Gaslighters live on fancied time. A curious affliction bedecks their psyche—I’d call it antipathy for bitter truth. In Nigeria, this anomaly transcends personal and social relationships and spills into the political space.
Whether online or offline, gaslighting manifests in layered self-deception; it presents as a shared national pastime where illusion is venerated and reality is exiled.
In the gaslighter’s nirvana, to be Nigerian is to be perpetually blameless, untarnished amid a nation drowning in corruption, bigotry, and decay. Every man and woman wears a halo of infallibility, casting themselves as messiahs while damning all who dare question their fabricated integrity and version of events.
Gaslighting, a term borrowed from 1940s theatre, portends a sinister dance where the lead manipulator persuades the partner to doubt their own senses, to question the very ground beneath their feet. As all things ruinous, Nigerians take to this waltz with masterful flair. Narratives are implanted with surgical precision, cloaked in secrecy and pseudo-realism thus making the implausible plausible and the absurd bankable.
The truth is swiftly deconstructed, labelled as ‘conspiracy theory,’ and cast to the outer margins of public discourse. Meanwhile, fabricated reality is adorned in the finery of ‘gospel truth’ and paraded on the esplanades of media consumption with pomp and flourish. This inversion of reality creates a social space where citizens wander, perpetually lost, their moral compass desensitized to relentless manipulation.
For instance, the ongoing banter in social space, about Rtd. General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB)’s recently launched autobiography, is incantatory of Nigerian mind and nature. Whether online or offline, the tenor of the debate is overtly ritualistic and sorely politicised. Suddenly, IBB adorns the garb of a truth-sayer, and everyone else, a self-styled gadfly cum bleeding-heart patriot, who must condemn the brazen artifice and pageantry of a book launch that scored N17.5 billion worth of donations to IBB’s presidential library project.
Far from the racket and patois of accidental bleeding hearts, most enjoyable and educative is erudite essayist cum leader writer, Sam Omatseye’s unsparing deconstruction of the author and the book; likewise Lasisi Olagunju’s incisive take on IBB and his controversial literature.
Yet this is less IBB’s frantic search for closure and redemption and more about ‘guiltless’ Nigerians’ predilection to mount the soapbox just to spout off and be seen in fabricated reality’s public sphere.
The retired general’s fanciful memoir parallels post-Muhammadu Buhari era. Triggered by the 2023 election results, aggrieved politicians and electorate reconstruct Nigeria into a narrow commune, beholden to their selfish interpretations of citizenship, power, politics, and democratic dividends.
Each stakeholder manifests a peculiar morass of patriotic experience. Amid the drama, Nigeria thrives as a political theatre – an expansive stage where people of vast partisan stripes are entertained, misinformed, and gaslighted.
The process, in recent times, assumes the course of indoctrination by courtiers. The latter manifests as our most malignant affliction. Comprising journalists, politicians, NGOs, and rights activists, their machinations are oft inimical to nationhood, stability, and growth – perhaps because too many among them are deployed as weapons of adverse programming.
This may no doubt resonate as far-fetched to individuals and groups profiting from the status quo, especially the press and civil societies. That is understandable. It is often the nature of bacterium responsible for a pandemic to deem itself the next best thing to happen to earthlings.
For a people programmed for conquest, Nigerians carry on with unabashed ignorance and arrogance. Arrogance is pitiable. But ignorance is expensive and quite scary. Yet Nigerians soldier on unperturbed by the ramifications of it all.
This is what happens when a nation becomes unmoored from reality. It retreats into a fictive nirvana. In this predetermined cosmology, reality is redefined to suit dubious whims, and facts are manufactured to soothe relative bias. Consequently, national discourse is dominated by fabricated events. From performative grief over insecurity, misgovernance, national history and disasters to celebrity gossip, this country is sold to desperate narratives at home and abroad.
Whether it is the soaring price of Premium Methylated Spirit (PMS), the insurgent creed of violence resonant with brainwashed minors and young adults, or the virulent manifestations of partisan politics, the compelling nature of the grievances articulated and the pervasiveness of despair are wielded to justify the rationale for Nigeria’s creed of carnage and enduring portrayal as a banana republic by foreign governments and consulates.
A history of corruption and neglect at the federal, state, and local levels of government, among others, has equally morphed into a major source of widespread dissatisfaction towards politicians, the legal system, and law enforcement by the masses.
These sentiments thrive in greater depths across geographic and virtual spaces; as Nigeria rejuvenates from the intrigues of disputed polls, a wave of validation and reproof of the incumbent political class and the opposition seeking to dislodge it has produced a charged atmosphere of warring critics and apologists, cynics, and anarchists – all wired to gaslight whatever reality conflicts with their preferred versions of events.
Of the latter, the majority parade flawed presence because they have no real persona and moral substance. Yet Nigeria suffers their storm of spunk and slogans through minor and major upheavals.
The participation of large segments of the press, academia, and civil society in this political gaslighting has been largely driven by funded partisanship but like Arundhati Roy would say, “I’m not against people being funded—because we’re running out of options, but we have to understand, ‘Are you walking the dog or is the dog walking you? Who’s the dog and who are you?”
The situation triggers existential questions about the quality of political participation in Nigeria. How do we determine real and funded patriotism? Are Nigerians inured to the precepts of partisanship astride the politics of reality and illusions?
The jostling over reality and illusion becomes most intense in a toxic public sphere where both distort to preserve the status quo of exploitation or repudiate it. A failure to achieve a balance between oppressive reality and the placebo of illusion eventually leads to anarchy and societal collapse.
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In his book, Collapse, economist Jared Diamond lists five precursors to social decay, including a failure to understand and prevent causes of environmental damage; climate change; pillage by hostile neighbours; the inability of friendly neighbours to continue trade; and finally, how the society itself deals with the problems raised by the first four factors.
A common failing of the last item is the dislocation between the short-term interests of elites and the longer-term interests of the societies they dominate and exploit. Diamond’s last point is critical. The ruling elite’s penchant for corruption, maladministration, and circumventing the law, almost always triggers widespread cynicism, disillusionment, apathy, and finally, rage. Those who suffer the consequences of misgovernance characteristically scorn loyalty to the nation and increasingly nurse fantasies of violent insurrection as revenge.
The concept of the common good, mocked by the predation of the privileged minority, vanishes and is replaced by the self-seeking “Me-Credo” of the underprivileged majority. Society burns as individuals gaslight their own shortcomings and in repudiation of systemic failings, submit to primal lust.
But all hope is not lost. Gaslighting, for all its potency, has a fatal flaw—it crumbles in the face of truth. It’s about time we cultivated a more critical culture of appraisal, of self, reality, and the narratives handed to us. We must equally demand greater transparency from our elected representatives. But if only we hold our thoughts and ourselves to the same unimpeachable standards.