Aare Amerijoye DOT.B.

Nigeria is not collapsing because heaven is angry. Nigeria is collapsing because we have normalised deception and crowned it as governance. We have turned impunity into “strategy” and renamed confusion as “experience.” We are not being governed, we are being managed like a helpless population that must accept any cruelty as policy. The tragedy is not only that Nigeria is bleeding, the tragedy is that the bleeding has been sold to the people as an “economic reform,” as if hunger must be respected simply because it wears agbada.

There are moments in the life of a nation when everything becomes so obvious that silence becomes a crime. Nigeria has reached that moment. When a man’s identity is inconsistent across key official records, it is no longer a minor matter. It is not “a clerical mistake.” It is not “a typographical error.” It is not a harmless oversight. It is a loud moral siren that the country is being led by a system that expects citizens to swallow contradictions as breakfast and call it patriotism.

Any country that intends to be taken seriously cannot be led by a man whose public records resemble a poorly edited script. When your date of birth appears to shift depending on which document is opened, it does not speak of harmless confusion, it speaks of deliberate disorder. It suggests a man who believes accountability is optional, and who assumes that national intelligence is cheap. In a sane society, such inconsistency is a question mark. In Nigeria, it has become a badge of arrogance, defended passionately by people who should be demanding answers.

But perhaps the most humiliating part is not even the contradiction itself. The most humiliating part is the army of defenders who have converted themselves into voluntary shield-bearers for national embarrassment. These supporters do not defend competence, they defend a political idol. They do not defend integrity, they defend personal pride. They do not defend performance, they defend packaging. They would never tolerate such inconsistency from a bank manager, a school principal, a local government chairman, or even a passport officer. Yet when it sits in Aso Rock, they call it “politics.” That is not loyalty. That is mental surrender.

Tinubu’s supporters have mastered a dangerous religion: the worship of suffering. They clap for hardship, they defend pain, they romanticise misery, and they insult Nigerians who complain. They have made hunger a national sermon and poverty a patriotic test. They speak as if the poor must “endure” forever, while those in power live like royalty. They tell citizens to be patient while prices rise without mercy and salaries remain frozen like dead stones. They call collapse “renewal,” and call national exhaustion “progress.”

Nigeria has become a marketplace of grief. Food has become a luxury. Transportation has become a punishment. Electricity has become a mockery. School fees have become a nightmare. Rent has become a trap. Jobs have become myths. Small businesses are dying like candles under heavy rain. Families are splitting under financial pressure. Young men now count survival as success, not achievement. Young women now measure hope in fragments. This is not a “temporary hardship.” This is a calculated demolition of the dignity of ordinary citizens.

And while the nation is choking daily, what does the Tinubu camp offer as response? Propaganda. Insults. Noise. Blame shifting. They behave like a government is a stage play, and Nigerians are mere extras who must endure whatever the lead actor decides. Governance has become a theatre of arrogance. Suffering is treated like a statistic. Excuses are issued like press statements. And a country of over 200 million people is expected to clap like an audience.

Let us speak plainly: leadership is credibility. Authority is trust. And trust does not grow in the soil of contradictions. If a leader cannot present a clean, consistent, verifiable personal identity, then he has no moral right to demand national loyalty. If the foundation is shaky, the building will collapse. Nigeria has already been forced to live under a collapsing roof of lies, hardship, propaganda, and institutional arrogance.

It is not just a question of identity, it is a question of character. A man who tolerates contradictions about himself will never respect truth for the people. A man who is comfortable with inconsistencies will always govern with inconsistency. A man who can watch confusion circulate around his records without urgency for clarity will never pursue clarity in governance. And the results are already visible: policy confusion, economic instability, rising insecurity, and a nation spiralling into despair.

What Nigeria is witnessing today is not reform, it is ruin. It is not strategy, it is survivalism. It is not governance, it is experimentation with human lives. It is the arrogant philosophy of “manage it,” “endure it,” and “suffer it,” while the political elite remain insulated from the consequences of their own incompetence. They have turned the people into lab rats and called it leadership.

Nigeria is now paying the price of emotional politics, not intelligent governance. We have tried arrogance. We have tasted trial-and-error. We have endured the rule of noise-makers who confuse public relations for competence. We have seen a naira collapse like a man pushed off a cliff. We have watched investors flee. We have watched businesses suffocate. We have watched citizens become refugees inside their own country, running from hunger, insecurity, and hopelessness. Yet some people still insist that this pain is “normal,” because admitting failure would be too painful for their egos.

Those who defend Tinubu blindly must understand this: you are not defending a man, you are defending a system that is crushing your own people. You are not defending a leader, you are defending your own emotional investment. You are not defending progress, you are defending national stagnation. You are not defending Nigeria, you are defending the exact culture that has made Nigeria poor in the midst of wealth.

The defenders have become accomplices. They are no longer innocent supporters. They are collaborators with national suffering. They are the loud voices protecting incompetence from accountability. They are the human shields of a failing government. They have chosen tribe over truth, propaganda over evidence, personal pride over national rescue. And that choice is costing Nigeria daily.

Nigeria must stop behaving like a conquered people. This is not the season for spectators. This is not the time for silence. This is not the time for timid prayers without action. A country that wants to be taken seriously must learn to reject rubbish, no matter how powerful the rubbish appears. No nation rises by defending nonsense. No society prospers by clapping for confusion. No people survive by worshipping contradictions.

This is why the Tinubu presidency must not be romanticised. It must not be excused. It must not be tolerated as destiny. Nigeria is not a private inheritance. Nigeria is not a family company. Nigeria is not a fan club. Nigeria is a nation, and a nation deserves seriousness. The presidency is not a shelter for unanswered questions, it is the highest office of public responsibility, and responsibility demands clarity.

Tinubu is not Nigeria’s destiny. He is Nigeria’s disaster in designer clothing. And until Nigerians stop defending nonsense and start demanding truth, the suffering will not stop. It will only change shape, grow fangs, and become worse.

Nigeria must wake up. Nigeria must be wise. Nigeria must be bold. Because this is no longer politics. This is survival.

Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director-General,
The Narrative Force