When the All Progressives Congress Youth Wing’s leader Dayo Isreal, announced placements for ‘‘scouting and identification’’ of brilliant young minds for the role of Special Assistants to “Propaganda Affairs” and setting up a “Positive Propaganda Unit”, many thought it was all a joke ‘cruise’, well, it was not.
The political drama of recruiting youth “agents of positive propaganda” ahead of the 2027 election, the program’s name and mission suggest something sinister: the institutionalisation of positive propaganda or the other way round, as a party policy.
Words do mean a lot, and propaganda is not a synonym for political communication. The word carries with it its baggage from the 17th century, when the Catholic Congregatio de Propaganda Fide used the term, through the mid-20th century, when totalitarian governments militarised it. Propaganda today is known to be the intentional dissemination of information, true, half-true or completely untrue, to shape opinion and action. It is distinguished by scholars from “misinformation” (deception for no bad intent) and “disinformation” (deception for bad intent), but in real politics, the distinction is lost. They share in common their corrosive effect on the truth.
Policy has also been formulated too often by propaganda in Nigeria. Politicians promise but give only roads that are on paper only, power plants that never get the light of production, and empowerment programs for youths that empower but not evidently. These party announcements of projects give an illusion of achievement because the seasoned reality is still seen as the same by many citizens, who continue to languish in hardship. In a nation, these tales do not just persuade, but unmake. Counter-proof is enemy propaganda in the eyes of the party faithful, while official announcements are fantasy in the eyes of the opposition. Both sides, in this manner, politicise truth.
Evidence in the form of research points this way. Political disinformation was studied in 2023 and found to falsify, especially when presented by government and political parties, politicise firsthand by bringing truth-claims down to identity markers instead of shared reality (Vasist et al., 2023). Yet another body of research illustrates the ways that government deception has disproportionate consequences: because they share institutional legitimacy, they accelerate the dissemination of misinformation and drain social norms supportive of democratic discourse (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2020). Government is demeaned as entertainment when make-believe trumps evidence and sloganeering trumps substance.
Nigeria’s information space is already brittle. Social media spread can be two-faced: generating the youth and global focus, but also rumours and counter-rumours, at times confusing authentic complaints. Under such a command, state or party propaganda, especially when “positive”, is two-faced and perilous. It is not only the intra-party cynics’ lure; it creates country narratives, silences opposition, and constricts space for authentic civic debate. This nomenclature by the APC Youth Wing to refer to this group is another semantic sleight of hand. By placing the adjectival “positive” before the noun “propaganda,” it is made to look innocuous, presented as appearing to be public education or civic engagement. Positive or negative propaganda is, nevertheless, the telling of stories to promote a political agenda. It is not transparency, it is not accountability, and in fact, not truth. A government does not need propaganda for a great past, but documentation, open data, and publicly accessible evidence of performance.
In recent months, fact-checking organisations like FactCheckAfrica have exposed misleading claims emanating from the Tinubu administration, especially related to the purported “special visa” for Nigerians in Japan. A detailed investigation debunking the claim that Japan had created a new visa scheme to resettle African migrants, pointing out that the initiative announced at TICAD was a cultural-exchange programme, not an immigration pathway, leading to the scrapping of the “African Hometown” initiative by the Japanese government. Also, President Bola Tinubu deleted a social media post in which he claimed to have met with the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, following public backlash and a fact check investigation by FactCheckAfrica.
There is an elevated ethical cost to propaganda. Citizens wind up growing up on leaders’ expectations of being deceived. Independent reporters and fact checkers are dismissed as saboteurs of progress. And once you get dishonesty institutionalised, it starts playing on itself: why build a road when you can ask for a signpost and hashtag the trend? Why take up reform of the power sector when you can produce “light-up projects” in large billboards? Propaganda allows governments to weather the news cycle without enduring the tedium of policy. For democracy, legitimacy does not mean just winning an election but keeping the faith of the institutions and the people. When political parties are voted in on a platform of narrative fraud and do not live up to promises of fulfilment, legitimacy is lost, and opposition starts mobilising, from such failing. The only thing left is a hollowed-out political settlement prone to revolution, cynicism, and further deceit.
Nigerians atleast, would know how propaganda results in violence, either electoral or ethno-religious violence. To introduce somewhat ‘state-disinformation’ into this volatile mix is to add petrol to dry leaves. Political parties anywhere in the world communicate, frame, and persuade, of course. The problem is not communication; it is communication that can be separated from verifiable fact. If APC, or even any other party, must turn on in 2027 by waking up young minds, there are better choices. Establish a Department of Youth Policy that documents and reports with evidence. Establish a Verification Desk which works in collaboration with unbiased fact-checkers so that claims are authentic. Use citizen-reporting apps whereby young Nigerians fact-check, photo, and track government projects in their area. Not SAPA, as termed by the Youth Wing leader.
Carnegie Endowment’s 2022 report on disinformation illustrates the path to defeating lies: transparency, corrections policy, and local verification centres, and not propaganda. People believe information when they can see it for themselves, not when it comes from a party “spin squad.” The APC Youth Wing has an opportunity here. Instead of employing young Nigerians as positive propaganda performers, it would be better to reach them as truth ambassadors, champions of transparency, and performance agents. Propaganda is a political cost. It is bought in fleeting attention but decays with time. It gains headlines at the cost of losing credibility. And in a country already suffering from distrust, disinformation and polarisation, the last thing a party or government should do is throw around words with simple euphemism or positions that conflict with evidence-based and citizen-centred trust.
Habeeb Adisa is the Head of Programs/Co-Editor at FactCheckAfrica
