What exactly is genius about repeating the past? If every allegation against a sitting president is met with “others did it too,” are we witnessing leadership or just recycled excuses? If hardship deepens while propaganda grows louder, who benefits from the noise—and who pays the price? And if Nigerians are told to endure suffering today because yesterday was worse, when did comparison replace competence as the standard of governance?
These are not rhetorical flourishes. They are urgent questions confronting Nigeria under Bola Tinubu, a leader whose supporters tirelessly brand him a genius while defending every controversy with the same tired refrain: whataboutism.
Whataboutism has become the ruling party’s first instinct. It is the reflex that leaps out whenever power is questioned. It is the art of avoiding accountability by pointing elsewhere—backward, sideways, anywhere but forward. Under Tinubu, this tactic has not merely survived; it has matured into a governing philosophy.
When critics raise concerns about disproportionate appointments and federal imbalance, the answer comes swiftly: “Buhari did the same.” When the rule of law is questioned, the reply is predictable: “Obasanjo disobeyed court orders.” When corruption and fiscal opacity dominate public discourse, the counterpunch is immediate: “Jonathan was worse.” The message is clear—do not ask for better; accept that this is as good as it gets.
But here is the inconvenient truth: if the defense of Tinubu is that he is no different from his predecessors, then the myth of genius collapses under its own weight.
Tinubu did not campaign as a continuation of old failures. He did not ask Nigerians to vote for déjà vu. He promised renewed hope. Renewal implies improvement. Hope demands progress. Yet what Nigerians increasingly encounter is not renewal, but replication—old habits dressed up as inevitability, sold as strategy.
Consider appointments and the federal character principle. Concerns about regional concentration did not emerge from thin air; they followed patterns Nigerians have seen before. Supporters quickly reach for the Buhari card, invoking Muhammadu Buhari as if precedent transforms error into virtue. But Buhari’s era was heavily criticized for exactly this reason. Tinubu’s ascension was supposed to mark a correction, not a continuation. If a leader inherits a broken system and chooses to repeat its flaws, is that brilliance—or convenience?
Then there is the matter of the rule of law. Selective obedience to court orders erodes democratic confidence. Instead of addressing the substance of these concerns, Tinubu’s defenders drag history into the dock, pointing at Olusegun Obasanjo. But democracy is not a museum of bad behavior. It is a living system meant to improve with time. When illegality is justified by precedent, reform dies quietly, suffocated by excuses.
Corruption allegations follow the same script. Questions about public finance, subsidy-era spending, and fiscal transparency are waved away with comparisons to Goodluck Jonathan. This is particularly ironic. APC’s moral rise was built on condemning Jonathan’s perceived failures. If today’s defense is that corruption is unavoidable because it happened before, then APC’s founding argument stands exposed as empty theater.
This is not governance by principle; it is governance by comparison. And comparison, when used this way, is a tool for lowering standards. It trains citizens to accept less, expect nothing, and applaud mediocrity because it is familiar.
Nowhere is this more dangerous than in the conversation about elections and democratic norms. When questions arise about electoral credibility, the response is not reassurance through transparency but deflection: “PDP rigged worse.” This logic does not protect democracy; it hollows it out. It teaches citizens that integrity is optional and that legitimacy is relative. A democracy run on lowered expectations is not a democracy—it is a managed illusion.
Behind this illusion stands a loud, coordinated ecosystem of party loyalists, writers, influencers, and media surrogates. Their job is not governance; it is narrative control. They ridicule critics, dismiss dissent as sabotage, and frame suffering as a necessary sacrifice for a brighter tomorrow that never quite arrives. They flood timelines, dominate airwaves, and drown policy debate in slogans. Substance becomes secondary; branding takes center stage.
And branding, unlike governance, is expensive.
While Nigerians battle inflation, hunger, collapsing purchasing power, and joblessness, credible claims and public observations point to massive resources being poured into media campaigns—trillions of naira in public funds, critics allege, deployed not to ease suffering but to manage perception. Hashtags trend. Influencers smile. Talking points circulate. But markets do not obey hashtags. Food prices do not respond to slogans. Rent does not fall because an influencer tweeted optimism.
The tragedy is not merely the spending; it is the misplaced priority. A government obsessed with applause will always neglect relief. A leadership that confuses online dominance with legitimacy will mistake noise for success. Nigerians do not live on social media dashboards; they live in markets, on roads, in hospitals, and in homes where hunger is not theoretical.
Ask the germane questions the propaganda avoids. Can a hashtag reduce transport costs? Can a coordinated trend stabilize the currency? Can sponsored praise fill empty stomachs? Can narrative laundering erase lived pain? And if the answer to all these questions is no, then why does the government appear more invested in optics than outcomes?
This is where the genius myth finally collapses. Genius is not repetition. Genius is not excuse-making. Genius is not spending public money to argue online while citizens suffer offline. Genius confronts problems; it does not compare them to worse ones in the past. Genius fixes; it does not deflect.
Whataboutism may win debates on television panels and social media threads, but it cannot govern a nation. It cannot feed families. It cannot restore trust. It cannot build institutions. It can only delay reckoning.
And that reckoning is coming—not from critics, not from opposition parties, but from reality itself. Nigerians are not fooled by recycled defenses. They understand that hardship justified by history is still hardship. They know that suffering explained away is still suffering. And they see clearly that propaganda, no matter how lavishly funded, cannot change the cost of living.
You cannot hashtag hunger away. You cannot tweet people out of poverty. You cannot trend prosperity into existence. And you cannot manufacture genius while millions are trapped in daily struggle.
If Tinubu is doing what every other president did, then calling him a genius is not insight—it is propaganda. And propaganda, no matter how expensive, cannot govern Nigeria.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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