In Nigeria, no official announcement arrives without its shadow: an alternative story, whispered and shared, crafted to make sense of events that the official account leaves shrouded in mystery. The government may speak, but the people will interpret. It is not simply skepticism; it is a national art form—an intricate weaving of suspicion, doubt, and the relentless search for hidden motives. As the political scientist James C. Scott once observed, “When the powerful speak, the powerless listen with one ear and interpret with the other.” In Nigeria, that second ear is always busy.
By Bagudu Mohammed
The tragedy of this habit is not just in its frequency but in its necessity. Too often, leaders fail to inspire faith, hope, or conviction. Actions arrive without clarity, policies without persuasion, and outcomes without trust. Into that vacuum rushes the people’s imagination. With each unexplained twist, each mysterious decision, the nation becomes a puzzle that citizens insist on solving for themselves. The absence of convincing explanations creates fertile ground for “alternative narratives”—stories born of emotion, desire, suspicion, and sometimes sheer mischief—that attempt to make the senseless sensible.
These stories often defy logic, yet they are difficult to dismiss in a land where genuine mysteries abound. Nigerians no longer simply hear news; they interpret it according to their environment, their social circle, and the narratives they already hold dear. And once an alternative version aligns with a person’s feelings or suspicions, it takes root so deeply that even irrefutable evidence struggles to dig it out. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once warned, “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” In Nigeria, this is not just a warning—it is a daily reality.
Take, for instance, the 2023 presidential election. Among Peter Obi’s supporters, the belief that he won is not merely an opinion—it is, in many circles, an unshakable truth. This belief thrives despite the logistical, mathematical, and political improbabilities stacked against it. Why? Because the Independent National Electoral Commission’s infamous “technical glitches” on election day seemed to confirm the very suspicions many already carried. Instead of quelling doubts, the glitch became a gift—proof, in the minds of many, that something was being hidden. In the marketplace of political narratives, INEC’s explanation simply could not compete with the emotional power of a suspected plot.
The same pattern has played out before. Muhammadu Buhari’s supporters once believed, with religious intensity, that he could not have lost the elections before 2015. Even when courts dismissed his petitions, the belief endured. It was only after a powerful coalition backed him in 2015 that victory arrived—an outcome his supporters saw not as a change in political dynamics, but as the undoing of years of electoral sabotage. In both Obi’s and Buhari’s cases, geography and social circles reinforced belief. People often mistake the sentiment of their immediate environment for the sentiment of the entire nation, a psychological quirk known as the “availability heuristic.” If everyone you know supports a candidate, it becomes easy to believe that “everyone” supports them.
This tendency has dangerous consequences. In 2011, post-election violence erupted largely in regions where Buhari was most popular—areas where the expectation of his victory had been treated as fact. The violence was not just about losing; it was about losing when victory felt inevitable. Politicians rarely help matters. Few will ever look their supporters in the eye and admit defeat. To do so risks losing influence, relevance, and the future possibility of political patronage.
And so, narratives fester. Sometimes they are even fed by rivals—deliberately or through dangerous silence. When false claims surfaced that former Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai had said Peter Obi won the 2023 election, his failure to publicly and forcefully denounce them allowed the rumor to grow. Silence, in these cases, is not neutral—it is an accelerant. Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir Lawal’s own declaration that Obi had won only added fuel, leaving observers to wonder how much was political principle and how much was political bitterness.
These dynamics are not limited to elections. Professor Jerry Gana’s recent accusation that El-Rufai and former President Buhari “imported bandits” during the 2015 elections plays on one of the country’s most enduring mysteries: the origins and operations of banditry in northern Nigeria. In the absence of transparent answers, Nigerians fill in the blanks themselves, often linking crises to public figures whose reputations make the accusation seem plausible.
Even religion has not escaped this vortex. A new breed of prophecy—what might be called “polico-prophecy”—has emerged. Pastors and prophets now regularly declare who is destined to win elections, often with contradictory messages. The divine, it seems, now speaks in the language of political partisanship. These prophecies are rarely grounded in data, but rather in popular sentiment, emotional resonance, and the skillful manipulation of collective hope.
The same logic infects debates about marginalization. The Tiv-Idoma rivalry in Benue State is a microcosm of Nigeria’s ethnic politics: each side complains of being sidelined, while conveniently forgetting its own history of sidelining others. As one Tiv commentator put it bluntly, “He who wants equity must come with clean hands.” Yet, across the country, groups demand fairness at the center while clinging tightly to dominance at the local level.
In the end, much of Nigeria’s political storytelling—whether about elections, governance, security, or ethnicity—is not about truth but about justification. People craft narratives that excuse their own injustices while condemning those of others. This is why conspiracy thrives: because the soil of mistrust is rich, the seeds of rumor are cheap, and the harvest is intoxicating. As long as the mysteries remain unsolved and official accounts unconvincing, alternative narratives will flourish—not because they are always true, but because they feel true.
And in Nigeria, feeling true is often enough.
