Introduction

GST (pronounced gist, Twitter/X: @wearegst) has earned a genuine place in Nigeria’s civic media landscape. In a country where mainstream newsrooms are usually compromised by commercial and political interests, the arrival of a platform that claims to be committed to democratic accountability and civic mobilization is in principle a good thing and should always be welcome.

But moral credibility should not lead to editorial immunity. And it is precisely because GST matters [because it commands audiences of thousands of Nigerians on the questions it chooses to campaign on] that its methodology deserves serious, evidence-based scrutiny.

GST’s reporting on at least three recent public interest issues: Nigeria’s tax reform, Milo and childhood nutrition, and the regulation of powdered milk, has been misleading, decontextualised, and in the case of the milk campaign, potentially harmful to the very Nigerians it claims to serve.

What is GST?

To be fair, GST does not describe itself as a neutral news outlet. Its founder and CEO, Adewunmi Emoruwa, has been explicit about this. In a 2026 profile by Communiqué, a media trade publication, he stated: “We are not going to be strictly bound by the entire idea of objectivity. So we are going to editorialize from the start. We’re going to give people the truth.” Elsewhere he described the platform as “a news movement of sorts, but really, it is a sort of social justice community.”

This is an important distinction. GST is not journalism in the conventional sense. It is advocacy journalism [a hybrid model in which content production is explicitly instrumental to campaign goals]. Its own described formula is: story → campaign → pressure → response. It appears that for GST, “content” is a tool for mobilization, not primarily for informing. This is not inherently wrong and advocacy organizations worldwide use media to advance policy change. The problem arises when this model is applied to complex, evidence-dependent scientific and economic questions [and when the audience, which largely encounters GST as a news source, is not made aware of the distinction].

This matters structurally, too. GST’s primary confirmed funder is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a Washington DC-based body funded by the United States Congress whose stated mission is to “fuel liberty” globally. A separate NED-funded fellowship, run in partnership with Communiqué Academy, feeds content directly into the GST platform. NED is a legitimate democracy promotion institution, and its support for Nigerian independent media has genuine value. But a media platform that takes no advertising, relies primarily on a foreign institutional funders with a declared advocacy mandate, and explicitly rejects journalistic neutrality is something Nigeria’s audience deserves to understand when consuming its content [especially when that content makes specific empirical claims about health and economics].

None of this makes GST wrong about everything. It makes it necessary to evaluate GST’s claims the same way we would evaluate any other advocacy organization’s claims: on the evidence, not on the organization’s stated intentions.

Part I: The 2025 Tax Campaign

In late 2025, Nigeria’s National Assembly was debating a major tax reform package under the framework of the Nigeria Tax Act (NTA). The reform, led by Taiwo Oyedele, Chair of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reform Committee, was designed in part to rationalise and simplify Nigeria’s notoriously complex tax system. Oyedele claimed a stated objective of theirs was protecting lower-income earners while broadening the tax base.

GST launched an accompanying #RejectTaxScam campaign. One widely circulated post declared: “This is about our money, our rights. It’s not theirs to seize. Post your call. Share it. Tag them. rejecttaxscam.com.” The campaign used emotionally charged language and called on Nigerians to actively resist the reform.

Another post illustrates a specific type of analytical failure [that has become commonplace with GST]. Commenting on the government’s announcement that those earning below ₦800,000 per year would not be taxed, GST responded: “This isn’t a win. The government says people earning below ₦800,000 a year won’t be taxed. But ₦800,000 a year equals just ₦66,600 a month which is below the minimum wage of ₦70,000. That means almost everyone earning a salary will be affected.”

This framing had a surface-level plausibility that made it effective as a campaign message. The calculation is arithmetically correct. But it is analytically incomplete in ways that matter enormously for public understanding. The NTA 2025, as enacted, introduced a progressive rate restructuring and not a flat across-the-board increase. The reform raised the personal income tax-free threshold, introduced lower effective rates for middle-income earners, and restructured higher bands. Oyedele, in multiple public addresses both before and after the Act’s passage, consistently argued that workers earning the minimum wage and below would pay zero personal income tax under the new framework, and that the overall burden on formal-sector workers earning typical Nigerian salaries would decrease or remain neutral in many brackets.

The reform was not without legitimate criticism, particularly regarding the VAT components, its implementation timeline, and the treatment of informal sector workers. Those are real debates worth having. But GST’s campaign did not engage these nuances. It painted the entire reform as a tax seizure affecting “almost everyone,” generating fear and mobilising opposition on grounds that the evidence did not fully support.

Interestingly, when the Act was passed, it [so far] demonstrably favoured lower earners in key provisions, GST issued no correction, no follow-up, and no reassessment of its campaign claims. The rejecttaxscam.com campaign materials remain online as of the time of writing without a post-enactment correction.

For an organisation that claims civic accountability as its mandate, this specific pattern of aggressive public mobilisation based on incomplete analysis, followed by silence when the analysis proves overstated, is a serious editorial and organizational failure.

