History is not lacking in the infamous tradecraft of state propaganda and political spin. They are professional merchants of falsehood, the spin-doctors, who master the art of turning lies into political currency. In the chilling annals of Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, earned notoriety for his ruthless doctrine: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” An ‘evil genius’ of some sort, Goebbels’ masterful manipulation of mass psychology laid the foundation for what would become modern state spin, a carefully manufactured narrative deployed to sedate or deceive the populace in the service of power.
In the 20th century, totalitarian regimes, including Stalinist Russia and Maoist China, weaponized disinformation as tools of political control. Even in democracies, spin doctors, that is, those behind-the-scenes whisperers, who massage public perception, have assumed pivotal roles, often conflating the lines between strategic communication and outright falsehood. From the Watergate scandal in Nixon’s America to Blair’s “sexed-up” Iraq dossier in Britain, the machinery of state spin has too often been used not to clarify, but to obfuscate. From the propagandists of Nazi Germany to modern political strategists, they shape narratives, flatten dissent, and obscure inconvenient truths. In democratic societies, the spin-doctor assumes a subtler but no less dangerous role, one of twisting facts not necessarily to oppress, but to distract, delay, and deflect. When curators of alternate truth operating from a parallel universe dance to the samba of spin, power abandons conscience and integrity in governance reigns supreme. In Nigeria, this craft is alive and well, with modern-day Goebbels raising spin to a cunning art form, whether distracting from illness, security crises, or governance failure.
Politically, spin presumes truth is malleable. It births a political culture where truth is disposable, and choreographed optical illusion is everything. Psychologically, it pits perception against substance. From this standpoint, spin functions as a coping mechanism, an avoidance behaviour aimed at delaying the confrontation with uncomfortable truths. But in sociological terms, especially in fragile democracies like Nigeria’s, spins are corrosive. They reflect a distrustful relationship between rulers and ruled. Indeed, they delegitimize institutions, foster conspiratorial mindset, and widen the already gaping trust deficit between the rulers and the ruled. Philosophically, it flirts with the idea that deception can serve a higher purpose. Spin raises the perennial dilemma posed by Plato’s Noble Lie: is it ever acceptable to lie for the ‘greater good’? But very rarely does spin invite moral reflection. Yet, every once in a while, conscience breaks through.
Quickly, let’s take a backward leap into history and recall the samba of conscience as a moral parable. In 1984, the legendary Afrobeat musician and social critic, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, was jailed by a military regime under dubious charges. While in prison, something extraordinary happened. The very judge who had sentenced him came to visit, remorseful, confessing that “his hands were tied” by the powers that be. Fela, never one to mince words, erupted: “Judge come beg me for forgiveness!” It was a scene of dramatic reversal—the oppressor undone by his own conscience, the prisoner now the moral authority. In response to the incident, an ace journalist, writing in their column, described the judge as “a lucky man who has a conscience that beats samba in his ears.” It was a poetic turn of phrase—suggesting that the judge’s late awakening, though insufficient, still marked him as one of the rare few in power whose conscience refused to die. Power humbled by remorse, the Justice’s act of contrition remains one of Nigeria’s most vivid moral parables.
Fast-forward to 2017, when the samba of spin drowned the din of conscience as Mallam Garba Shehu, former Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to late former President Muhammadu Buhari clung to the allurements of power to enroll himself into this infamous league of spin-doctors. In his recently launched book, According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson’s Experience, Shehu peeled the mask off his own complicity, recounting how he spun and concocted the now infamous “Rats ate the wires” story, which was purely a calculated lie designed to divert attention from President Buhari’s failing health in 2017. Mr. Shehu now admits in his memoir: “I concocted the rat story to divert attention from Buhari’s sickness…In my view, that spin worked.” There was no admission of wrongdoing. There was no sense of remorse; just a cold, tactical confession. If the judge in Maiduguri was dancing to the rhythmic cadence of his conscience, Shehu turned it into PR choreography.
In Chapter 10 of his book, Shehu recalled how the spin was born. A damaged cable was casually attributed to rats during a conversation in the Chief of Staff’s office. Faced with mounting media inquiries about Buhari’s health and capacity to resume duty, Shehu latched onto the rat theory and ran with it. At that time, the political atmosphere was toxic with speculations. Maazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of IPOB, had publicly alleged that Buhari had died in the UK and had been replaced with a body double – Jibril from Sudan. The theory, ridiculous on the surface, nevertheless gained traction. An ex British MP for Falkirt West and Falkirt, Eric Stuart lent extra currency to the conspiracy theory when he pronounced then President dead by sending a condolence via his Twitter handle, @EricJoyce to Buhari’s wife.
Buhari’s prolonged absence, his visibly diminished public appearances, and evasive answers from presidential aides fertilized the soil for conspiracy to grow. And then came the rat story, a masterstroke of absurdity designed to shift national conversation from the President’s health to the exotic tastes of Nigerian rodents. The media, in Shehu’s words, “ate it up.” The BBC even ran it as one of the top stories of the day. Nigerians – half disbelieving, half amused – gasped, laughed, and moved on. But what seemed like a clever deflection was, in truth, a brazen betrayal of public trust. Now, years later, Garba Shehu confesses, not with contrition, but with a touch of boastful reflection, as though he were proud of having pulled off a master-class in distraction, not minding the objections of VP Yemi Osinbajo and Minister Lai Mohammed. If only Mr. Shehu appreciated the self-destructive implications of his open admission of guilt, he would have thought twice before yielding to the primitive pressure of spin, all in the name of blind loyalty to his principal.
