Last Monday, we all woke up to the not-so-shocking news of Paul Biya’s eighth-term victory at age 92. I chuckled because this was not just a political event. It is a psycho-social indictment. It signals Africa’s deepening descent into democratic infamy, echoing the tragic legacies of Robert Mugabe and Mobutu Sese Seko combined. Whether it stems from historical amnesia or a deliberate embrace of shamelessness, I do not know, but the result is the same: a continent held hostage by its own leaders’ refusal to let go.
Cameroon’s Constitutional Council, led by another 93-year-old, Clement Atangana, confirmed Biya’s win with 53.66 per cent of the vote. His closest rival, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, 79, claimed he actually won and called for mass protests. The streets responded, but the system did not. Biya, who has ruled since 1982, will now remain in power until 2032 – when he’ll be nearly 100. The world’s oldest president, governing a nation where youth unemployment festers and civil unrest simmers, has become a symbol not of endurance but of democratic decay.
Africa has seen this movie before. Mugabe clung to power in Zimbabwe until he was ousted at 93. Mobutu ruled Zaire for 32 years, draining the country of dignity and resources. Their regimes were marked by repression, corruption, and the cult of personality. Biya’s eighth term is not a sequel – it’s a remake. The audience, weary but resigned, watches with a mix of disbelief and déjà vu.
This is not just about one man. It is about a continent where power is hoarded like treasure, where elections are rituals of retention rather than renewal. It is about leaders who see history not as a warning but as a playbook. The lesson they’ve learned is simple: shame is optional. Survival is everything.
Which brings us to the oxymoron of our age: “Shamelessness as virtue.” A phrase that should never exist yet now defines our political reality. It is what the literati call an oxymoron – the pairing of two contradictory ideas to reveal a deeper truth.
Shamelessness, the absence of moral restraint, should be antithetical to virtue, the embodiment of ethical excellence. But in today’s world of politics – local and international – this contradiction is not just tolerated. It is celebrated. It is the new currency of power and survival.
In the age of spectacle, spin, and selective memory, shame has not merely faded – it has been exiled. It died without ceremony, buried beneath campaign slogans, diplomatic euphemisms, and the relentless churn of the news cycle. In its place rose a new political superpower: shamelessness. It’s not the quiet absence of shame, but its proud, public rejection.
Shamelessness is no longer a flaw. It is a strategy. A passport to relevance. A governing philosophy.
Nietzsche once wrote, “He who despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.” But in today’s political arena, even self-contempt has been outsourced. Leaders no longer wrestle with conscience; they outsource it to public relations firms. Shame, once a moral compass, has become a liability – an encumbrance to ambition.
Donald Trump didn’t just normalise shamelessness; he industrialised it. He turned it into a brand, a movement, a governing style. He lied, bragged, insulted, and tweeted his way into the White House, then out, then halfway back in. He lost an election and called it stolen. He incited a riot and called it patriotism. He hoarded classified documents and called it décor. And through it all, he never flinched. Because flinching is for the ashamed. I await Wole Soyinka’s literary offering on Trump following the cancellation of his US visa.
On his part, Emmanuel Macron married his primary school teacher and made her First Lady. That’s not a scandal. That’s French exceptionalism. The man turned a PTA meeting into a lifelong commitment. Critics called it unconventional. Macron called it destiny. And the French? They shrugged, lit a cigarette, and returned to debating pension reform. But the real French masterclass in shamelessness came from Nicolas Sarkozy. Convicted in 2021 for corruption and influence peddling, sentenced to prison, and still strutting through Parisian salons with the bravado of a misunderstood genius. He didn’t retreat – he rebranded. He didn’t apologise – he autographed books. In France, shame is not a sentence – it’s a subplot.
Across the Channel, Britain offered its own masterclass in aristocratic shamelessness. Prince Andrew, once styled “His Royal Highness”, was accused of sexual misconduct linked to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. He denied everything, settled out of court, and was quietly stripped of his royal duties. Yet, he remains a fixture in the tabloids, occasionally surfacing at funerals and family events like a ghost of entitlement past.
