Follow Us on Google
If a foreigner were asked to identify Nigeria’s real national motto, the answer might well be: “The Bigger the Scandal, the Less the Explanation.”
Welcome to the republic where fraud is no longer merely a crime; it often appears to function as a parallel institution in which the living and the ghosts seem to collaborate with astonishing efficiency.
If nations had corporate identities, Nigeria might well be registered as The Federal Republic of Fraudulence Incorporated, a peculiar enterprise where the impossible merely awaits official confirmation, the unbelievable is defended with astonishing confidence, and the inexplicable is explained until it becomes even more incomprehensible.
Here, major scandals frequently arrive wearing official badges and quietly depart wrapped in institutional silence. Every few months, the nation is treated to another blockbuster episode. A fresh controversy erupts. Citizens demand answers. Civil society protests. The media investigates. Government promises a thorough probe. Committees are inaugurated. Press conferences are held. Assurances are generously distributed.
Then, almost on cue, the scandal quietly disappears, because another scandal has arrived to bury the previous one.
Nigeria has perfected the delicate art of replacing accountability with amnesia.
The latest controversy surrounding an allegedly fake presidential council has once again exposed a familiar national script.
How does an institution whose legal foundation has been publicly questioned gain recognition within government circles? How does it allegedly enjoy official patronage, influence public affairs and even find its way into budgetary allocations? Who created it? Who authorised it? Who supervised it? Who benefited?
Who should ultimately be held responsible?
These are not difficult questions. They are the very basic questions any functioning democracy ought to answer.
Yet, instead of straightforward explanations, Nigerians are too often treated to elaborate narratives that somehow generate even more confusion than the original allegations.
Government spokespersons emerge before television cameras wearing remarkable composure, attempting to weave stories that would struggle to convince children gathered around a village fire on a moonlit night.
One statement contradicts another. A clarification demands another clarification. Denials gradually become qualifications. Qualifications are reinterpreted. Reinterpretations eventually require fresh explanations.
Before long, the official version becomes more unbelievable than the controversy it was meant to resolve. In many democracies, spokespersons explain government policy. In Nigeria, they sometimes appear to explain away the government itself.
The irony is particularly painful because history has a stubborn memory. Some of today’s most vigorous defenders of official contradictions once stood on the opposite side of the barricades. They were celebrated as fearless pro-democracy activists, who confronted military dictatorships, challenged propaganda, resisted authoritarianism and demanded transparency, constitutionalism and accountability.
They marched. They protested. They risked intimidation. They inspired hope. They taught Nigerians that power should answer to the people.
Today, many of those same voices stand accused of defending the very culture of opacity they once denounced. The slogans have changed. The vocabulary has evolved. The principles have become negotiable.
The revolutionary fire appears, at least in the eyes of many Nigerians, to have been replaced by carefully prepared official talking points.
History can be remarkably unforgiving. It remembers not only what people fought against, but also what they eventually chose to defend.
Meanwhile, ordinary Nigerians continue to inhabit two entirely different republics.
In one republic, a trader who defaults on a modest tax obligation quickly encounters the full machinery of the state. A commercial bus driver with expired vehicle papers is sanctioned almost immediately. A young graduate who mistakenly fills an official form incorrectly may spend months navigating layers of unforgiving bureaucracy.
However, in the other republic, colossal controversies drift effortlessly through public life with astonishing resilience. Files disappear. Investigations remain “ongoing.” Reports are “being compiled.” Committees are “reviewing the matter.”
Recommendations are “awaiting implementation.”
Years pass. Governments change.
Administrations come and go.
The questions remain exactly where citizens left them.
Nigeria’s archives have become crowded with monumental scandals that began with righteous indignation but quietly ended in collective forgetfulness.
Billions disappear without convincing explanations. Contracts materialise without visible projects. Ghost workers receive salaries. Ghost companies secure contracts. Phantom beneficiaries populate payrolls.
Perhaps, the deeper question is one many Nigerians increasingly whisper, even if few dare to ask aloud: could the country’s endless cycle of institutional absurdities be rooted in the very foundations of its nationhood?
Nigeria remains, in the eyes of many observers, a state assembled by colonial fiat, where numerous peoples with distinct histories, cultures and aspirations were welded together under one flag without their consent. More than six decades after independence, the old fault lines continue to surface, suggesting that political geography alone does not automatically produce national cohesion.
Adding to the irony is the enduring controversy surrounding the country’s constitutional foundation. Critics have long questioned the legitimacy of a constitution that famously begins with the solemn declaration, “We the people…”, even though many Nigerians insist they neither debated nor adopted it through a popular process. The persistent claim that the document bears no signatures from its drafters has become, for many, a powerful metaphor for a broader crisis.
Now, if public reports surrounding the latest controversy are eventually substantiated, even ghost councils may have joined the growing list of invisible institutions with visible influence.
Perhaps, in Nigeria, the ghosts have simply become better organised than the living.
Fantasy itself now struggles to compete with reality.
Indeed, Nigerian comedians increasingly face unfair competition because official events frequently outpace fiction. A script rejected in Nollywood for being too unrealistic might easily qualify as tomorrow’s political headline.
That is, perhaps, the saddest commentary of all.
The deeper crisis confronting Nigeria is not merely corruption. Corruption, tragic as it is, has existed in many societies. The greater danger is the normalisation of corruption.
It is the gradual lowering of public expectations. It is the dangerous belief that no matter how outrageous a controversy becomes, enough time, enough official statements and enough carefully managed distractions will eventually bury it beneath the next national crisis.
Citizens are slowly being conditioned to believe that accountability is optional, transparency is inconvenient and truth is negotiable.
We have become emotionally vaccinated against outrage.
Nothing shocks us. Nothing surprises us. Nothing seems impossible anymore.
Today, it is an allegedly questionable council. Tomorrow, perhaps, an imaginary ministry. The day after, perhaps, a department that exists only on official letterheads but faithfully receives annual appropriations. And instead of constitutional lawyers, perhaps, comedians will eventually be invited to explain governance.
A democracy cannot flourish where transparency is treated as an inconvenience and accountability as a ceremonial courtesy. Nations are not destroyed only by those who steal public resources. They are equally endangered by those who repeatedly ask citizens to suspend reason in defence of the indefensible.
Every unresolved scandal quietly teaches the next public official that consequences are negotiable. Every unanswered question weakens public confidence. Every disappearing investigation chips away at institutional credibility. Every official explanation that insults common sense widens the distance between government and the governed.
The greatest casualty is no longer money; it is trust.
Trust, once lost, cannot be restored through press briefings, carefully worded communiqués or eloquent television appearances. It returns only when institutions demonstrate that no individual, office or organisation is too powerful to answer legitimate public questions.
Nigeria deserves better than governance that increasingly resembles political theatre. The nation deserves institutions capable of explaining themselves without contradiction, public finance that can withstand public scrutiny, investigations that produce conclusions rather than headlines, and leaders who recognise that accountability is not an act of generosity but a constitutional obligation.
Until public office becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than perpetual explanation, Nigeria risks remaining a republic where scandals rarely reach conclusions, investigations rarely produce consequences and truth itself must first queue for official clearance before obtaining permission to exist.
Perhaps, our greatest renewable resource is no longer crude oil.
Perhaps, it is no longer agriculture, or even the resilience of Nigerians. Perhaps, the nation’s most inexhaustible natural resource is the endless supply of unanswered questions. And until those questions begin receiving honest answers instead of increasingly unbelievable explanations, Nigeria will remain a country where reality has become its most gifted comedian.
