By Iniobong Udoh II
One thing Tinubu’s APC By Iniobong Udoh II are so comfortable with misinformation is because they understand the Nigerian audience. Many Nigerians do not check dates, do not keep political receipts, do not verify figures and after a few years, barely remember how we got to where we are. So you can rewrite history in front of people who actually lived through the history, and some of them will believe you.
This did not start in 2023. Go back to 2015 and look at how Muhammadu Buhari was sold to Nigerians. Red Media Africa, a Lagos-based media and communications company, through its governance arm StateCraft, was officially appointed the communication and strategy agency for the Buhari/Osinbajo campaign.
Their job, according to their own announcement, included driving the campaign’s “issues, messages, character and vision”, especially to young Nigerians. And please, this is not something somebody accused Red Media of doing years later. They celebrated it themselves. After Buhari won, RED described 2015 as a fantastic year because they had been given the brief to run the “winning campaign communication” for the presidency.
Years later, while explaining how elections are won in Nigeria, StateCraft described what they did with Buhari as a “reputational transformation from a despotic ruler to a reformed democrat.” Read that again. They understood the Buhari Nigerians already knew, understood the image problem, and deliberately worked on changing that perception.
And Tinubu himself has never behaved like somebody who was merely standing somewhere at the back while all this happened. Remember the famous Emilokan speech in Abeokuta in 2022? Tinubu openly told APC delegates that Buhari had contested for president three times and failed, had even given up, but that he went back to him, encouraged him to run again and supported him.
His words were very clear: “If not for me that stood behind Buhari, he wouldn’t have become the President.” Even as recently as 2025, when former SGF Boss Mustapha challenged the idea that Tinubu was responsible for Buhari’s victory, Tinubu’s Presidency pushed back. His spokesman, Temitope Ajayi, argued that Buhari would not even have won the APC presidential primary in 2014 without Tinubu mobilising governors and South-West delegates behind him.
So when I talk about the political machinery that sold Buhari in 2015 and the machinery we are dealing with today, I am not inventing a relationship. The people involved have told us themselves. Now bring this mentality to what happened with Tope Fasua on Arise TV. This is not some random APC supporter arguing on Facebook. Fasua is an economist and Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Economic Affairs.
Yet he went on national television and confidently claimed Uber bought Glovo, described Glovo as a Nigerian company and attached a $16.9 billion figure to it. Except Glovo is not Nigerian. It was founded in Spain. Uber did not buy Glovo. Delivery Hero became Glovo’s majority shareholder years ago, and what Uber announced in 2026 was an offer to acquire Delivery Hero.
See why misinformation can be dangerous? Sometimes the lie is not made completely from lies. Uber is real. Glovo is real. Delivery Hero is real. An acquisition announcement is real. Mix all the facts together carelessly, change who bought who, change where the company comes from, add one confident voice on television, and you have created an entirely new “fact” for millions of people.
And when Adesuwa Giwa-Osagie corrected Fasua on air, instead of simply accepting the correction, he became visibly uncomfortable and complained about being interrupted. Sorry, but what should a journalist do? Allow wrong information to enter millions of homes because she does not want to offend a presidential adviser? This is exactly why I disdain this growing Nigerian culture of “I don’t like data.”
If you hate checking figures, dates, old videos and original sources, you are making yourself an easy customer for propaganda. And this is why when somebody tells me, “Ini, your posts are too long,” or “Why do you always bring data?”, I tell the person that they are simply not my audience. Because I cannot discuss Nigeria with vibes. We have done vibes for too long.
If you tell me inflation has reduced, I want to know what period you are comparing. If you tell me a government created millions of jobs, show me the data. If you tell me somebody never made a statement, let us find the old video. If you tell me something happened in 2015, let us bring out reports from 2015. Because Nigerian politicians understand something many Nigerians still don’t understand: Our short memory is a political weapon.
Something happens today, everybody screams. Two weeks later another scandal comes and the old one disappears. Four years later, somebody rewrites the story completely and people who lived through it will be arguing with you because they cannot remember. Then you bring screenshots, newspaper reports, INEC figures, NBS data, CBN reports and old videos, and somebody complains that your post is “too long.”
Please, I will continue writing long when long is required. I don’t want you to believe me simply because you like me. I want you to be able to check me. I can dislike Tinubu and still reject false information about Tinubu. I can like a politician and still accept data that embarrasses that politician. That is the discipline Nigerians need, especially as 2027 approaches. Read. Remember. Check.
Because if politicians have media companies, communication strategists, data analysts and people paid to shape narratives, while the citizens they are targeting refuse to read beyond three paragraphs, who exactly do you think has the advantage? This is why I use data. This is why I keep receipts. And this is why I will not stop.
