By Oladoja M.O
In an age where access to information is boundless and opinions flood our timelines like seasonal rains, one would expect public discourse, especially around issues of governance to be rich with nuance, clarity, and purpose. Instead, what we are confronted with in Nigeria is a noisy theatre of misdirected outrage and watery criticism, lacking both depth and direction.
One recent trigger came from the viral criticisms surrounding the national budget, particularly the eyebrow-raising figures allegedly earmarked for streetlight poles and similar line items. As is typical in the social media age, the noise began to swell. Twitter went into a frenzy. Threads upon threads emerged, each outdoing the other in outrage. The focus wasn’t just on the figures; it quickly spiraled into yet another populist takedown of the presidency, calling into question the entire moral fabric of governance. But just when the public’s fury had reached a crescendo, a jarring but necessary intervention came from an unlikely source: a senator who, contrary to the collective narrative, took time to explain that the criticism was misdirected. What was being paraded as evidence of executive recklessness was, in fact, the product of legislative insertions. Even the revered watchdog body, BudgIt, which had positioned itself as the conscience of fiscal scrutiny had peddled the wrong story, and done so confidently.
At that point, a deeper question emerged, one which goes beyond this specific incident: What exactly is the quality of criticism in Nigeria?
What we see across our social and political landscapes is not a culture of informed criticism but a culture of reactive condemnation. The ability to shout the loudest, to gather the most retweets or likes, has replaced the discipline of patient inquiry, structural understanding, and fact-based argument. We have mistaken noise for scrutiny, and in doing so, we have created an illusion: an illusion of outrage and criticism.
Here’s the tragic irony: many of these criticisms begin from a good place, the desire for accountability, for a better Nigeria. But because the foundation is faulty, the outcomes are futile. One cannot build a temple of truth on a foundation of ignorance. The budget saga is just one of many examples.
BudgIt, a civil society organization that has in the past done commendable work in simplifying the budget for the public, got it wrong this time, badly. Yet, even in the face of clarification, corrections, and new evidence, there was no public recant, no humility to say, “We were mistaken.” That act of refusal: the inability to admit error and recalibrate, is itself a glaring indicator of the intellectual poverty that plagues Nigerian criticism. In a land where saving face is prioritized over seeking truth, errors are not corrected; they are doubled down upon. And the implications are devastating. Public trust becomes confused and misdirected. The presidency gets blamed for what is in fact a legislative maneuver. Activists spend more time dragging the wrong institutions while the real culprits laugh quietly in shadows. The people remain stirred but unenlightened, angry, yes, but none the wiser.
This shallow approach to criticism bleeds into other national conversations. Take the fixation on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road. A project that, whether justifiable or not, deserves technical, economic, and legal analysis is instead reduced to a carnival of trendy hashtags. Populists slam it without understanding its scope, funding model, or long-term impact. No consideration is given to feasibility studies, displacement issues, or cost-benefit analyses. No proper questions asked about procurement processes or federal-state cooperation. Instead, the discourse becomes a jamboree, a performance of rage designed to court virality, not accountability.
This is not criticism. It is a parody of it.
And just when you think the poverty of insight couldn’t dig deeper, reality offers more proof. Consider Peter Obi’s recent Democracy Day speech. In his attempt to talk about democracy, he instead ended up distorting history misrepresenting the very fabric of the democratic struggle in Nigeria. A man who, during the dark days of military rule, was cozy with the system’s power brokers, now stands on podiums speaking as though he bore scars from that era. When real patriots were sacrificing their lives, fleeing their homes, and watching their properties burned for daring to speak truth to power, Obi stood closer to the oppressor than the oppressed. Yet today, he speaks with the authority of the afflicted. That, too, is born of ignorance not just his, but the ignorance of the audience clapping in affirmation, unaware of the truth.
Even more revealing was the reaction to President Tinubu’s Democracy Day awards. Nigerians, young and old, in all corners of the internet, questioned why certain figures were honoured some even asking, “Who are the Ogoni 9?” Others criticized the president for not awarding campaign allies, as though national honours were a reward system for electoral foot soldiers. It was laughable, yet tragic. Because how can you even begin to criticise a government when you don’t understand the very history of the democracy you claim to defend? How do you talk about national direction when your knowledge of national evolution is trapped in recent memory, as if Nigeria started in 2023?
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It’s not just young people, either. Some of the loudest voices in the room middle-aged, supposedly experienced display a kind of ignorance so raw, you’d think the only political event they’ve lived through was a Twitter space. This is why we are where we are: a nation speaking loud but saying little, reacting fast but knowing nothing.
True criticism demands hard work. It requires research, attention to context, historical awareness, and, above all, intellectual honesty. You cannot meaningfully critique governance structures when you don’t understand the separation of powers. You cannot hold public office holders accountable when you confuse federal responsibilities with local ones. You cannot demand transparency when your tools of inquiry are faulty. And in this desert of rigorous public engagement, one cannot help but mourn the absence of voices like that of Gani Fawehinmi: voices forged in the fire of truth, unseduced by populism, unshaken by power. Gani didn’t criticize for clout; he criticized with clarity. He did not shout merely to be heard; he roared because he understood. He was, above all, consistent, a virtue alien to many of today’s keyboard crusaders.
What Nigeria faces is not a lack of criticism; it’s an excess of uninformed, performative, and ultimately useless criticism. And therein lies the danger. Because when the noise becomes the norm, it drowns out the voices that actually matter. When every outrage is manufactured, real outrage loses its power. When critique becomes theatre, accountability becomes a joke.
To move forward as a nation, we must re-engineer our culture of criticism. We must build a new generation of thinkers, activists, and ordinary citizens who understand that to question power effectively, one must first understand it deeply. That it is not enough to be angry; one must be accurately angry. That social media fame is not the same as civic literacy. Until then, we will continue to shout: loudly, passionately, endlessly, but in circles.
Like a dog chasing its own tail, we will perform outrage while the real issues remain untouched, and the real culprits continue to operate in silence.
The illusion will continue. The theatre will go on. And the nation, tragically, will remain where it is starved, not of voices, but of thought.
•Oladoja writes from Abuja via mayokunmark@gmail.com