The Truths and Lies in Nigerian Politics: De-Structuring the Post-Truth Challenge of the Buhari Presidency

Abstract

This essay interrogates one of the major wrongs of Nigerian Politics namely, the lies of the Nigerian leadership and its submissive acceptance by the Nigerian public under the administration of Muhammadu Buhari. Today, we consciously live in a post-truth Political space that harbours corruption of intellectual integrity which has damaged the fabric of Nigerian democracy. Today truth seems longer important and relevant in national policy and politics. The resultant effect has been corruption of leadership recruitment processes, with its attendant economic and social problems of unemployment, youth restiveness, hunger in the land and criminality etc. This paper explores this dark side of the age of Information and communication Technology (ICT), a side that is exploited by the media mavens, political hawks and ideological propagandists who promotes lies, illusion, confusion, and other forms of demented or manipulated imagination. The paper submits that the Buhari Presidency was characterized by abundant lying as one of the defining aspects of dark times in Nigerian democracy in which policies, politics and governance were framed largely by lies in the promotion of sophistry and illusion has ruined the economy and damaged its polity