Oath as a Strategy for National Security: An Appraisal of The Nigerian Political Oaths of Administration

This paper appraised the Nigerian Political Oaths of office designed as security measures to guide, and checktakers in order to uphold the rule of law and maintain order in the society. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the Speech Act theory,were synthesized to consider how committing or limiting the vocabularies employed in formulating the texts of Nigerian oaths of offices are.Two oath texts – Oath of office of president and governor were purposively sampled for critical examination. Findings revealed that self-assertive expressions such as‘ will be faithful?, ?will discharge my duties?, ?will abide by?, deployed to demonstrate willingness and obligation are harped upon in the texts to the neglect of options that are germane to enforcing the translation of those promises into concrete actions. The paper opined that it should be included in the oaths taken that oath defaulters be prosecuted or impeached to serve as punitive measures.