I am responding to Mohammed Bello Doka’s piece dated 4th August, 2026, not to defend President Tinubu or to dismiss Doka’s indignation, but to widen the lens and offer what I call an Alternative Perspective, a deliberate attempt to retell our national story beyond the shrill, tribal arithmetic that has come to pass for political analysis.
My platform, Alternative Perspectives was conceived precisely for moments like this: when a nation begins to mistake volume for virtue, and to mistake the loudest insult for the deepest conviction. We live in a Nigeria where public debate is increasingly framed as Muslim versus Christian, North versus South, until almost every issue collapses into a crude “us versus them.” In that atmosphere, strength is measured not by balance or evidence, but by the brutality of language.
Scholars of political communication have long warned about this. In his theory of affective polarization, Iyengar and Westwood argued that citizens do not just disagree on policy anymore; they begin to despise the other side as a moral out-group. That is exactly what we are seeing. The man who shouts “ethno-religious alarm” is called fearless. The one who urges moderation is dismissed as weak.
The result is a daily cold war fought not on competence, merit, or policy, but on the motive of protecting one’s “side.” It is why support for candidates in Nigeria has become so predictable that you can forecast it by region and religion before a single manifesto is read. Yet real governance, as political scientist Robert Dahl observed in Polyarchy thrives in the messy middle, in the space where no side is completely right or completely wrong.
That is why, Alternative Perspectives exist. It is not to tell Nigerians what to think, but to help them think critically, independently, and with facts as anchor rather than echo chambers as comfort. It is to throw alternative ideas into the marketplace of conviction, so that public judgment is shaped by reason and not by reflex.
Which brings me to Doka’s essay. He accuses Nigerian politicians and the media of double standards: the same voices that shook Aso Rock over Buhari’s WAEC certificate are now quiet about Tinubu’s INEC Form EC9, which lists only a Bachelor’s degree from Chicago State University while leaving primary and secondary spaces blank. He names the likes of Reno Omokri, who once demanded Buhari’s certificate but now says he verified Tinubu’s at CSU; Kola Ologbondiyan, who called Buhari’s case a national embarrassment but is now mute; Mike Ozekhome, who sued Buhari over WAEC and now faces forgery charges himself; Olisa Agbakoba, who called Buhari’s case serious and now asks for calm.
Doka also calls out the Lagos-Ibadan press, the Punch, Vanguard, ThisDay, and columnists like Femi Aribisala and Akin Oladele for leading editorial crusades in 2015 and now limiting themselves to quoting opposition voices. His conclusion is searing and not without merit: Nigeria runs elastic rules for the elite. A graduate from Kano, Enugu, or Port Harcourt will be denied a job for one missing paper, while a president can have blank spaces and we are told to defer to constitutional interpretation. “If certificates are important, then they must be important for everybody,” he warns. That is privilege masquerading as democracy.
But here is where the story needs another chapter, because Doka’s diagnosis, while sharp, is also selective, and selectivity is the same disease he is diagnosing. He does not dwell on the segment of Nigerians who defended Buhari’s non-submission of WAEC on the logic of “self-recognition.” Their argument was simple and widely repeated: how could a man who entered the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), rose to General, ruled as military Head of State, and governed as civilian President be questioned over O’Level? The thinking was that public service at that altitude should itself constitute proof of capacity. That same logic now circulates quietly around Tinubu, and to ignore it is to tell only half the truth in order to mobilize sentiment. In fairness theory, this is what social psychologists call “motivated reasoning”. We accept evidence that flatters our group and reject what threatens it. Doka falls into it even as he critiques it.
The media record bears this out on both sides. On 11 December 2019, _The PUNCH published an editorial titled “Buhari’s lawlessness: Our stand,” announcing it would no longer call him “President” but “Major General” and would refer to his government as a “regime.”. The Guardian UK, in March 2015 ran “Muhammadu Buhari: reformed dictator returns to power.”. The Guardian Nigeria, in January 2019 had “Critics slam ‘dictator’ Buhari over Onnoghen’s suspension,” and in June 2021 an opinion piece called him a “born-again dictator.” PUNCH itself wrote “Buhari still has character of 1984 dictator” in December 2019, and in 2016 “Buhari: From dictator to democrat.” Buhari himself noted that The Economist had called him a former dictator. That was not a few tweets. It was an institutional posture.
Fast forward, and the tone has shifted. Under Tinubu, a state of emergency has been declared in Rivers State under circumstances many lawyers called questionable. The judiciary, INEC, and even the National Assembly are being accused of acting like appendages of the executive in ways not seen before. Yet the editorial thunder is softer. The most telling contrast is in how the media treated the two Chiefs of Staff. Abba Kyari under Buhari was painted as a shadowy cabal, an “evil genius” Nigerians learned to despise even in death. Today, Femi Gbajabiamila is at the center of endless controversies but is largely framed as “innocent until proven by court.”
In April 2026, a video surfaced of Gbajabiamila at the 50th birthday of Hon. Leke Abejide’s wife in Abuja. Abejide, representing Yagba in the House, belongs to the Nafiu Bala faction of the ADC. Gbajabiamila was heard telling him: “I know you to be a committed party man… someone who does not like to be cheated. So please, stay in that same ADC. Fight them. Scatter them. Hold on to your party. Do not abandon it. We like what you are doing. Continue. Don’t mind what the former governor said about joining the APC. No, stay in ADC, win your re-election and you will.” He added, “Bring Gombe,” referring to Bala Nafiu Gombe who is challenging the David Mark-led ADC leadership in court. Opposition leaders called it proof of presidential interference. The APC said the opposition should put its house in order. Abejide later said it was “jovial advice to scatter political marauders,” not to destroy ADC. Whether you buy that or not, the fact is the media firestorm was not the same as it was in the Kyari years. That is the double standard Doka is right to point to.
And it is not only the press. We do it with health and age too. When I responded to reports that Tinubu was ill, I argued that at his age and Atiku’s age, regular medical checks are normal, and Atiku’s checks are less visible only because he is not in office. Yet the same voices who correctly defended Buhari’s illness in 2015-2017 by saying “illness is not death” and who noted he outlived many younger, stronger men, are now the ones most anxious about Tinubu’s health while overlooking Atiku’s age in the same bracket. Buhari himself came into office in 2015 at 72, with visible vigor, only for age and the weight of office to take their toll. The point is not to defend any one man. The point is that we are addicted to selective outrage.
Doka’s intervention is therefore useful. It diagnoses an ailment. But like many diagnoses in Nigeria, it also wants to be the treatment, and in doing so it risks becoming part of the ailment. The way out is not to choose a side and shout louder. It is to insist, as John Rawls argued in his theory of justice, that rules must be applied behind a “veil of ignorance”, without knowing whose ox is being gored. If certificates matter, let them matter for all. If we condemn interference in opposition parties, let us condemn it whoever is in power. If we defended Buhari’s right to serve despite health questions, let us extend the same logic, and the same scrutiny, to Tinubu and Atiku. Until then, we are not having a national debate. We are staging a regional drama, and the country is the casualty.
Bagudu Mohammed is the Founder, Alternative Perspectives.
Web: https://alternativeperspective.onrender.com
Email: bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com | Phone: 0703 494 3575
