By Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D
There was a time when a national scandal could dominate public discourse for weeks. Questions would be asked.
Investigations would follow. The media would sustain the pressure. Citizens would demand answers. Public officials would feel the weight of accountability.
Not anymore. Today, Nigeria appears to have developed what may best be described as outrage fatigue. We are still capable of expressing anger. But only briefly. Our outrage has become fleeting, our indignation temporary and our collective memory painfully short.
Every week presents a fresh scandal.
Every month produces another national embarrassment. Before accountability can catch up with one controversy, another arrives to replace it. The result is a society that has become desensitised to the abnormal.
Years ago, Nigerians were told that a snake had swallowed ₦36 million belonging to the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board. The explanation became an international joke. We laughed. We criticised. We moved on.
Later came the astonishing report of a vessel under official investigation that reportedly disappeared. Again, disbelief gave way to humour. Humour gave way to resignation.
Then came ghost workers collecting salaries for years. Ghost pensioners receiving benefits long after retirement or death. Budget padding scandals.
Projects that existed only on paper.
Contracts fully paid for but never executed.
Each revelation generated outrage. Each outrage faded.
Now we are confronted with the controversy surrounding the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, PFIPC.
According to the Presidency, the agency had no legal existence.
Yet it reportedly found its way into the national budget with an allocation running into more than ₦1.3 billion.
It reportedly operated from office accommodation within the Federal Secretariat and bore all the outward appearance of a government institution.
Whether the courts eventually establish criminal liability against those involved is a separate matter.
But the institutional questions raised by the controversy are too important to disappear beneath the next news cycle.
How did it happen?
Where did the safeguards fail?
Who processed the paperwork?
Who approved the budgetary provision?
Who allocated office accommodation?
Who exercised oversight?
These are not questions that should evaporate because another scandal has emerged.
Yet that is increasingly what happens in Nigeria.
Our attention span has become shorter than our accountability process.
We have become prisoners of the next headline.
Social media amplifies the cycle.
A scandal breaks.
Hashtags trend.
Television stations host heated debates.
Memes flood the internet.
Politicians exchange accusations.
Then another controversy emerges.
The previous one quietly disappears from public consciousness without resolution.
The danger is not merely that scandals occur.
Every democracy experiences scandals.
The greater danger is when citizens become so overwhelmed by the frequency of institutional failures that they begin to regard them as normal.
That is how accountability dies.
Not through one dramatic event.
But through gradual public exhaustion.
Outrage fatigue is dangerous because it quietly lowers society’s expectations.
Instead of asking why public institutions failed, citizens begin to expect failure.
Instead of demanding accountability, they settle for explanations.
Instead of insisting on consequences, they settle for press statements.
The abnormal slowly acquires the appearance of normality.
That should worry every Nigerian.
Democracy depends upon an active and vigilant citizenry.
Public institutions function best when they know that citizens are watching, questioning and refusing to let issues disappear into silence.
When public attention becomes temporary, institutional accountability also becomes temporary.
Perhaps this explains why some investigations appear to lose momentum once media attention shifts elsewhere.
The pressure disappears. The headlines move on. The public forgets. The files gather dust. The cycle repeats itself.
Nigeria cannot afford this culture of selective memory.
A nation that forgets yesterday’s scandal cannot effectively prevent tomorrow’s.
Accountability requires persistence.
Institutions are strengthened not merely by exposing wrongdoing but by following every controversy to its logical conclusion.
There is another dimension to this problem. Public trust. Each unresolved controversy chips away at confidence in public institutions.
Eventually, citizens begin to doubt even genuine explanations because too many implausible ones have gone unchallenged.
Trust, once eroded, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. Perhaps this is the greatest cost of outrage fatigue.
It is not merely that scandals go unresolved. It is that public confidence gradually disappears with them.
Nigeria deserves better. We should not become a nation that merely consumes scandals as entertainment. We should become a nation that insists every scandal ends with answers.
Every allegation deserves investigation.
Every investigation deserves conclusion.
Every proven wrongdoing deserves consequences. Until that culture takes root, the cycle will continue.
We will express outrage. We will trend hashtags. We will create memes. We will move on. And somewhere, another file will quietly join the growing archive of unresolved controversies.
Perhaps the greatest danger facing Nigeria today is not corruption alone.
Nor is it insecurity. It is our growing ability to become accustomed to both.
For when a nation loses the capacity to remain outraged long enough to demand accountability, it begins to lose something even more valuable than public money. It begins to lose its democratic conscience.
Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D, FIMC, CMC
lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com
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