Part II: The Milo Campaign

GST’s campaign against Nestlé’s Milo in Nigeria has ran across multiple posts since 2025. The core of their advocacy framing can be summarised below:

• “Nigerian Milo is a sugar bomb sold as nutrition” (April 10, 2026)

• “Milo is bad food. Nigeria’s version is a more evil” (August 25, 2025)

• “Nigeria’s Milo packs more sugar and sodium than abroad. It is driving stunting, obesity, tooth decay, and harm while regulators stay silent” (August 25, 2025)

This core empirical claim — that Nigerian Milo has a different formulation from versions sold in other markets, with higher sugar content — has some basis. This differential formulation has been reported independently by journalists and health researchers across West Africa. The concern about sugar overconsumption and its health effects is legitimate and well-supported by global health literature. None of this is disputed.

Again, the problem is not that GST raised the question. The problem is what it thinks the answer is.

The claim that Milo is “contributing to stunted growth” and “driving” malnutrition in Nigeria is both an attribution claim and a causal argument. And as causal arguments usually go, it is poorly constructed for the Nigerian context. Nigeria’s childhood malnutrition crisis is not primarily driven by the dietary habits of households that can afford to purchase branded powdered beverages. It is driven by poverty [with a capital letter P]. According to the World Bank and UNICEF joint estimates, approximately 36.5 percent of Nigerian children under five suffer stunting, with the most severe prevalence in the North West and North East regions [precisely the poorest, least food-secure zones in the country, where access to Milo and branded food products of any kind is limited]. The drivers of this crisis are poverty, food insecurity, poor water and sanitation, and inadequate health services, not the formulation of a beverage that the majority of stunted children’s families cannot regularly afford to buy.

A more rigorous framing would be: “Nestlé’s differential sugar formulation for Nigerian Milo compared to European markets raises a legitimate equity and regulatory question — why are Nigerian consumers subject to a less nutritionally optimised product than European consumers?” That is a fair question, and it warrants regulatory scrutiny of both Nestlé and NAFDAC.

But GST’s framing: “Nigeria’s Milo is mostly sugar,” “it is driving stunting”, implies a direct causal relationship between Milo consumption and malnutrition that the evidence does not support. Worse, by attaching Nestlé’s product to Nigeria’s most emotionally resonant public health crisis [child malnutrition], the campaign risks becoming an agenda that, if internalised by parents who can actually afford Milo, could prompt them to substitute it with products offering less nutritional value, or simply reduce caloric intake in an already food-insecure environment.

Dietary interventions in low-income settings must account for the realistic alternatives available to the target population. The GST campaign/“journalism” does not do this.

Part III: The Milk Campaign

The most recent and arguably most consequential example is GST’s campaign on Fat-Filled Milk Powder (FFMP).

The campaign’s key claim (April 14, 2026) is: “Most Nigerians think they are drinking milk. They are drinking Fat-Filled Milk Powder (FFMP). In the EU, FFMP can’t be sold as milk, it must be labelled as a milk ingredient, not a dairy product. Here, it’s ‘milk’. Nigerians are eating what others aren’t allowed to call food.” An accompanying graphic labels Nigeria “a dumping ground for substandard milk.”

The campaign further accused NAFDAC of regulatory complacency. In actual fact, NAFDAC publicly responded to GST’s questions on this matter prior to the campaign’s escalation, providing regulatory context and clarification. GST has never acknowledged this response in any of its published content.

So, let us engage with GST’s core claim honestly.

What is true: FFMP is not whole milk. It is made from recombined skimmed milk powder and vegetable fat [typically palm oil or coconut oil. EU regulations do indeed require it to be labelled as a milk ingredient rather than as milk. The labelling standards in some Nigerian products marketing FFMP as “milk” or “dairy drink” are arguably inconsistent, and regulatory clarity on labelling would benefit consumers. These are legitimate consumer protection issues.

What is misleading: The campaign frames EU regulatory categorisation as equivalent to “food that others aren’t allowed to call food”, as if FFMP is a harmful or dangerous product. This is not supported by the nutritional evidence.

FFMP, particularly fortified FFMP as sold in Nigeria, is a recognised and nutritionally significant food product in low and middle-income countries. The WHO and FAO both recognise fortified FFMP as a cost-effective vehicle for delivering essential micronutrients [particularly calcium, vitamins A and D, and protein] in populations where fresh dairy is inaccessible. Again, Nigeria is a country dealing with systemic and entrenched poverty, hence its use in Nigeria is not incidental.

Fresh milk is perishable. This is a country where more than 70 percent of households have poor electricity access, the consumption of fresh dairy products at the scale needed to replace FFMP is simply not viable. Dry foods, including dried fish, dried beans, powdered eggs, and FFMP, are consumed because they are appropriate to the infrastructure conditions in which most Nigerians live.

Furthermore, for many low-income households, FFMP represents an accessible, affordable source of protein and calories at a price point that fresh dairy [even where available] cannot match. The suggestion that Nigerians consuming FFMP are being harmed by a product “others aren’t allowed to call food” is an egregious lie and also ignores what those Nigerians would actually consume in FFMP’s absence.

