Ever since Raye broke the internet two weeks ago with her affecting critique of President Tinubu’s administration, Nigerians have increasingly taken to lamenting the record levels of hardship that President Tinubu’s administration has heralded. While, in a sense, this torrent of public furor reflects the terrible state of the country, it also at once suggests a nation frustrated with the direction the country is headed, a nation ready to take back their country from the clutches of the demagogues who have run the country aground. What’s perhaps most interesting about this tide of online activism is that Gen Zs—who have historically been largely apathetic towards politics—seem to be leading the line this time.
Anyone who has been even remotely active on social media, especially X, would by now be familiar with older Nigerians reproving Gen Zs with exasperated missives about how dangerous the growing political apathy among their generation is. You’ve probably encountered a frustrated Nigerian lamenting about how titillating online gossip and reality TV shows like Big Brother and Love Island are all that seem to pique the interest of Gen Zs. This time, however, Gen Zs are fearlessly excoriating the government with an intensity only the young, bubbling with youthful vigor and an unvarnished sense of justice, can muster. Take a stroll through the streets of X or Instagram, and you’d be inundated with polemics from young Nigerians tired of the government.
Heartening as the outpouring of solidarity against bad governance on these platforms is, it pales in comparison to TikTok, in whose streets Gen Zs are fanning the flames of a revolution through a mix of slapstick humor and political satire. Search “Corruptok” on the platform and you’ll be inundated with videos of young Nigerians cleverly satirizing corrupt politicians. One such video that has been making the rounds is captioned with “When my politician friend starts using bad words like ‘infrastructural development’ and ‘capital funding’.”
@kvg_bassey Now people for the country go Dey educated💔🤣. #fyp #corruption #corrupttok #nigeriantiktok🇳🇬 #viral_video #corruptok #goviral
Another post captioned “POV: Me falling after the minister of education told me he used my ‘private jet’ money to improve the educational sector,” finds the video creator parodying Tinubu’s infamous fall at Eagle Square in June of 2024. My personal favorite is one annotated with the words “Appointing my homeboy as Minister of Defense because he’s good at Call of Duty.” In the clip, over the soundtrack of RichGang’s Lifestyle (which has become the de facto soundtrack of Corruptok), Tinubu confers a military officer with an honor.
@pha_v_our Allegedly….Tag that bro 😅 🥲 #viral_video #corruptok #fyp #blow #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp
The various elements of the video—the caption, soundtrack, and clip—make for an incredibly entertaining watch, but beneath the varnish of humor is a biting critique. Tinubu’s administration has been mired in allegations of nepotistic practices. Take the appointment of Oyetunde Oladimeji Ojo, Tinubu’s son-in-law, as the head of the Federal Housing Authority. Temitope Ilori’s appointment as the Director-General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), raised conerns about nepotism as Ilori is the daughter of Chief Bisi Akande, a close associate of Tinubu’s. Even more shocking and polarizing was the appointment of the 24-year-old son of Kashim Ibrahim-Imam, Imam Ibrahim Kashim, as chairman of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA). At the time of his appointment, he was freshly out of university and lacked the experience required to steward over a department.
#corruptok’s satirical bent is not entirely without precedent. People across history have always criticized demagogues through satire. Newspapers in Nigeria have been squaring up to corrupt leaders using satirical cartoons. During the #EndSarz protests, young Nigerians, deployed social media as an avenue to criticize President Buhari. In an interview at one of the protests, after rifling through a laundry list of complaints, Stephanie Mbachu exasperatedly said, “Buhari has been a bad boy.” The clip quickly went viral and became fodder for hilarious parody videos of Buhari. Tinubu himself was also the object of online ridicule during the last presidential campaign, owing to his many incoherent gaffes.
And yet the rise of #corruptok feels markedly different than any of these other instances. Its scale is entirely unprecedented. These videos garner millions of views. Their virality has even catapulted the trend outside the nation’s borders. Foreign nationals have joined the trend, parodying Tinubu with hilariously censoring skits. Others have seized the opportunity to criticize their country’s inept leaders. Another interesting point to be made is that, even though these videos are insanely hilarious, they are single-minded in their criticism of malfeasance. Humor never obscures the message. To put it differently: the videos are funny, but we know “it’s not all jokes.”
Compare it with the parodies of Tinubu during the last presidential campaign. The bulk of the videos were scattershot attempts at painting him as a doddering old man. This isn’t an indictment—his many gaffes show he is indeed feeble—but those videos would have been turbocharged if they bore focused critiques, which is the key ingredient for great satire. Satire has forever been a tool for skirting censorship. Literary luminaries like George Orwell and Mark Twain built their careers on disguising biting critiques in the cloak of satire. And now young Nigerians are deploying this tool to titillate themselves and critique corrupt leaders. But that’s not even the most interesting fact in all of this. The kicker is that satire has contributed to making online activism more attractive for young Nigerians. Until recently, young people viewed complaining about issues such as corruption and the cost of living crisis as unfashionable. Today, however, criticizing the President or satirizing the country’s corruption problems suggests being witty and in lockstep with the times.
