2019 General Elections: Revisiting the Role of Mass Media in Crisis Resolution in Nigeria

Election is basically avenue where eligible members of the public are allowed to select or vote who will govern them. At times, the processes that guide this selection or voting remain smooth and perfect while in most cases they result into series of unimaginable crisis thereby led to fighting, burning of houses, cars and many other valuable properties and above all killing of one another. In a situation of this nature, media as fourth estate of the realm are expected not only to provide accurate and authoritative information about the whole thing but also to discharge their basic social responsibility of building an ideal society that is peaceful for all citizenry, since development triumph only in a peaceful society. This paper specifically examines in all ramifications; election, electoral process in Nigeria and the role of mass media toward having violence free electoral process. Empirically, this paper adopted survey method to gather resourceful data 200 respondents who were randomly selected among residents of Osun state, Nigeria. Social responsibility and peace journalism theories made a great impart with their assumptions that gave credence to this research work. At the end, analysis of data collected proved to the fact that men of pen profession have tremendous role to play in a peaceful democratic system and they must keep up this responsibility so as to keep our society in the path of peace in all our electoral processes in Nigeria