The comparison to EU labelling standards is particularly troubling as an analytical framework. The EU’s milk labelling rules are written in the context of a European food supply in which fresh whole milk, semi-skimmed milk, and a wide range of dairy alternatives are universally available, affordable, and cold-chain supported. Applying those labelling standards as a benchmark of product quality to a Nigerian market with fundamentally different infrastructure, income levels, and food security conditions is at best context-free advocacy. At worst, we can call GST’s agenda regulatory standards imperialism: which is basically importing the regulatory assumptions of wealthy, cold-climate, high-infrastructure countries and applying them to a tropical, low-infrastructure, protein-deficient food system in which the calculus of harm is entirely different.

If Nigerians were successfully mobilised by this campaign to distrust and abandon FFMP without a viable, accessible, affordable alternative being offered [and no such alternative is presented in GST’s content] the public health consequences could be severe. Anti-vaccine campaigns for example are superficially plausible advocacy producing catastrophic outcomes by causing populations to abandon an imperfect but protective intervention without anything to replace it.

Conclusion

None of this argues that GST should not exist, or that its work lacks value. Its accountability journalism on governance, elections, and political power has been substantive and necessary. Its role in supporting journalists during #EndSARS and in challenging government overreach is part of Nigeria’s democratic record.

But accountability journalism that is not itself accountable is not a public good. David Hundeyin [failed Nigerian journalist turned Russia-state propagandist] is a classical example of this.

Nigeria’s public health and economic challenges are not simple stories of corporate exploitation and regulatory failure. They are stories of poverty, infrastructure collapse, inadequate state capacity, and the genuine difficulty of making good decisions under structural constraints that most of GST’s international institutional funders have never had to navigate personally. Reporting on these challenges requires precisely the contextual rigour that GST’s three-act campaign formula: story → campaign → pressure does not easily accommodate.

The Nigerian audience GST claims to serve deserves better than European regulatory standards applied without context and causal claims made without evidence. It deserves journalism that is honest about what it is, careful about what it claims, and accountable when it gets things wrong.

I rest my case.

In the early hours of Friday, May 30, Nigerian-born, UK-based accountant and writer Feyi Fawenhimi (@DoubleEph) posted a tweet that caught my attention. He shared four images: the first three were screenshots from a story in The Economist detailing the exploitation of young Africans in Russia, while the fourth was a public release from Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Education. This official statement confirmed (and implicated Nigeria in) the broader concerns raised by the Economist article. My reaction wasn’t one of shock or sadness, but rather a familiar sense of resignation and disappointment that has come to define my life as a Nigerian.

To the casual observer, the ministry’s release appeared to be a routine advertisement for a scholarship at Alabuga Polytech in Tatarstan, Russia. [Such opportunities have long been part of Nigeria’s positive relationship with Russia. Before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of Nigerian students pursued degrees in medicine, engineering, and other STEM fields at Russian and Ukrainian universities. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed this dynamic. Stricter travel restrictions, heightened safety concerns, and diplomatic tensions have made studying in Russia and Ukraine increasingly difficult, forcing many Nigerians to reconsider their options.]

Alabuga is a special economic zone (SEZ) of industrial and production type, located in the Yelabuzhsky District of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. The management company of SEZ Alabuga is wholly owned by the Russian Federation through the Joint Stock Company "Special Economic Zones," with the Ministry of Land and Property of the Republic of Tatarstan serving as its sole shareholder.

On the surface, the Alabuga scholarship seemed like a valuable chance for students to study fields such as industrial robotics, automation, and electrical installation—courses that are either unavailable in Nigeria or underfunded if they are. But the advertisement omitted crucial details. It failed to mention that the program specifically targeted girls aged 18–22 for a reason and that these young women would be assembling Shahed drone parts (imported from Iran), in Russian factories that may become legitimate military targets for Ukrainian strikes. This raises some interesting questions: Why would Russia (the world’s ninth most populous country) need to recruit young African women for such work? Why was the full scope of the program concealed from both the recruits and the public? Why is the Nigerian government (and other African governments) endorsing the exploitation and debasement of their own people?

Well, it appears that Russia, facing labor shortages and seeking a workforce that is “dispensable, pays attention to detail, exploitable, and pliable,” has devised an elaborate scheme which involves collaborating with African governments and exploiting local poverty, to lure hundreds of unsuspecting young women into what may be the last jobs they ever hold.

This exploitation has unfolded in plain sight, yet has gone largely unnoticed. This article seeks to assemble a clear picture and highlight the grave risks facing young Africans girls caught in this new, state-sanctioned form of exploitation.

How Did We Get Here?

While not the main focus of this article, it is important to provide some background on how we arrived at the current situation. After World War II, Russia (as the USSR) emerged as a superpower. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has sought to restore its former geographic and military influence, often by targeting neighboring states it perceives as vulnerable.

