Prophecy, politics and cognitive dissonace resolution in 2023 Nigeria's presediential election

Abstract

Religion, in spite of its abuses and excesses, still maintains a pervasive influence in contemporary Africa‘s socio-political sphere. In the recent presidential election (2023) in Nigeria, predictive prophecy, which prognosticate the results before the actual date of the election, featured prominently in the pre- and postelection discourses. In this paper, how cognitive dissonance occasioned by the official result announced and the predictions of selected prophets will be given a critical assessment. Cognitive dissonance theory posits that dissonance is aroused whenever you simultaneously hold two cognitions that are psychologically incompatible. The theory is about a more sophisticated theoretical treatment of problems arising from consistency-inconsistency, balance-imbalance and congruity and incongruity factors in social psychology. In essence, the theory delineates the problems arising in post-decision-making circumstances. Drawing on cognitive dissonance theory, this paper analyses the pre-presidential election predictions of selected prophets and the official results announced and how the dissonance generated were subsequently resolved by these prophets and their acolytes. Most of the time, anytime dissonance is aroused, attempt is often made to resolve it in order to give the affected effective coping mechanism. Few cases of dissonance resolutions are also attested in ancient Israelite prophetism and these are evident in the extant prophetic corpus, as corollary some of these examples will be given a brief mention.