Olu Allen
Nigeria has a strange, almost pathological relationship with memory.
We forget too quickly.
Or worse, we pretend to forget when it becomes politically inconvenient.
So let me rewind the tape. Let me remind us of a man whose voice once filled this country as if it were the voice of the people themselves:
Daniel Kanu.
The Architecture of Illusion
To understand him, you must understand the darkness he served. The mid-1990s. The reign of General Sani Abacha. This was not merely a military regime; it was a mausoleum of ambition.
Abacha had annulled the freest election in Nigerian history, jailed a presumed president, and was now plotting the unthinkable: to transform himself from a uniformed dictator into a civilian life president.
Into this vacuum stepped Daniel Kanu, a young, vibrant mobilizer who did something remarkable. Not in virtue, but in volume.
He didn’t seize power.
He didn’t write decrees.
But he did something just as powerful for the regime:
He tried to manufacture legitimacy from the bottom up.
Through a group boldly, almost comically, named Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA), he organized rallies across the federation. These were not small gatherings.
They were massive, coordinated spectacles. Buses chartered. Placards printed. Crowds choreographed.
And the message?
Simple. Repeated. Relentless:
“Let him continue.”
“Transform him.”
“He is the only option.”
Sound familiar?
Kanu’s movement deployed tactics that are now textbook:
Repetition until propaganda begins to sound like the truth.
Emotional blackmail, suggesting that any opposition to Abacha was anti-youth, anti-progress, even unpatriotic.
Reframing hardship as the necessary price for “stability.”
Creating an illusion of mass support while dissenting voices were quietly buried or jailed.
They didn’t argue reality.
They tried to replace it.
The Wicked Honesty of History
But here is where the story takes a turn that every “continuity” advocate should study.
While the noise was rising…
Reality was waiting.
On June 8, 1998, without consultation, without a transition plan, without a “third term” miracle—Abacha died. Just like that. A heartbeat stopped, and with it, the entire architecture of manufactured consent began to crumble.
The rallies vanished.
The slogans expired.
The dream dissolved.
And Daniel Kanu?
From front pages to footnotes.
From influence… to irrelevance.
Then came the part the textbooks don’t advertise:
Legal troubles. Conviction. Prison.
And eventually, disappearance from the national stage.
Not because Nigerians suddenly became wiser overnight.
But because power moved on and left its praise singers behind in the wilderness.
The Remake: Better English, More Algorithms
Now, look around you today.
We are watching a remake. The hardware has changed, the crowds are now in WhatsApp groups, the placards are now tweets, but the software is identical.
You hear them everywhere:
Telling you the economy is improving while your pocket disagrees.
Explaining that your suffering is “necessary reform.”
Insisting, with polished confidence, that there is no alternative.
They don’t shout like before.
They spin.
Smoothly. Elegantly. Relentlessly.
One says hardship is a sign of “courageous leadership.”
Another says pain is “the cost of progress.”
Another stretches logic until it nearly snaps, trying to convince you that decline is actually growth in disguise.
This is no longer defense of policy.
This is gaslighting: the systematic attempt to make a population distrust its own eyes, its own ledger books, its own lived experience.
And the more they speak, the more one thing becomes clear:
They are trying to reconstruct reality to match the ambition of power.
A Warning, Not an Attack
Let us be honest.
Supporting a government is not a crime.
Believing in leadership is not foolish.
But gaslighting a nation?
History has never been kind to that.
Because here is the part many conveniently ignore:
History does not fail.
It does not get confused.
It does not lose records.
It simply repeats outcomes for similar behaviors.
Every time people gather to insist that power must continue at all costs…
Every time truth is bent to protect authority…
Every time citizens are told to doubt their own reality…
The ending has always been the same.
Always.
So this is not an attack.
It is a warning.
To the modern-day defenders of “continuity by all means.”
To the eloquent explainers of obvious hardship.
To the professional narrators of selective truth.
Be careful.
Because the path you are walking is not new.
It is paved with the bones of previous regimes and the discarded reputations of their loyalists.
The destination is not hidden.
We have seen it before, in Daniel Kanu.
We saw it before him in the praise-singers of the Second Republic.
We will see it again.
Where Will You Stand?
Power will change hands. It always does.
Narratives will collapse. They always do.
And when that moment comes, when the inevitable transition arrives, history will ask a simple, devastating question:
Where did you stand when truth needed a voice?
Not how well you spoke.
Not how loyal you sounded.
But how honest you were.
Because in the end:
The crowd disperses.
The banners fade.
The algorithms move on to the next hype.
But those who helped distort reality?
They remain… not as heroes, but as lessons.
Make we wise up.
Allen writes from Kano, he writes on public affairs and promote good governance.
