IF Chinua Achebe were alive, he would not be writing a sequel to Things Fall Apart, as a content creator who comically called him "Shina Achebe" asked in a recent viral video. Achebe would be unnerved. Like Wole Soyinka, he would be unlike what he had been before, while Nigerians wonder where he is and what he is saying about the country's near-descent into anarchy. What would unnerve Achebe, what I suppose unnerves Ṣoyinka, is the mass aid and applause willingly and unwillingly given to the predators who prey on our national peace.
For people to be saved, there has to be a desire to want to be saved or, at least, a recognition of what it means to be saved. The situation in Nigeria is, sadly, the opposite. Many instances point out that, through some actions, some Nigerians are instead strengthening terrorism and exposing the country to more danger. Certainly, this is odd. How can a citizenry that cries for help be culpable in its own peril? The answer is truly not straightforward; it lies in meticulously surveying the extents of disinformation, misinformation and memefication of insecurity in Nigeria.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), although both disinformation and misinformation could be used interchangeably, there is a difference in the more common UNESCO usage. In its in-house common usage, disinformation is misleading information intentionally passed, often meant to deceive or manipulate, while misinformation is accidentally false information. Whether or not one considers the two terms the same, the point is that Nigeria suffers an avalanche of disinformation and misinformation.
In 2014 when the Ebola virus broke out, my mother woke me roughly at dawn and asked me to go and bathe with some hot, salted water. I had little to no time to think and ask why. She seemed sure and agitated. My reverence for her obliged me to do what she asked me. Only later did I learn that it was said that taking that diabolic bath was supposed to ward off Ebola virus. I also found out that this act spread like wildfire across the country. It was chaotic, but its chaos was created with misinformation, one that is rooted in low-budget fetishness, rather than pure science. This is how susceptible Nigerians have been to false information, unfounded allegations and assertions without true authorities.
There are consequences to both disinformation and misinformation, and none should have to be acclimated to. When you misinform or disinform the people, you set them against the truth and the freedom that comes with it, which is any of the basic human rights you can think of. When a person operates with false information, they are as likely to make decisions that lead to their death as they are to make ones that stunt their growth. On Tuesday, 2 June 2026, parents in Osun State withdrew their children from schools when it was falsely claimed that bandits were now in the state. Some students were withdrawn in the middle of tests, some from examinations of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC). In a country where standards of education have fallen so much that cutoff points for entries into the highest institutions are at an all-time low. What could be more tragic?
Another consequence of mis- or disinformation is that it becomes a validation for terrorism. It makes unpopular essentials and platforms wanton fear. This may well be the end goal of those behind disinformation on security matters in Nigeria. This begs several questions: What does a Nigeria in anarchy mean for those who want to see it in such a condition? Is it truly about religious assimilation or utter human subjugation? Is it about resource control, ethnic cleansing, or expansion? My answers are as valid as yours.
We cannot laugh our way through every tragedy, certainly not through abductions and killings. The simplest of tragedies will expose whatever grave misdeed we hide with well-made comedy.
Probing the objective of the terror acts should not stop checking how Nigerians become vulnerable to false information. There is the usual suspect: the ineptitude and corruption of leaders at all levels. There is also the less talked about: the weak attention and low awareness given to essential mechanisms that could have saved the country. One such essential thing in Nigeria is the knowledge of budgets and the implementation of allocations to security initiatives. An instance of that is the Safe School Initiative, which runs into about 145 billion Naira and is only now being targeted for probe after hundreds of school children have been kidnapped. How culpable are Nigerians, the civil servants, in charge? How many Nigerians were even aware of this initiative before now?
It is no point to say that Nigerians are unaware of certain policies because of lack of access to official information since, other than media reports, the Freedom of Information Act was designed to ease awareness and accountability. While that in itself is a problem, seeing that complacency in execution trails FOIA itself, active citizen engagement as seen in cases of the recent kidnapping and the 2020 #EndSARS movement, or something about the same region, would have solidified the institutional effectiveness of the FOIA or forced better government efforts. Nigerians cannot afford to assume our elected leaders will act ethically, nor can we assume our fellow citizens in government won't be lazy or corrupt. We have a system of corruption that degrades the capable and advances the willing misfit. We must be the wings by which the right things get done.
In doing the work of fixing our security system, we must also become more aware of the dysfunctional nature of our popular culture in engaging serious issues. In this age of content creation, it appears that more Nigerians than one can count are blind to the need for the safety of our country and more wide-eyed to virality. This ungodly, blameworthy pursuit has somehow become a norm. A politician siphons money, somebody makes a skit from it, a celebrity's private life gets exposed, it becomes skit material. For every morally degrading issue or systemic corruption case, far too many Nigerians have been conditioned to accept that laughter must stick to their faces. Some other times, they circulate outright, divisive lies that show ethnic and/or religious misrepresentation.
When creative pieces only satisfy the chase after money, that is arts becoming a wordless poem in an overcrowded, noisy theatre.
Reducing or extracting unnecessary laughter from life-threatening issues is memefication. What threatens our existence should not be taken to give the same pleasure as thumbnail-like pictures thrown in casual conversations. People, no, children are dying. None of it is funny. It is sad that, for virality, many Nigerians have created funny content to make skits based on the recent abductions of school kids. This is not dark humor, this is inhumanity. How many members of the families of the kidnapped would see your skit and wish you well?
Of course, let the skit makers work, let the comedians work, let the entertainers work, let the content creators work. The creative should work, indeed. When the creative works, however, they must know that human lives are not supposed to be the materials for making those who should be fighting for their lives laugh or relax. It is a wàhálà no dey finish mentality, but even if problems are boundless, normalizing one problem does not absolve one from its danger. We cannot laugh our way through every tragedy, certainly not through abductions and killings. The simplest of tragedies will expose whatever grave misdeed we hide with well-made comedy.
If anyone must use sad incidents to create content, such should at least speak to power, like what skit maker Taaooma did or what BaeU did. It has always been the duty of arts to stand guard of society, to watch and reflect what it sees, so that society may reinvent itself where needed. When creative pieces only satisfy the chase after money, that is arts becoming a wordless poem in an overcrowded, noisy theatre. Even the false artist should not be unconscionable; your creativity is allowed to be faulty, not the humanity that informs its essence.
Come what may, care must be taken by all and sundry. The false information you spread can damage things in ways that you may not be able to quantify, whether or not you do it for virality, the adrenaline rush, or just to belong. There are lives, including yours, at stake. The casualness with which some approach danger or platform it, like those who commented their account details under the TikTok live of terrorists so that they could get credited, is nothing but an approval of terror. This has been going on for long, and must be corrected, if not punished.
This is not the country that Achebe would want to write about. In fact, the very attempt to make a comic comment with Achebe's magnum opus is a form of ridicule to his legacy. This embarrassing conversation only makes those who subscribe to it avoidant of pain, if they must be humanized. At best, it adds weight to the very text that Achebe had responded to: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. We should be ashamed.
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