The formula is simple: Military incursions followed by ceasefires that result in territorial losses for the targeted country and temporary peace until the next conflict.

This approach was first seen in the 2008 war with Georgia, where Russia intervened under the pretext of defending separatist regions, ultimately occupying territory and imposing a ceasefire on unfavorable terms for Georgia. The strategy continued in Ukraine, beginning with the annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014, escalating to a full-scale invasion in 2022.

Despite repeated denials from the Russian government on the possibility of a war or invasion, the 2022 invasion of Ukraine was eventually launched as a so-called “special military operation.” Putin’s stated objective was a swift campaign to seize Kyiv, remove President Zelensky, and install a pro-Russian government, effectively turning Ukraine into a vassal state. However, as we all know in 2025, it is clear that this plan has not succeeded. The Russian military, once regarded as the world’s second most powerful, has been hampered by corruption, complacency, and unexpectedly strong Ukrainian resistance, which has been majorly supported by Western weaponry. The conflict has become a protracted war of attrition, with no clear end in sight.

As the war dragged on, Western sanctions severely restricted Russia’s access to advanced weaponry and critical components, prompting Moscow to seek assistance from allies such as Iran, China, and North Korea. While China’s support has largely remained covert due to concerns about secondary sanctions, Iran and North Korea (already heavily sanctioned, with nothing else to lose) have continued to supply Russia with crucial military technology.

Iran’s Shahed drones, in particular, have become central to Russia’s campaign. These drones are inexpensive, can be produced rapidly, and are highly effective in striking Ukrainian targets. Iran provided Russia with both the technology and raw materials for these drones, leading to the establishment of assembly and production sites within Russia. The Alabuga Special Economic Zone has become a primary hub for assembling and manufacturing Shahed drones, leveraging imported components and technical assistance from Iran.

A Campaign Of Deceit

Just as I outlined in my previous article, “The Digital Sankarification of Ibrahim Traore,” Russia has long mastered the art of information warfare. The same toolkit: influencers, media, and policy levers, was deployed to recruit these young, unsuspecting African girls for its latest strategy in Alabuga.

Russia’s campaign of deceit has unfolded in two critical phases, with African governments (who should be safeguarding their vulnerable citizens) serving more as enablers than protectors.

Firstly, Russia established a veneer of legitimacy by announcing, through state policy, that the Alabuga Special Economic Zone (and by extension, Alabuga Polytech) had a newfound interest in training young African women in technology fields supposedly inaccessible in their home countries.

Once this narrative was in place, Russian officials reached out via diplomatic channels to governments such as Nigeria, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and Ghana, presenting a scholarship opportunity tailored to their young, female demographic. Personally, I find quite astonishing that, in the midst of a war, a Russian government educational policy specifically targeting 18- to 22-year-old women did not trigger alarm bells among the leadership of these countries.

Secondly, Russia launched an extensive news media and social media campaign. In Nigeria, for example, the Federal Ministry of Education publicized the offer of 150 scholarships, while various media outlets (some unwitting, others with a pro-Russia slant) amplified the message.

This formula was repeated in several of the target countries. For example, in Somalia, where a government minister visited the Alabuga zone for a photo-op with the recruits, and in Kampala, where tech competitions were promoted as a pathway to Alabuga scholarships.

A prominent figure in the Nigerian media landscape, “journalist” David Hundeyin, was also a key promoter of these clandestine efforts to recruit young Nigerian girls to Russia’s Alabuga drone factories.

Hundeyin, through his personal social media accounts (Twitter/X, Youtube) and his media outlet, West Africa Weekly, published several content defending the “Alabuga Start” program and dismissing critical reports (even from other Nigerians) as “Western disinformation campaigns”. In an article published on April 30, 2025, Hundeyin argued that allegations of exploitation and trafficking were part of an information war against Russia, and he questioned the credibility of sources reporting abuses in Alabuga.

TikTok, Facebook, and Telegram were also used to target these young women with promises of opportunity and adventure. Influencers and polished videos painted a picture of empowerment and career advancement, omitting the more painful reality. We now know from several first-hand reports that these women faced risk of death from Ukrainian attacks, long hours, surveillance, lower-than-promised wages, and hazardous working environments, with little recourse or ability to leave (a.k.a: slavery).

This campaign and lesson in modern slavery has exploited the lax oversight and complacency of African governments, as well as the absence of effective safeguards in their policies, to funnel young women into Russia’s wartime labor machine. The result is a stark example of modern exploitation masquerading as opportunity: A campaign of deceit that demands urgent scrutiny and accountability.

Where Do We Go From Here?

As I described in the introduction of “JAMB, A Cultural Lack of Accountability and the Anatomy of Educational Policy Failure in Nigeria,” I, like many other Nigerians, have come to expect absolutely nothing from our own government. In the Nigerian dream, the social contract is nonexistent. Yet, even in my state of perpetual resignation and lack of expectations, my government still manages to disappoint me.

