On Reno Omokri and Comfort of the Unreal: The Philosophy of Nigerian Political Reality -By Ozuomba Egwuonwu

When Mike Arnold recently “exposed” Reno Omokri as a chronic fabricator, who, in Arnold’s words, lies with calm precision and reptilian charm, the public’s reaction oscillated between amusement and moral fatigue. Yet beneath the digital noise lies a far subtler revelation: what has been unveiled is not merely one man’s moral failing, but the architecture of Nigerian evolved political reality.

Arnold’s account does not so much accuse Omokri as it discloses the hidden logic of the Nigerian political system, that it permits (even rewards) image over meaning, performance over process. It suggests that the “politician” in Nigeria is first a communicator, a lateral networker, a symbol of status, before he or she is a policy-maker or public servant. And within such a landscape, the successful politician is the one who hires the best spin-machine, navigates the patronage networks, and keeps the appearance of substance.

Omokri’s supposed deceits,the curated photographs, the exaggerated capabilities, the seamless posturing of global influence, are not aberrations; they are the essential grammar of the Nigerian political persona.

If Nigeria, as evolved, remains functional- at least for politicians, their beneficiaries, and those who have not yet been displaced or devoured by her contradictions, then Omokri’s exposure is not scandalous but sacramental. He has entered the priesthood of those who know how the illusion works and why it must never fully collapse.

Arnold’s description of Omokri as “constant in lying, but calm, cold, and soullessly charming”,reads less like a moral indictment and more like an ethnography of political being in Nigeria. Here, power is not first a matter of policy or vision but of semiotics. In such a system, to seem is to be. Authenticity becomes secondary to appearance, and narrative control replaces ideological coherence. Thus, when Omokri stages his image beside symbols of influence or drapes himself in moral and religious rhetoric, he is not lying in the conventional sense,he is performing the rites of legitimacy.

This is what Arnold’s exposure confirms: Omokri is not pretending to be a Nigerian politician; he is one, in the purest sense. He has absorbed well the lessons and the ecosystem- where political authority depends not on transparency, but on the artful orchestration of belief, where political dispensation is not born from transparency but from repeated, if conjured narratives.

To understand why such fictions and keeping up appearances thrive, one must examine the psychological contrast between the Nigerian people and their political reality.

Nigeria is a polity built on contradiction: unity that abhors integration, wealth that abhors distribution, religion that abhors spirituality, governance that abhors justice. What holds such contradictions together is a shared theatre, the guise, not generation of national coherence. So in that theatre, every actor- politician, priest, parole, must maintain a degree of performance to sustain the illusion of progress.

Thus, the “mythic self-projection” becomes not just tolerated but structural, Bola’s “Tony,” Reno’s “connections,” and even other politicians’ mythical biographies becomes the social fabric weaved into our national continuity. The lie, once accepted, becomes part of the fallacious civic glue, a fiction everyone knows but no one wishes to tear apart, for fear of unraveling the little stability, gasps away from dreaded resetting utter chaos.

The unpalatable truth however is that every exposure of a public figure in Nigeria simultaneously exposes the rest of us. The endurance of the political illusion rests not only on those who craft it, but on those who consume it with weary indulgence.

The Nigerian public knows, almost instinctively, that its politicians are actors in a vast national play. Yet, we watch, not because we believe, but because the theatre must go on. In a nation founded upon contradiction, we have come to not only tolerate the untrue; we somewhat have evolved to depend on it. Lies have become our social adhesive, the fabric that keeps our incoherence from disintegrating into our mythical, self- fabricated boogeyman chaos.
So Nigeria’s most enduring political achievement is her ability to make illusion perform the work of order. And so, government is not primarily about governance, but about narration, a sustained act of storytelling that persuades the citizenry to mistake motion for movement.

In that sense, Omokri’s alleged fabrications are not exceptional but archetypal. They echo a system that values persistence of narration even if false, over clarity of fact. The state functions, not through consistent truth, but through consistent performance of truth. Which is why exposure in Nigeria rarely ruins a political life.

If we accept Nigeria as it presently functions, a state held together by negotiated illusions, then it follows that Reno Omokri’s exposure should not disqualify him from political aspiration. It should, rather, validate him.

In a system that rewards image, his fluency in self-presentation is a credential. In a landscape where narratives are currency, his storytelling is capital. If politics here is a theatre of controlled chaos, then Omokri has proven himself stage-ready.

Even the nation’s own vice president once suggested that “good men should sell ice cream” rather than enter politics, an admission that moral innocence is ill-suited to our political climate. By that measure, Omokri’s ambition for high office, including the vice-presidency, is not audacious; it is consistent. He seeks not to redefine the rules, but to play them expertly. And perhaps, in a world already structured by illusion, that is the most realistic form of sincerity available.

The philosopher Plato once proposed the idea of the “noble lie”- a foundational myth told by rulers to preserve social harmony. Nigeria, too, runs on her own noble lies: that her elections are genuine contests of ideologies, her chaos is order, her suffering is progress, that her institutions are impartial, and her leaders are suitable custodians of destiny.

These fictions are not sustained because they are believed, but because they are useful. They allow society to function despite the absence of coherence. To strip them away would be to expose the abyss- a nation unwilling to accept its evolving identity, unready for truth.
If Nigeria as presently constituted is sustained by illusionary coherence, then those who can craft and sustain such illusions are indispensable to her machinery. It follows then, however paradoxically, that Reno Omokri’s exposure should not disqualify him from political aspiration.

In a more just society, such revelations would end a man’s public career. In Nigeria, it might even revive one. Because here, truth is optional, but narrative is essential.

If we have accepted, consciously or not, that the Nigerian “order”, with all its performative coherence and moral elasticity is “working”, even “thriving” (at least for the few who matter- its politicians and motley representative few yet to be displaced or destroyed by its contradictions) , then we must accept, too, that Omokri represents its natural political offspring. To support his aspirations is to accept our collective reflection, however uncomfortable.

We may wish for a purer order, a politics of transparency, integrity, and rational progress, but to wish that without reforming the structure is to seek after sunlight in a house built without windows. Until the system itself changes, untruths become viable and not fatal, and those who thrive in it must necessarily be those who can manage its illusions with grace. In that sense, Omokri’s alleged falsehoods are not private failings, they are national metaphors, his deceptions are not a scandal but a mirror- in which we see the reflection of every Nigerian who will learn to navigate a world where truth is optional but performance is survival.

For in the end, the comfort of the untrue is the only stability a society of contradictions can sustain. Reno Omokri’s exposure is therefore not necessarily a tragedy, but a philosophical invitation: to look into the mirror of our politics as it has evolved, and finally admit that we recognize the face staring back.

Ozuomba Egwuonwu