The monarchy, once a symbol of decorum and restraint, now tiptoes around its own embarrassments. But with King Charles III’s recent decision to permanently close the door on Andrew’s return to a royal life, we witness a rare gesture of institutional self-awareness – a subtle acknowledgement that even in the age of spectacle, some boundaries must still be drawn. Stripped of his titles, he is now simply Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – a name that echoes both lineage and exile, marking the monarchy’s reluctant reckoning with its own shadows.
Meanwhile, Tony Blair, architect of the “coalition of the willing”, lied his way into Baghdad with the elegance of a barrister and the conviction of a televangelist. Weapons of mass destruction? Never found. Regime change? Delivered in rubble. Accountability? Deferred indefinitely. Today, Blair lectures on leadership and ethics – proof that shamelessness is not just survivable, but profitable. In Britain, shame is not exile – it’s a sabbatical.
NATO, once a bastion of transatlantic decorum, now genuflects to Trump-era bravado. They watched him insult allies, flirt with autocrats, and treat diplomacy like a reality show – and still adopted him as daddy. Because in geopolitics, shamelessness is strength. It is the ability to smile while selling arms, to preach peace while funding war, to condemn coups while attending coronations.
Shamelessness has become the lingua franca of leadership. In Russia, Vladimir Putin annexes territory and calls it reunification. In China, Xi Jinping abolishes term limits and calls it stability. In India, Narendra Modi rewrites textbooks and calls it a cultural revival. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro denied the pandemic and called it patriotism. The shameless inherit the earth – or at least the budget.
Here in Nigeria, the global headquarters of political shamelessness, it manifests in different colours like a chameleon. Our politicians don’t merely lack shame. They celebrate it. They wear it like agbádá – flowing, flamboyant, and immune to criticism. They defect between parties like footballers chasing signing bonuses. They promise reforms and deliver ribbon-cuttings. They steal billions and donate boreholes. They rig elections and sponsor thanksgiving services.
One senator was caught with dollars stuffed in his babanriga. He said it was for a constituency project. Another lawmaker, saddled with investigating a heist, demanded a bribe from the man he was to probe, fuelling more corruption. Another governor built a statue of Jacob Zuma. He called it diplomacy. A presidential candidate lost an election, challenged the result, lost in court, and still declared himself the “authentic winner”. That’s not delusion. That’s Nigerian resilience.
Shamelessness in Nigeria is not just tolerated – it is rewarded. The more brazen you are, the higher you rise. Apologies are for the weak. Resignations are for foreigners. Here, scandal is a stepping stone. Indictment is a badge of honour. The truly shameless don’t just survive – they thrive.
The epidemic of certificate forgery in Nigeria has long mutated into a culture of entitlement. For all you care, Nigeria is a republic of paper, where titles are currency and credentials the scaffolding of power. In our peculiar circumstances, truth is often the first casualty. The resignation of Uche Nnaji, erstwhile Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation, is not a rupture in the system – it is a ritual. A familiar dance in our governance process, where scandal is not the crime, but the exposure. Nnaji’s exit, prompted by allegations of forged academic credentials and a dubious NYSC certificate, was not a reckoning. It was a retreat. A quiet folding of the curtain, without prosecution, without apology, without consequence.
Here was a man whose portfolio demanded precision, integrity, and intellectual rigour, yet whose credentials appeared stitched together with the threadbare fabric of forgery. According to Premium Times, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, never issued him a degree. The Vice-Chancellor confirmed this. His NYSC certificate? A temporal riddle – he began service before graduation and served 13 months instead of 12. It was a forgery so clumsy it could have been drafted by a playwright drunk on putrid high-grade Sapele water, heroine, colos, and hubris combined.
Yet, when the scandal broke, Nnaji did not face the music. He sent proxies and equally dubious public affairs analysts to press conferences and prime-time media slots to burnish his ludicrous image, like a monarch dispatching footmen to explain away a coup. When the pressure mounted unceasingly, he resigned. Not with disgrace, but with decorum. Not with prosecution, but with a press release.