The federal government of Nigeria has denied any involvement in the Alabuga “modern slavery” scheme. While I believe that it’s unlikely that the government acted out of malice, our country seems trapped in a cycle of incompetence that continually harms its most vulnerable citizens—sometimes with tragic consequences, as seen in this “Alabuga Start” story.

In so many ways, incompetence may end up being more consequential and harmful than malice.

I rest my case.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is officially English-speaking and renowned for its deeply fragmented and often corrupt political climate. In this environment, many Nigerians remain largely unaware of developments in neighboring African countries. Most would struggle to name Ghana’s political parties or identify Cameroon’s current president. This is not solely due to pride, self-absorption or indifference. Rather, it reflects a population of over 200 million people intensely preoccupied with its own social, economical, political, and cultural challenges, alongside the overwhelming influence of some global cultural trends.

At the same time, external cultural forces have profoundly shaped the Nigerian psyche. In the 1990s and 2000s, American hip-hop and Indian cinema (Bollywood) dominated youth culture, providing templates for music, fashion, and even local film industries. Today, Korean pop music (K-pop) and dramas are captivating a new generation, with Nigerian Gen Zs forming vibrant fan communities and even integrating Korean language and aesthetics into their daily lives. These global influences often overshadow regional African affairs, reinforcing a worldview oriented more toward the West and Asia than toward neighboring countries.

So, while the average Nigerian may not be able to recognize the president of Gabon in a crowd or accurately recall the capital of Angola, over the past year, many of them have become very familiar with images and videos of a young, charismatic military leader in camouflage. At first, these posts (circulating on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and TikTok) largely went unnoticed. But continuous reinforcement through repeated exposure has made Captain Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso a known figure. He is frequently depicted as a transformative leader who has rescued his country from the “evil hands” of Western (a.k.a French) domination, with posts touting new industries and sweeping reforms, especially from “pan-Africanist” social-media accounts. Interestingly, some recipients of this well-oiled spin are even unaware that Burkina Faso is a francophone country or that Traoré himself does not speak English. Yet, stories (in English, generated with artificial intelligence) about free education, new housing, and booming tomato paste factories abound—few of them true, many exaggerated and others, entirely fabricated.

How did our average Nigerian, who is often disconnected from regional geopolitics, suddenly become so well-versed in the affairs of Burkina Faso? The answer lies in the digital “Sankarification” of Ibrahim Traoré.

Through social media, Traoré has been reborn, reframed, and propagandized as the second coming of Thomas Sankara (a mostly well-regarded revolutionary icon whose legacy still resonates across francophone Africa and the diaspora). In this article, I will explore how this digital mythmaking (largely driven by Russian disinformation networks) has elevated Traoré’s image and what it reveals about the power of online narratives in shaping modern African consciousness.

The Man, Thomas Isidore Sankara

To understand Thomas Sankara’s relevance to our story, we need to travel back about forty years. Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was a young, charismatic military officer who rose to power in Burkina Faso (then called Upper or Haute Volta) through a coup in 1983. It was a time when African countries were still dealing with “teething” issues associated with democracy and when such military takeovers were more common1. At just 34, Sankara became president and immediately set about transforming the country into an anti-capitalist and anti-imperial “utopia”. He renamed it Burkina Faso, meaning “land of upright or honorable people,” to mark a new national identity free from its colonial past.

Years before he became the leader of the Burkinabès, Sankara’s worldview was shaped by his military training in Madagascar, it was there that be became exposed to Marxist and pan-Africanist idea(l)s. Unlike other copycats and grifters in the “revolution” world, Thomas Sankara was a genuine ideologue: he lived modestly, famously riding a bicycle to work, he also sent his kids to public schools. Before becoming president, he served as Minister of Information and later became Prime Minister, where his outspoken and radical views led to his imprisonment by the government he served. His close ally, Blaise Compaoré, led a coup that freed Sankara and installed him as leader (a decision Compaoré would later work to reverse).

As president, Sankara launched a radical program of reforms. He targeted the base of the Maslow’s pyramid and prioritized basic needs in Burkina Faso (food, housing, healthcare, and education), he implemented mass vaccination campaigns, and a nationwide literacy drive. He promoted women’s rights, outlawed forced marriages, and banned female circumcision. He rejected luxury, selling off government limousines and making the cheapest car in the country (at the time, Renault-5s) the official vehicle for himself and his ministers. Ernest Harsch describes him as “an idealist, demanding, and rigorous”.

However, his leadership was not without controversy. Sankara’s government executed some officials from the previous regime and detained political opponents that disagreed with him. Still, he remained immensely popular with ordinary Burkinabè for what they perceived as his integrity, vision, and insistence on self-reliance. While some of Sankara’s socialist policies were successful at first, the gains proved difficult to sustain. By 1987, Burkina Faso had become heavily dependent again on foreign remittances, aid and trade (most especially, with Ivory Coast), accompanied with a heavy national debt burden that continued to balloon.

