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The Nasarawa State University at Keffi was a beehive on the penultimate Wednesday. On that day, Prof. Emmanuel Dandaura, the pioneer Director of the Institute of Strategic and Development Communication (ISDEVCOM) and Vice-President of the Nigeria Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), delivered the 59th inaugural lecture of the university established in 2001. It was a lecture sadly missed by those who neither participated physically nor digitally via Zoom because Dandaura was at his professorial and oratorial best. He effectively communicated the logic inherent in lying with applause. In essence, Dandaura’s “When Applause Lies” was about “communication, power and war between reputation and perception in Nigeria.”
The logic of his thesis was that communication has never been more abundant in Nigeria than it presently is, with official statements flooding the airwaves, social media amplifying every policy pronouncement, and public events choreographed for maximum visibility. Despite these, trust remains stubbornly scarce. This is the contrast he established using data from the Afrobarometer, which reveals a striking paradox. The Afrobarometer data showed that over 70 per cent of Nigerians are regularly exposed to government communication campaigns, but fewer than 30 per cent trust the institutions behind them. This gap, Prof. Dandaura argued, is not accidental. It is also the issue between applause and lies. It says that the applause that greets leaders and policies is often not emblematic of genuine endorsement. Often, it is manufactured perception, always loud and visible, but hollow. In Prof. Dandaura’s thesis, such applause signifies exposure, not belief, and visibility, not credibility. “When applause lies, governance becomes theatre,” he argued. The implication is erosion of legitimacy.
Dandaura’s argument is rooted in his experience of bridging theatre and strategic communication. Trained at the University of Jos under mentors such as Prof. Samson O.O. Amali and Ambassador Iyorwuese Hagher, he began as a theatre artist before evolving into a scholar of development communication. His early plays “Nation Builders” and “Venom for Venom”, alongside theoretical works such as “Development Entertainment” (2010), established theatre not as mere entertainment but as “social technology” that configures meaning, constructs collective memory, and orchestrates public consent.
With over 153 high-impact publications, leadership within the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, and advisory roles with the African Union and UNESCO, Prof. Dandaura observed the same dynamics migrate from the stage to the state. He posits that governance has adopted the drama logic of performance, in which power is enacted, and communication directs the script, while citizens are positioned as audience rather than co-creators. The result, he posits, is a communicative environment in which perception consistently outpaces reputation, because perception is fast, emotional, and manufactured, whereas reputation is slow, cumulative, and earned through consistent conduct.
At the heart of Prof. Dandaura’s inaugural lecture is a distinction which he rigorously made between reputation and perception. Reputation, as Charles Fombrun (1996) defines it, reflects stakeholders’ collective judgment of credibility and reliability. It is built through accountability, institutional memory, and sustained performance. Reputation possesses depth and resilience. In contrast, perception is immediate and responsive to visibility, symbolism, and narrative framing. It thrives on media spin, press briefings, and ceremonial gestures. He argues that when perception races ahead of reality, institutions appear credible because they are seen. However, they fail the test of lived experience. Prof. Dandaura illustrates this with his Perception-Reputation Spectrum and argues that where applause becomes deceptive, it no longer signals “I believe you” but merely “I have seen you.”
For Dandaura, applause, in itself, functions as ritualised social communication. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s dramaturgic framework (1959), Dandaura notes that in multilingual, multi-ethnic Nigeria, clapping is never neutral. It regulates social sequences, reinforces power relations, and can be engineered through rhetorical cues. However, modern studies confirm that 70 per cent of political applause is driven by structured devices rather than spontaneous conviction. The fact is that applause often masks doubts. Applause can be arranged, sponsored, or rented. The consequence, Dandaura warns, is a system where public rituals coexist with private disillusionment. Under such realities, visibility replaces verification while exposure masquerades as endorsement.