But resignation is not redemption. It is not justice. It is not accountability. It is merely the end of a chapter – not the beginning of reform. He has not even come clean on the status of the credentials he presented to the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly and the country’s intelligence apparatchiks.
Mind you, Nnaji is not an anomaly. He is a sequel. A spiritual scion of Salisu Buhari, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, who in 1999 was exposed for falsifying his age and academic qualifications. Buhari claimed to be 36 and a graduate of the University of Toronto. He was neither. When confronted, he uttered the now-immortal words: “I apologise to Nigerians.” He resigned, yes, but was soon granted a state pardon. His apology became a template – a ritual of contrition without consequence. A blueprint for future fraudsters in public office.
Then came Babalola Borishade, who wore four ministerial robes under President Obasanjo, each stained with allegations of corruption and credential inflation. A Reader in Electrical Engineering who preferred “Professor”, just like a doctoral candidate who adopted “Dr” before the ink dried. His tenure in aviation was marked by scandal, his stint in education by ridicule. Yet, he remained a fixture in the corridors of power. He was not sacked but shuffled. Not rejected, but reimposed. The Senate said no thrice. The system said yes.
Evans Enwerem, the Senate President, whose name became a national riddle – Evans or Evan? The chamber debated, the country chuckled, and the truth remained elusive. He was removed but not disgraced. His exit was procedural, not moral. A footnote in the anthology of Nigerian political farce. These are not men. They are metaphors. Archetypes of a system where scandal is not the crime, but the exposure. Where punishment is not legal, but logistical. Where the consequence is not jail, but reassignment. Their stories are not episodic. They are endemic. They remind us that forgery is not an aberration in Nigerian politics – it is a feature.
And so, the procession continues. Betta Edu, former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, allegedly instructed the Accountant-General to pay N585m into a private account. A move so brazen it made the Abacha loot look like petty theft, just pilfering. Edu claimed it was standard practice. Her media aide insisted it was legal. Nigerians, ever generous with nicknames, christened her the “Minister of Humanitarian Laundering”. Suspended in January 2024, she vanished from cabinet meetings but not from Instagram. No EFCC charges. No court appearances. Just vibes, social media rendezvous, and silence.
And then, there are the ghosts of credential fraud past. Kemi Adeosun resigned in 2018 after presenting a forged NYSC exemption certificate. Her departure was painful but principled. Adebayo Shittu skipped NYSC entirely and claimed exemption by virtue of being an elected lawmaker in his native Oyo State, at the time, converting his legislative service into national service. Performing Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, faced similar allegations. The nation shrugged. Hannatu Musawa was allegedly still serving in the NYSC when she was appointed minister. Yet for years, she was publishing to be noticed in newspapers. A lawsuit was filed. It was dismissed. She stayed. The outcome? Silence.
The real scandal is not the act. It is the aftermath. The EFCC, ever the dramatist, freezes accounts but not narratives. The courts prevaricate, delay, and sometimes dismiss. The public, exhausted from fuel queues, forex trauma, labour union strikes, and activists’ grandstanding, moves on. And one way or the other, we all breathe corruption and call it compromise, effizy or such nebulous euphemisms.
Minister Bosun Tijani’s case adds a chilling dimension. An undercover investigation revealed that his National Identification Number slip was sold online for just N100. The same platform offered the NIN of Dr Vincent Olatunji, Nigeria’s chief data regulator. These details were obtained from unauthorised websites like AnyVerify.com.ng, which trade sensitive identity data – BVNs, NINs, and more – without consent or oversight. Tijani acknowledged the breach and initiated investigations with NIMC and the Nigeria Data Protection Commission. But the damage was done. This incident is not just a privacy violation. It is a national security threat. It affirms that in Nigeria, identity is not sacred. It is salable. In this republic of forgery, even the gatekeepers are vulnerable. Fraud is no longer episodic. It is infrastructural. The system, not just the individual, stands indicted.