Was Buhari better or worse for it? Did the rat story save his image or expose his vulnerability? Did it stabilize the Nigerian State or sow deeper distrust? These are questions Garba Shehu must answer. Because for all his bravado and braggadocio, the cost of his spin was not paid by him alone; instead, it was borne by the Nigerian people that for weeks debated the metaphysics of presidential identity. He never did. Mr. Shehu may have written a book, but he has also written himself into a corner—a character, whose conscience wouldn’t let him rest until he confessed, albeit too late. Unfortunately, the confident swagger and revelry with which he swooned all through his rat spin like a WWII hero hardly suggested the disposition of a contrite heart. This is less-surprising in a political culture where truth is disposable, and image or optical illusion is everything; where the capacity to leverage state power to manipulate citizens, gaslight a nation, and bury the truth under convenient fiction suffices as a political capital.
There is a moral injury here. Shehu, by his own account, deliberately misled the nation. He was not merely a loyal aide trying to buy time for his boss; he was a craftsman of deception, peddling bare-faced lies in the guise of official communication. That the story “worked” for a time does not make it any less dishonest; nor does it absolve the institutional complicity of the presidency and those in it who allowed, endorsed, or benefitted from the ruse. Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s former Information Minister, and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo may have disagreed with the rat decoy as Mr. Shehu openly admitted, but their dissent was quiet and ineffective. This silence, this complicity by omission, is how systems of deception thrive. If truth had more defenders within the Villa than fiction, Shehu’s story might have ended differently. But it did not and the nation paid the price.
What then shall we say of a government that needed rats to explain away its own decay? How many of those wrong-headed policies such as ‘Ways and Means’ financing were curated, concealed, or amplified by Garba Shehu’s media machinery? How much public memory was sculpted by sanitized narratives—from rodents to survival through foreign medicine? Did his spin help fuel decisions that harmed the nation? Did his lies cover the tracks of incompetence, negligence, or worse? Perhaps, the samba beat of his conscience might have been deafening; yet, the pull of hubris would nudge him on to double down.
Perhaps, Mr. Shehu was not a lone ranger in this spin business. In the early years of the Buhari administration, a grotesque tragedy played out in Benue State in January 2017. Scores of farmers were massacred by armed herders in what turned into a humanitarian and security catastrophe. Roughly 71 caskets were laid out in a gory precision awaiting mass burial. It was such a heart-wrenching sight! The visceral grief of bereaved communities prompted national outrage; yet, it also inspired one of the most damning examples of spin-driven cynicism from the seat of power. During an appearance on AIT, the presidential spokesperson, Mr. Femi Adesina, was asked about the violence and the ancestral claims of displaced farmers. His response was chilling in its callousness: “Ancestral attachment? You can only have ancestral attachment when you are alive…; if you are dead, how does the attachment matter?” He went further, urging victims to surrender their land for ranching to preserve their lives. “People should offer land for peace sake…if you have land that you can give, give”. The message to Nigerians was clear. Abandon your heritage or end up dead. You can either freely choose to die defending your land, or parcel out your community, and it is your fault if you cannot let go.
Few days before late former President Buhari was committed to mother earth, Mr. Adesina revved up the spin engine with a self-indicting statement, intended as a defence of his boss’ reliance on UK hospitals as a matter of survival. “He always had his medicals in London…One has to be alive first to get certain things corrected… If he had said, ‘I will do my medicals in Nigeria…’ he could have long been dead because there may not be the expertise needed.” This “survival spin” amounted to a confession that under Buhari, Nigeria failed to invest in healthcare. For over eight years, spanning both military and civilian tenure, Buhari never built a worldclass hospital capable of serving him or Nigerians. That failure wasn’t side-lined; it was crowed about. Adesina’s boast underscores the depth of systemic neglect. Nigeria’s healthcare failed its own president, and its citizens. The irony? Buhari still died in London after billions were spent protecting his life abroad.
All the spins, all the evasions, all the billions wasted; yet, the inevitable caught up. And in death, even the most fortified lies dissolve into dust. It’s now left for Nigerians to learn, reflect, and demand more than rats and rationalizations. Who knows how many modern-day spin-doctors walk the hallowed corridors of power, crafting tales, fabricating narratives, and spinning half-truths to shield powers and principalities from public scrutiny? Let them ask Shehu and Adesina: “How market?” Perhaps, they may be tempted to stay the course of spin and still answer, ‘It is working’. Luckily, no amount of spin can cancel the verdict of conscience or erase the testimony of the oppressed. Let them ‘carry dey go’.
Finally, the Fela–Judge episode reminds us that true accountability can come from the unlikeliest of sources. Conscience, when unavoidable or inescapable, can upend power. The samba of conscience can shake the high and mighty. This explains why Nigeria needs a samba for conscience, not spin. The samba of conscience must become a thunderclap of reform. But Nigeria needs more than samba; it needs change. Words of admission must lead to reform – invest in world-class healthcare; stop using injury and fear as policy excuses; demand honesty, not spin. Let today’s spin-doctors remember the lessons of rats, London hospitals, ancestral land, and public confession. Let the surge of conscience not be ornamental but catalytic because, truth may dance slowly, but eventually, it leads the samba.
The samba of spin-doctors’ conscience may play softly in the background. But the question remains: Will it grow loud enough to awaken others? Or will it fade, drowned by new distractions, new rats, and new deceptions? For Nigeria’s sake, let the din of conscience knock down the ‘Jericho Walls’ of spin and liberate the Nigerian State from the crisis of conscience.