1.0 Introduction

Politicians the World over are known to be tactical, foxy and oratorical. Typical of a good politician, Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko the out-going Governor of Sokoto State invariably used Figurative expressions in his speeches to persuade his audience which is the hall-mark of every politician.

Audiences are naturally held spellbound and disarmed anytime language is molded and laced with figures speech.

Figures of speech (or ‘rhetorical tropes’) are ways of using words that may seem unusual but have a specific and desired effect. Read as ‘normal words’ they often break normal rules of grammar, but can be nevertheless understood. They are common in poetry and eloquent speech.

‘Figures speech’ is often used generically, and the big list here includes not only figures of speech but also a wider range of rhetorical and linguistic devices.

Governor Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko successfully manipulated language and gained an undue advantage over his political opponents. Sometimes, the input of his message or better still speech was not something to carry home about, but the figurative manipulation of words painted images and formed pictures that carried more emotion than mere words could convey.