Have you ever met a pretending Nigerian? Of course, you have. If you haven’t, it’s probable that you haven’t been paying attention. They are everywhere. On your timeline, in your worship place, at the market, and most dangerously, in government. Pretence is now our national uniform. We wear it to hide poverty, to chase validation, and to survive a system that rewards noise over work.

Online, they post from rented cars and borrowed flats with captions like “God’s timing.” They mock the honest hawker while their own breakfast is on credit and the data used to post was borrowed. We are broke, but we are terrified of looking broke. So, we rent a lifestyle and pay for it with lies.

In church, they have the loudest “Amen” and the longest testimonies. By Monday, the same hands run Ponzi schemes and Yahoo. Scripture is quoted to swindle, then Sunday comes and they mount the pulpit again. We have turned faith into a costume for fraud, and God is not mocked.

But the biggest stage for pretence is the public sector. Here, sycophancy is a job description. From the clerk in the ministry to the Federal Executive Council, the job is no longer service. It is to manufacture alternate realities for “oga.”

In these realities, every failed policy is a “bold reform.” Every abandoned project is “work in progress.” Every empty treasury is “strategic fiscal consolidation.” Aides make glossy slides, pay influencers, and trend hashtags to convince 200 million people that black is white. The goal is simple: make the boss feel good. Make him believe he is “doing well” and the best thing since sliced bread. Surrounded by echoes, he believes it.

This is how we got here: people pretending to be pretending that the pretenders they hype are pretending to be doing something. It is comedy until you count the cost. One kilometre of road is patched for a photo-op. Hospitals have no drugs but we commission billboards. Schools have no teachers but we launch “Education Week.” We have mastered optics and abandoned outcomes.

The rot in our psyche is an allergy to truth. Truth is rude. Truth doesn’t get contracts. Truth doesn’t get appointments. So, we reward the loudest liar with a microphone, the biggest praise singer with a title, and the most shameless pretender with power. Then we call the honest man “stubborn.” A nation cannot eat press releases. A nation cannot grow on vibes.

It ends when we say so. Stop clapping for nonsense. Stop retweeting lies. Stop calling thieves “our own.” We cannot pretend our way out of incompetency and inefficiencies. Start demanding results, not rhetoric. Nigeria does not need more pretenders. Nigeria needs truth-tellers brave enough to look “oga” in the eye and say: “This is not working.” Because if we don’t, the alternate reality we built will be all that’s left. And in that reality, there will be nothing left to pretend about.

Labaran Yusuf, 

Jos, Plateau State