By Mohammed Bello Doka
5 May, 2026.
Picture this: the National Leader of a political party—Henry Seriake Dickson of the NDC—posts a registration link on his verified Facebook page, begging his own followers to sign up. The post stays up for two full days. The result? Fewer than five thousand likes. Not five million. Not five hundred thousand. Five thousand. Yet the same National Leader, through his camp, expects Nigeria to believe that ten million people rushed online to register for that same party within 24 hours of Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso joining. That is not a political claim. That is a mathematical confession of fraud.
Let me be unambiguous. Dickson is not a bystander. He is the National Leader of the NDC. The post he made was a direct call to action: “Register to join the NDC,” followed by the link www.ndcregister.co. Every single one of those alleged ten million registrations was done online. There is no excuse about rural illiteracy or lack of internet access. The entire claim is digital. If ten million people were genuinely motivated to find that link, open it, fill out forms, and submit—all online—then the National Leader’s own promotional post would have generated a firestorm of engagement. Shares in the millions. Comments flooding. Likes in the hundreds of thousands. Instead, we have a paltry 50,000 likes over 48 hours. That is not a slow start. That is a dead campaign walking.
But the real victims of this lie are the NDC’s genuine supporters. The loyal men and women who believe their National Leader. They see “10 million registered” and think victory is guaranteed. They stop knocking on doors. They stop persuading neighbors. They stop sacrificing weekends for rallies. False hope has sedated them. Why work hard when the numbers are already on your side? That is the poison of propaganda pushed past its elastic limit.
Then election day comes. The real votes are counted. The results do not match the fantasy. And what will happen? The same National Leader who fed them a ten-million lie will scream “rigging.” He will blame INEC, the opposition, the judiciary, even the weather. His genuine supporters, hearts shattered, will join the chorus. But the truth is brutal and simple: they believed a lie, they stopped campaigning, and they lost. Not because the election was stolen, but because their own leader’s fabrication made them lazy and complacent.
Propaganda works only when it respects plausibility. Henry Dickson’s Facebook post—under 50,000 likes—has done more damage to the NDC than any opposition attack ever could. The math is not complicated. And arithmetic, unlike political spin, never lies.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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Opinion