Everyone knows of the Oluwole market in Lagos as being notorious for identity and certificate fraud and racketeering. So much so that some even call certain court orders and injunctions “Oluwole-made”. In our jurisprudence? The implications are grave. If a minister’s identity can be commodified so cheaply, what hope is there for ordinary citizens? The breach exposes a systemic failure in data protection, verification, and cybersecurity. It also reveals how fraud has evolved beyond forged certificates into digital impersonation, where anyone can “become” someone else with a few clicks.
In 2020, a Supreme Court ruling disqualified Bayelsa governor-elect David Lyon just hours before his inauguration after his running mate was found to have submitted forged academic credentials to INEC. The fallout was seismic. The opposition took power. The public trust took a hit. I have also heard of the “Benin six-month degree” phenomenon – where diploma mills in neighbouring countries offer rapid, unearned qualifications. This is emblematic of the rot. These mills exploit regulatory gaps and the desperation of job seekers. They advertise on WhatsApp, deliver PDFs via email, and promise legitimacy for a fee. The certificates look real. The consequences are realer. But we allow them to participate in our mandatory NYSC scheme, or is it a scam?
But the shameless rot is not confined to documents. It spills into conduct. Fuji maestro KWAM 1 disrupted a ValueJet flight in Abuja, breaching safety protocols in a tarmac altercation that drew national outrage. He was primed for a flight ban, but he’s a special breed. Comfort Emmanson, a passenger on an Ibom Air flight from Uyo to Lagos, assaulted crew members after refusing to switch off her phone, leading to her arrest and remand. Yet both individuals were later considered for ambassadorial roles in the aviation sector. This is symbolic of a system that rewards notoriety. In a country where scandal is a stepping stone, even air rage becomes a résumé booster.
The list of presidential pardons stinks of moral compromise. Drug lords, convicted murderers, and looters of the national treasury have been granted clemency, attracting wild condemnation across the land. Not that reprieve is bad, but not when there’s no repentance, but simply for proximity to power. These should constitute the shame of a nation. But no – these individuals are rewarded, upgraded, and celebrated. Their ignominious pasts are not erased; they are rebranded. In Nigeria, disgrace is not a deterrent. it is a detour. The more scandalous your résumé, the more likely you are to be called “distinguished.” The nation does not recoil from shame. It recycles it.
The crisis is no longer confined to ballot boxes, influence peddling, and budget allocations. It has breached palaces and altars. Monarchs, once the moral compass of their communities, now spin like weathervanes in the storm of shamelessness. Oba Joseph Oloyede, the Apetu of Ipetumodu, was convicted in the U.S. for defrauding COVID-19 relief funds totalling $4.2m, and as I write and you read this, he still “sits” on his throne. The charges weren’t whispered – they were stamped in court documents. Yet the kingmakers, those supposed custodians of ancestral dignity, and his state governor keep dancing around and remain silent. The throne wobbles, but no one dares to steady it.
Across the land, royal stools have become bargaining chips. Some monarchs broker all manner of shady deals behind palace walls. Others chase clout on social media, dancing in the market square – not metaphorically, but literally. The staff of office, once wielded with solemnity, now doubles as a selfie stick. The crown, once heavy with responsibility, floats on the breeze of shamelessness. The throne, once a seat of wisdom, has become a prop in the theatre of absurdity. Royal fathers now twist histories, corner the commonwealth, shamelessly offer chieftaincies to 419ers, drug barons, and themselves do drugs. They shamelessly beg and generally misbehave. Yet a Yoruba proverb asks, “Bi oba ba ti n jo l’oja, ki ni ilu nse?” – If the king dances in the market, what then shall the town do? It’s not a question of choreography. It’s a question of consequence.
When those meant to uphold dignity abandon it, the people lose their compass. James Baldwin once said, “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” But today, it is not ignorance alone – it is shamelessness allied with power. It is the audacity to fail publicly and still demand applause. It is the ability to turn scandal into spectacle and spectacle into strategy. Have we all forgotten the warning of Søren Kierkegaard that: “The greatest danger, that of losing oneself, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.” That is the danger of shamelessness – it erodes the soul of leadership quietly, insidiously, until nothing remains but ambition without anchor.
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