COLUMN: Propaganda, Liquor, and Lies; Anatomy of a Failing Regime

By Gbolahan Badru

(𝘈 𝘳oad𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘢 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘥𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘛𝘪𝘯𝘶𝘣𝘶’𝘴 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘪a)

Under the administration of Bobo Chicago, we have a regime stumbling through governance like drunks gripping a broken steering wheel. Under the Bourdilon master, we brag of a state captive to leaders whose judgment reeks like stale liquor. Under Bola Tinubu’s administration, we have a government wobbling on intoxicated legs, mistaking chaos for policy.

Under him, ours is of a power in the hands of bottle-soaked tyrants who confuse delirium with vision and a leadership class marinated in alcohol and detached from consequence. Under him, we have institutions run by men whose minds evaporate faster than the spirits they consume and a cabinet of staggering monsters mistaking their hangovers for national strategy. Their insincerity sends a chill down the spine of every concerned Nigerian.

Governance has been reduced to the twitchy impulses of intoxicated beasts, and in another unbecoming case, it’s found staggering through the corridors of power like beasts drunk on their own incompetence.

Ours is of a ruling class whose minds are pickled in liquor, leaving the nation governed by dehydrated judgment. Ours is of a state which seems to have now been hijacked by inebriated monsters who confuse their alcoholic tremors for the pulse of leadership. A regime where every policy smells of fermented foolishness and every decision slurs its own justification.

You must have seen Nyesom Wike! Haven’t you? You must have known that ours is of a cabinet of glass-eyed creatures swirling governance in the same bottle that shattered their conscience. A government heavily guarded by all shades of pot-bellied monstrosities whose leadership artistry is so intoxicated that the country is steered by hallucinations masquerading as strategy. Nine hundred and five days after, we’ve found our nation held hostage by rulers who drink away clarity and vomit out policy, and a government whose authority is as unstable as the shaking hands gripping their nightly Whisky bottle.

When you come by Wike, or you hear Yusuf Tuggar speak, or see Bello Matawale’s response to national disasters, you will find it difficult not to admit that ours is of a state administered by alcohol-anointed fiends, incapable of sobriety long enough to think, let alone lead, and a regime intoxicated on both liquor and power; two poisons that have dissolved every trace of responsibility.

But beyond the staggering steps of these drunken overlords lies an even more sinister intoxication. The one not brewed in bottles but distilled in strategy rooms which serves the purposeful mutilation of what it means to be a Nigerian citizen. Under this Tinubu-led choreography of deceit, national orientation has been stripped of conscience and reconstructed into a hollow ritual of obedience.

The regime has turned civic awareness into a crime and elevated gullibility into a national virtue. What now passes for “being oriented” in Tinubu’s Nigeria is the quiet surrender of your mind— living with an unexamined soul, swallowing government mythologies without question, and embracing blindness as patriotism. They have recast citizenship as a performance of silence.

This administration has weaponized propaganda so aggressively that it no longer functions as a tool of governance, but as the very grammar of survival within their empire. They do not simply lie, but also architect a worldview where truth is an inconvenience and accountability is luxury.

They do not simply misrepresent, but also engineer alternate realities. We are governed by men who trust their fabrications more than they trust the people they claim to lead. They speak with the confidence of gods while bearing the competence of crawling ghosts.

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Every time they open their mouths, the country is assaulted with a fresh wave of statistical hallucinations, chanting economic figures conjured in the fever-dreams of drunk accountants, claiming growth in a land where shops close before noon because customers no longer come, insisting that inflation is falling, while markets groan under prices that rise with every sunrise, celebrating fiscal stability while the naira collapses like a starved animal convulsing on the floor of a dying economy.

They insist security has improved, even as terror mutates, diversifies, expands, and spreads like a plague with no antibiotic. The more their statistics glow, the darker the nation becomes.

And this past week has been the starkest indictment of their delusional governance. A week that unfolded like a national obituary scorched onto the conscience of the country. A week that saw a Brigadier General, an office that carries a symbol of the nation’s spine, murdered by terrorists because intelligence failed, because leadership failed, because a government too drunk on propaganda forgot that security requires clarity, and not theatrics.

In Kebbi, twenty-five schoolgirls were dragged into the wilderness, swallowed by the night because the state that should protect them is now too busy defending its false narratives.

In Kwara, killings soaked the soil, turning quiet towns into scenes of unspeakable carnage. A church was stormed, worshippers kidnapped mid-prayer, as though faith itself has become helpless under the shadow of this regime. And beyond these headlines lie countless tragedies that will never trend. These tragedies span from bodies buried hurriedly, families fragmented silently, to lives destroyed in corners the government refuses to acknowledge.

As every Nigerian still interested in the dirge of their country’s political poetry bleeds, the government won’t cease polishing and setting microphones for another round of press briefing. The usual, “ I’m depressed!, I’m very sad, I’m worried” and the lacking-in-substance assurances that follow.

In the wake of another family’s mourning, they prepare a different round of fresh lies and propaganda for national consumption. Our daily bread!.

While citizens collapse under hunger and despair, they rehearse new narratives where Nigeria is “thriving,” “stable,” “recovering,” or “progressing.” All caricatured in the empty “renewed hope” promises.

And so, in this Boulevard of misery where we peel away pretenses and strip authority naked, maybe we could have the strength to finally call for a moment of silent reflection from those who govern in this haze of arrogance and drunken calculation. Maybe we should summon the courage to tell them to drop the bottles of propaganda and sit with the wreckage they have created. Let them see the corpses, the grief, the hunger, and the fear dangling before the eyes of the people they have abandoned. Everything cannot continue to be politics as usual. A government that cannot protect its people has no business celebrating itself.

By all metrics, Ahmed Bola Tinubu has failed. Nigeria and Nigerians have never had it this bad. Since 2005, I have never seen a leader so uninterested in the welfare of the people he leads like Bobo Chicago. The man is absorbed only in his reelection fantasies, intoxicated by propaganda-laced statistics that bear no resemblance to reality, while Nigerians are dying of insecurity, hunger, and unprecedented hardship. We have never had a government this irresponsible, this incompetent, this inconsiderate, and this dishonest as Tinubu’s.Nine hundred and five days have rolled by under Bobo Chicago.

In all this time, what in Nigeria can we honestly say is working?