A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Images of Banditry inNorthern Nigeria

Studies on security in Nigeria have focused on the prevalence, incidences and responses of the governments in Nigeria to the insecurity situations and very few on the paralinguistics.The images have attracted our attention and that is why this study seeks to examine the images of bandits on newspaper pages and other online platforms.The design of this study is both the qualitative and the quantitative research design method in collecting, describing and analyzing the data.The type of sampling technique adopted for this study is purposive sampling.Ten sampled images and comments on social media and newspapers were analysed using the framework of visual discourse resources.The elements in the framework include: ideational mode, interpersonal mode, textual mode, denotation mode, connotation, style, illustrations amongst others.We find that the images of the bandits are therefore viewed as those of criminality, facelessness, militancy, violence, killers, criminal gang, human right abusers, forest dwellers, teenage criminals and murderers and not as the actual Nigerian Fulani people.This is not to exempt the different nomenclatures which the media has given to the different terrorist groups in Nigeria.We conclude therefore that there appears to be a negative image of the Fulani race amongst Nigerians which informs the character and image of banditry with which these normads are being tagged.