It was in the last administration that Femi Adesina, spokesperson of the presidency, branded two tribes of Nigerians with two sticky words: “wailing wailers” and “hailing hailers.” What sounded like political banter at the time has since hardened into a social law. The phrases did more than describe. They diagnosed.
The first tribe is the true believer. The stooge, the pro-government loyalist whose faith is placed not in institutions but in personality. For them the leader is incapable of error. When the facts bite, they invent soothing narratives. A shortfall becomes strategy. A scandal becomes sabotage. A failure becomes a phase. Social psychologists call this “motivated reasoning”, the human tendency to process information in a way that protects identity and allegiance rather than truth. The hailer does not lie so much as he defends.
The second tribe is the permanent skeptic. The anti-government purist whose identity is built on opposition. For them, any news that could be read as a government win feels like an insult. If a child is rescued, the question is not the rescue, it is the ransom. If a road is fixed, the question is not the road, it is the contract. Good news is translated instantly into conspiracy. Political scientists describe this as “negative partisanship,” where loyalty is less to a party and more to the act of resisting the other side. The wailer does not hate progress. He fears being seen endorsing the enemy.
What is fascinating, and almost karmic, is how quickly the masks swap. Those who once mocked wailers now find themselves wailing. Those who once hailed now find themselves jeering. Empathy fails because we refuse to stand in the other’s shoes, and so fate puts us there by force.
Watch it play out in real time. When news broke of the rescue of the abducted Oyo school children, the national chorus for weeks had been “bring them back alive, at any cost.” The moment they were returned, the chorus shifted. “Money must have exchanged hands.” “Why are we celebrating when the roads that enable kidnapping are still bad?” Suddenly the road mattered more than the lives. A victory became evidence of failure. What should have been relief turned into a test of loyalty.
Then came the El-Rufai conversation. In an attempt to frame him as Mr. Integrity, some commentators began citing the same people El-Rufai once bruised in Kaduna like workers sacked, houses demolished as proof that Tinubu is now doing to El-Rufai what El-Rufai did to others. The irony is thick. The same logic used to defend harsh state action is now used to condemn federal action. One administration’s “tough decision” becomes another’s “tyranny,” depending on who is holding the microphone.
That is the trap. Under one government, we accept every explanation as gospel. The demolition was urban renewal. The sack was reform. Under the next government, every explanation is a lie. The arrest is persecution. The project is propaganda. We do not argue from principle. We argue from position.
Sociologist Robert K. Merton warned about this decades ago in his theory of “reference groups.” We judge reality not by objective standards, but by the group we want to belong to and the group we want to defeat. Media scholars now call it “affective polarization.” We don’t just disagree. We feel disgust. And disgust makes consistency impossible.
So here we are, back in the era of wailers and hailers, except the cast has changed. Today’s wailers were yesterday’s hailers.The script is the same, only the actors have swapped lines.
The danger is not that people criticize or support government. That is democracy. The danger is when criticism and praise are not tethered to values, but to vanity. When we cannot clap for a rescue because it embarrasses our side. When we cannot question a policy because it flatters our man.
Perhaps the question we should be asking is not “are you wailing or hailing?” but “what would it take for you to do the opposite and still respect yourself?” Until we can answer that, we will keep living in a country where good news is bad news, and bad news is also bad news, the only difference being who gets to feel vindicated.
Bagudu Mohammed
,bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com
