‘Let’s buy money before buying food’: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of WhatsApp memes on the Nigerian Naira redesign policy

Abstract

In October 2022, the Central Bank of Nigeria declared that the three highest denominations of the Nigerian currency would be redesigned in order to strengthen the country’s cashless policy. This led to several protests involving loss of lives, due to scarcity of cash and limited access to electronic payment. This study examines WhatsApp memes that were circulated during the enforcement of the Naira redesign policy, with a view to investigating the ideological representations of the effect of the policy on Nigerians. The purposively selected data are analysed qualitatively from a multimodal critical discourse analytical framework. The findings reveal that the memes are discursively constructed in order to depict Nigerian citizens as victims of the policy, exploitation of the masses by other citizens and inadequacy of commercial banks as perpetrators, amid other representations. The study concludes that the memes are used to project an anti-welfarist ideology of the government.