Sankara’s life was dramatically cut short in 1987 when he was assassinated in a coup led by his former friend (and minister of justice), Compaoré, who ended up ruling Burkina Faso for 27 years until 2014, and reversed most of the economic and geopolitical policies Sankara had attempted to enact. Despite his brief time in power, Sankara’s legacy as a revolutionary, anti-imperialist, and advocate for African self-determination endures, even more among leftists and communists in Europe and the Americas with a clout similar to that of Che Guevara.

Sankara’s relevance to this story lies in how his image and ideals have been revived and reframed in the figure of Ibrahim Traoré. Traoré’s rhetoric, policies, and even his personal style are being deliberately postured to echo Sankara’s, fueling a digital and popular movement that casts him as the modern heir to Sankara’s revolutionary vision.

The Sankarification of Ibrahim Traoré—Who Pays the Piper? Who Plays the Tune?

To remake a man (or more precisely, to create the image of a man in the similitude of another man) what tools are required? In today’s world, the answer always starts with money, but that’s only a part of it. Traoré’s new public persona has relied heavily on a combination of sophisticated propaganda, social media virality, and back-end geopolitical maneuvering.

The image to be re-made must echo the legitimacy of a revered figure, be broadcast to a population susceptible to propaganda, and often emerge in a context of widespread dissatisfaction. Add to this the geopolitical ambitions of a declining superpower seeking renewed influence, especially in regions like Africa, then you have the complete recipe that has catalyzed the emergence of Ibrahim Traore as the second coming of Thomas Isidore Sankara.

On September 30, 2022, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, flanked by armed soldiers in camouflage and masks, announced the suspension of Burkina Faso’s constitution and the ouster of President Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba. This marked the country’s second coup that year. Earlier, Traoré had assisted Damiba in toppling the democratically elected president, Roch Marc Kaboré. This context is particularly important: it helps explain Traoré’s current paranoia (including rumours of “assassination attempts” on him) about being overthrown by his own allies—an environment where, as the saying goes, “there is no honour among putschists.”

Traoré capitalized on widespread frustration with Damiba’s failure to contain the JNIM-led jihadist insurgency, which continues to wreak havoc across Burkina Faso. Remarkably, Traoré was just 34 when he seized power, the same age as Thomas Sankara (a comparison that fueled his initial popularity especially since previous coup leaders were older). Described as quiet and academically gifted, Traoré graduated with honors in geology from the University of Ouagadougou. He joined the Burkina Faso military in 2009, and within 13 years, rose to lead both the country and its armed forces.

After the coup, Traoré criticized Damiba’s administration for its failures in security and economic management, promising to restore Burkina Faso’s former glory and to hold democratic elections by July 2024. Predictably, these elections have not taken place, and there is little indication that they will happen anytime soon.

Traoré’s rise and the propaganda surrounding him serve a dual purpose. First, his youth, charisma, and the symbolic connection to Sankara allow him to posture as a legitimate pan-Africanist leader who rejects Western influence and aspires to liberate his people from “neo-colonial” control. This narrative, fuelled by Russian online troll farms in the Sahel, greatly aligns with Russia’s strategic interests in Africa, as Moscow seeks to (counter Western sway and) expand its influence amid setbacks in Syria and Ukraine. Russia’s support, including military instructors and security assistance, has helped Traoré consolidate power, while anti-Western rhetoric resonates with many young Africans who have rightly become disillusioned by their own governments.

Secondly, domestically, Traoré’s record is faltering, and the propaganda serves as a needed distraction. State security has deteriorated further, with JNIM making significant territorial gains, including the recent seizure of a provincial capital. To manage negative publicity, Traoré has cracked down on dissent, banning and expelling all independent media, a stark contrast to Sankara’s relative openness with the media.

The Burkina Faso economy remains heavily dependent on gold exports. While the government has announced the nationalization of gold mines and new policies to keep more wealth in-country, the sector’s challenges persist, and Burkina Faso continues to rely on international aid and loans, including from the IMF with over $128 million disbursed or pending as of mid-2025 (despite anti-IMF rhetoric regularly spouted by Traoré and his network of online “pan-Africanists”).

In very plain terms, the current image of Traoré as a revolutionary savior is largely a mirage, carefully crafted for both domestic and international audiences. The reality is far more complex: Burkina Faso remains deeply unstable, and its supposed break from Western influence has not (at the time of writing) translated into improved security or prosperity. The digital sankarification of Traoré as the answer to all its travails is simply fugazi—it drifts, it floats, and it disappears.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Well, I wrote this because I grew up in the shadow of the Abacha military government and I have seen firsthand the dangers of authoritarian rule. The current propaganda surrounding Ibrahim Traoré in Burkina Faso is not just a regional phenomenon, it is a psychological campaign aimed at normalizing coups, dictatorships, and the suppression of dissent across West Africa. If left unchecked, this trend threatens to undo the hard-won democratic gains in more African countries, all in the service of Russia’s geopolitical interests.

