’ limitations. The study shows that the APC candidate employed covert and subtle means to brandish his political opponents’ limitations and inefficiency.
Keywords: All Progressive Congress (APC), Discourse Analysis, Political Parties, Pragmatics, campaign, manifesto, presidential candidate, presidential election