Prof. Dandaura draws on his background in theatre as a communication tool and argues that, with applause, society becomes a stage where power holders are actors, communication professionals are scriptwriters, and the media serves as the stage manager. At the centre of this lies a power preservation loop that employs perception, which is amplified through communication and elicits applause, which is misinterpreted as legitimacy. Here, reputation, which is always slow, institutional, and grounded in performance, struggles to compete. When perception defeats reputation, citizens listen with caution, respond with hesitation, and applaud without commitment. It means that applause is a lie, and it enables governance to shift from serving the public to convincing the public. As Prof. Dandaura rightly puts it, “We have become skilled at generating applause, but less committed to earning trust.”
To measure this deception, Dandaura proposes the Applause Index, which is a conceptual framework that maps the gap between perceived acclaim (applause) and actual public trust (reputation). He created a bar chart that shows high applause (perception) alongside lower trust (reputation), which reveals a credibility gap. The model expands into four quadrants of governance: these include performative governance, represented by high applause but low trust. He sees this as a most dangerous situation where communication is effective and narratives compelling, but citizens remain unconvinced because “presentation substitutes for delivery.”
Then, there is the legitimate governance quadrant indicated by high applause and high trust. Dandaura sees this as the ideal situation because it represents a state where words align with deeds. This is closely followed by the quiet credibility quadrant, which is indicated by low applause but high trust. For him, this is about an effective but under-communicated performance. The last quadrant is the system failure quadrant, which is indicated by low applause and low trust. According to him, this is represented by “neither visibility nor substance.”
Prof. Dandaura further illustrated his thesis with Nigeria. He argued that the country occupies the performative quadrant and empirically illustrated this with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 2023 presidential campaign promise to resolve the power crisis within four years. He argues that the applause which followed the promise was enthusiastic. Three years later, the same promise circulates as parody videos, skits, and songs, confirming that the applause attracted by the promise was not earned. It was his thesis in the lecture that when performance fails to follow promise, perception cannot mature into reputation.
One can further analyse the Tinubu government using the performative quadrant, as established by Dandaura, in examining the promises and the applause that followed the fuel subsidy removal. The same quadrant can be applied in analysing the petroleum sector reforms, power sector reforms, telecommunications liberalisation, and political communication in Nigeria. In each of these policy uptakes, leadership visibility surges but credibility declines as repetition of messaging increases exposure but erodes belief.
Prof. Dandaura’s inaugural lecture is not merely diagnostic. It is prescriptive. In the section of the 100-page lecture titled “Towards a Restoration of Credibility: From Performance to Trust,” Dandaura calls for a fundamental reorientation. He insists that communication must shift from messaging to listening, and from perception management to reputation building. In his thoughts, institutions must embrace two-way symmetrical engagement as proposed by Grunig and Hunt (1984), to restore deliberative public spheres of Habermas (1989), and recognise citizens as active co-creators rather than passive audiences. According to him, only sustained performance, which includes accountability, service delivery, and alignment between promise and outcome, can close the credibility gap. He finally posits that legitimacy must be earned, not staged and says that when that happens, applause will cease to lie and begin to reflect the reality.
Dandaura’s thesis is relevant to the present Nigerian reality. The country stands at the crossroads of abundant communication and scarce belief. Here, governance has produced sophisticated perception machinery and ignored reputation. Applause has become loud, visible, politically convenient and addictive, but still deceives when detached from trust. As citizens increasingly turn to satire, protest, and alternative digital spaces, misaligned communication from government produces cynicism, resistance, and eroded legitimacy. The solution lies not in louder applause but in quieter, consistent performance. Only then will communication reclaim its role as a tool for genuine development and democratic accountability.
However, applause is attractive. It is loud, and it affirms. But when it becomes a substitute for trust, then it lies. Prof. Dandaura’s message is clear: Nigeria must choose between the theatre of governance and the substance of legitimacy. The former sustains power in the moment, while the latter builds nations that endure. Therefore, the war between reputation and perception will determine whether our applause is the sound of genuine progress and development or merely the echo of deception.