Yes, the Nigerian democracy is flawed—maybe even all of Africa’s democracies are. I, myself, have become deeply disillusioned with our “democratic” leaders and the harm they have done to our country. But I would still choose this imperfect system over a return to military rule, where citizens are made subservient, the media is silenced, and our freedoms are erased. That is why I wrote this. Because it truly frightens me to see how effective the Traoré psy-op has become, and how many young Nigerians (unaware of the true situation in Burkina Faso) are now receptive to the idea of military leadership.

So, where do we go from here? The answer lies in confronting this wave of disinformation and psychological manipulation head-on. Civil society, the media, and educational institutions must work together to raise awareness, and promote critical thinking among young people (and maybe even old people).

Governments and intelligence agencies need to take information warfare seriously and invest in strategies to counter false narratives and strengthen democratic norms. Most importantly, we must not allow our justified frustrations with democracy’s failures to blind us to the far greater dangers of authoritarianism.

I rest my case.

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For the average Nigerian, the lack of expectations from our government is deeply rooted in decades of unfulfilled promises, persistent infrastructure failures, and a political culture that has normalized the abdication of basic state responsibilities. Despite repeated campaign pledges since the return to democracy in 1999, successive administrations have consistently failed to deliver on stable electricity, potable water, security, and timely payment of salaries and pensions. For instance, reliable electricity remains elusive for most Nigerians: only 13% of the population report having power that works “most” or “all of the time,” and 80% rate the government’s performance on electricity provision as poor 1.

Sadly, this widespread dissatisfaction has not translated into robust expectations for government accountability; rather, it has resulted in a fusion of self-reliance and resignation, where basic amenities are seen as personal responsibilities rather than state obligations. Nigerian politicians have learned to exploit this peculiar dynamic during election cycles, making campaign promises about salary payments, pensions, and road construction. Services that, in functional (first world) democracies, are considered baseline government duties.

In actual fact, our politicians have performed successful classical conditioning experiments on us and it worked.

You may begin to wonder why I’m providing this background in an article that is supposed to focus on Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) and its policy failures in Nigeria. The reason is simple: to truly grasp the significance of these failures, it’s important to first understand that we Nigerians (as a people and culture) have learned to expect only the barest minimum from our government. At the very least, when the nation’s youth—the so-called “leaders of tomorrow”, sit for exams that will shape their futures, determine their courses of study, and decide which universities they can attend, they expect their results to fairly reflect their efforts. They need to trust that their scores are accurate. But it seems that even this modest expectation is now too much to ask.

JAMB

JAMB is the body responsible for setting standards and conducting the entrance exam known as the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) for secondary school students in Nigeria. This exam is the gateway to universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education across the country. Depending on the institution, students may also be required to take an additional test called the post-UTME.

The UTME is a standardized exam, written once a year, with a total score of 400. While it is logical to assume that the pass mark would be 200, it is not (but that’s a discussion for another day). Traditionally, the exam was paper-based: students would shade answers with HB pencils, and the sheets would be marked. However, in 2013, the government introduced a computer-based test (CBT) version, which became fully implemented nationwide by 20152. The rationale behind this shift (despite Nigeria’s well-known challenges with electricity) was that CBT would speed up marking, reduce examination malpractice and errors.

Well, quite predictably, things haven’t gone exactly like that.

UTME 2025. How did we get here?

For the 2025 UTME exam, registration closed on March 8th with approximately 2,030,627 candidates. The examinations took place from 24th of April to 5th of May, 2025. Even before the exams began, there were early signs of potential problems. The official timetable required some candidates to arrive at their exam centers as early as 6:30 AM.

To put this in perspective, the average age of a JAMB candidate is 16 years, and a number of exam centers were situated far from students’ homes. Transportation is often difficult, and safety (in today’s Nigeria) cannot be taken for granted. And as you can imagine, the stress and disruption caused by such early reporting times are significant, especially for teenagers facing one of the most important exams of their lives. Yet, in our true Nigerian fashion, despite these advertised arrival times, the exams still started late at several centers, exerting another layer of frustration on the poor candidates. When the exams finally ended (despite the widespread complaints), the release of results was scheduled for May 5.

But how did JAMB respond to complaints, even before the results were released? Instead of addressing the genuine concerns raised by candidates, parents, and educators, the institution took a different approach:

1. JAMB (or their social media manager) spent valuable time on Twitter "clapping back" at Peter Obi, a former presidential candidate, in a post that ultimately earned a community note for misinformation 3.

2. On April 29th, JAMB shared a Google Doc “article,” clearly generated by ChatGPT and attributed to someone named Timothy Odedina, with the sole purpose of dismissing the concerns and incidents reported during the exam period 4.

3. On May 5th, JAMB released an analysis of the 2025 UTME results, stating that there was a significant failure rate and that only 0.4% of candidates scored above 300 5.

4. Finally, on May 9th, 2025, JAMB officially released the results.

Initially, after reviewing JAMB’s analysis, I genuinely thought the high failure rate was primarily due to increased distractions (especially from mobile phones), poor teaching methods, and chronic underfunding of the Nigerian education system. However, I now partially retract that view. While internet distractions and inadequate teaching and funding undeniably contribute to Nigeria’s struggling educational landscape, I underestimated the impact of the Nigerian “anyhowness” factor (an ingrained culture of carelessness and lack of accountability) on the examination statistics released by JAMB.

After the results came out, some intriguing patterns emerged. Some students who had consistently scored exceptionally well in previous years (often above 300) were now reported to have failed in 2025. In a typical year, when mistakes like this occur, the response is usually a mix of complaints and resignation, with many believing that fate/god/destiny was responsible for their misfortune. But this year was different, thanks to the emergence of a major character in our story.

Enter: Alex Onyia

LinkedIn describes Alex Onyia as a graduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and the CEO of Educare (a leading K-12 education technology platform in Africa). Confronted with widespread complaints about technical glitches and inexplicably low scores in the UTME, Alex began to leverage his large following and expertise to organize a collective response.

Firstly, he started by using social media to crowdsource and document cases from affected students, ultimately compiling a database of 8,391 candidates who reported issues with their exam scores. This data-driven approach allowed him to quantify the scale of the problem, providing a solid foundation for further action.

Alex then amplified the issue through mainstream media, appearing on TVC, to discuss the mass failures and highlight the technical and procedural irregularities that marred the exam. He also developed and publicly shared his hypothesis about the patterns of these failures, suggesting that the glitches were systemic rather than isolated incidents.

Most importantly, Onyia escalated the matter by taking “legal steps” against JAMB, seeking judicial intervention to compel the exam body to release detailed mark sheets for all affected candidates and provide transparency on the scoring process. This push was grounded in the evidence he had gathered so far and was intended to ensure that students could verify their results and dispute errors where necessary.

The mounting social, media, and legal pressure led JAMB to formally invite Onyia (on 13th of May) to participate in a transparent review of the 2025 UTME. He was asked to join a panel tasked with appraising the conduct of the examination, and identify challenges.

Irreversible consequences are truly irreversible

While all of this was unfolding, the poor Nigerian students who took these exams were already beginning to suffer the consequences. Opesusi Faith Timilehin, a 19-year-old girl living in Odogunyan, Ikorodu, Lagos with her elder sibling, was among them. After receiving a disappointing score of 190 out of 400, she ingested rodent poison and took her own life 6. Timilehin had reportedly passed the UTME the previous year, and the mental strain of failing an exam she had once succeeded in proved too much for her to bear.

Given the numerous issues that have already been identified with the examination process so far, is it really so far-fetched to consider that Timilehin might have received an incorrect result? And if so, is it unreasonable to hold JAMB at least partially responsible for her untimely death?

Oloyede becomes a crocodile

In a display that was as comical as it was tragically embarrassing, JAMB finally convened a press conference on May 14, 2025, led by its Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Olanrewaju Oloyede, in Bwari, Abuja. Rather than accept responsibility for a failure of this magnitude (as would be expected in other countries) an apparently overwhelmed Oloyede chose not to resign. Instead, he shed a few crocodile tears 7 and delivered a speech (in classic Nigerian fashion) titled “Man Proposes, God Disposes.”

One might be tempted to think that the supernatural had taken over the role of the JAMB Registrar and only the supernatural is to blame for this colossal debacle.

Despite the gravity of the situation ( and at the time of writing), Oloyede continues to evade accountability, deflecting blame onto a higher power rather than addressing his own incompetence. The tragedy that has unfolded under his watch has been met not with responsibility, but with excuses.

JAMB now claims to have identified a “technical error” affecting 157 centers nationwide, particularly in the Lagos and Owerri zones, with approximately 379,997 candidates impacted. In a move even more inconsiderate and callous, the body is proposing that these affected candidates retake the exams—beginning May 16, 2025, giving them merely two days to prepare 8.

The end: Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer

Nigeria is a deeply fragmented country, divided along ethnic, tribal, and religious lines. In recent years, tribalism and discrimination among its various groups have intensified, largely due to political factors. One clear implication of JAMB’s incompetence (beyond the tragic loss of life it has already caused) is the acceleration of distrust amongst all of our tribes, and the further fragmentation of our national fabric.

Following JAMB’s admission of its failures, and considering that a significant portion of those affected (173,387 candidates) are from Owerri in the South East, influential voices in the East have begun to question whether the sabotage was deliberate and targeted at the Igbo people 9.

While these suspicions might seem exaggerated (especially given an even larger number of affected candidates [206,610] are from Lagos in the South West) it is very apparent to me why such doubts arise and why deep divisions and suspicions among us will only continue to grow.

Ultimately, the blame for this crisis should rest squarely on the shoulders of Prof. Oloyede, who has refused to resign and may yet oversee the next round of examinations in 2026. The persistent lack of accountability, the prevalence of incompetence, and the absence of excellence in public policy will only continue to deepen Nigeria’s woes, exposing our already fragile society to further cracks.

I rest my case.

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