'Gaslighting' a form of Hypnotism and witchcraft.

In this country called Nigeria, some people are paid handsomely to sit behind a keyboard and create alternative realities, against the better judgment of what we actually know and feel, and they have a mandate to consistently beat these improvised realities into our brains. You really have to believe this.

A dear senior friend of mine tells me it's a well-known mind-control mechanism in psychology called "Gaslighting." I went to check this concept up on wikipedia and was shocked at the definition. It fits our present reality as snugly as a bodybag would fit a dead body.

When you have read up the concept of "gaslighting", you would have then known that form of mind control or psychological manipulation which, according to wikipedia,: "seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegititimize the target's belief." This is what is being currently practiced on Nigerians by this APC government, and it is largely succeeding.

So, even as you are reeling from the sharp pains of the pernicious and fresh injuries you have just been inflicted by invaders, even as you watch your gaping sores bleed, as you try to bury your dead; with a wry smile on their faces, but without a conscience, they stroke your hair and telepathically whisper soothing words of blackmail, straight from their laptops, into the ears of your brain. In the stillness of that moment, they tell you:

"Those are no wounds, my friend! Those are the therapeutic incisions of this administration to heal the wounds of past administrations!! You should be grateful for it. Thank Baba for it. You hate Baba if you begrudge him your gratitude!!"

Or they say:

"This is no blood my friend, you would be foolish to believe this to be blood. You must hate Buhari to believe you are bleeding. You are not bleeding. These are mere menstrual blood which confirms that this administration is ovulating. We are fertile. It confirms we are seminal. We are about to birth development, hence the blood...it's not blood from injury. It is blood that precedes development."

There is no end to the nonsense we hear on a daily basis, spewed out as excuses or alternatives to the actual realities we feel. These insidious characters, who repeat falsehood on a minute-by-minute basis, just to sway public opinion or emotionally blackmail the populace into accepting the corpse-laden mediocrity called "change", they are the real enemies of Nigeria.

These fellows remind me of Adolf Hitler's recipe for effectively disseminating propaganda. Hitler, when asked how he was so successful in his Aryan supremacy and anti-semitic propaganda, gave a simple recipe on the matter as follows:

a. Keep it simple;

b. repeat it often; and

c. let it burn.

This is what these people are doing to us. They are paid to repeat these lies ever so often, and create and disseminate a reality alternative to and different from what we actually experience daily, that even the strongest of resolves will collapse or buckle under the weight of repetition, with time. You just find yourself accepting the lie, which you know to be a lie, after several repetitions.

So:

a. When it is clear that Buhari is not healthy enough, both physically and mentally, to administer good governance in Nigeria, you suddenly wake up to a wave of propaganda asking you to contrast pictures of an old man drinking palm wine in the village and Buhari who has "magnanimously" undertaken to serve his country. And they politely ask you to feel stupid for daring to question Buhari's health rather than be grateful, when he, out of love for the country, has given up his retirement to come salvage Nigeria.

You know what they are doing here, right? At the end, the question of Buhari's health never gets answered. But you are beaten into feeling guilty for even asking at all. In time and with frequent repetition, the question never gets asked again. You see?

b. When Fulanis attack and ravage a community which is not theirs, these insidious characters quickly jump on the keyboard. First they claim its not Fulanis but foreigners. Then Nasir El-Rufai embarrasses them with an admission that he has had to pay off some herdsmen to stop attacks in Kaduna. Even Miyetti-Allah's ID card is found on the site of some of the massacres. Then they change gear. They start posting pictures of suppose Fulanis killed by Berom youths. You never saw this pictures on social media until people cried out over the Plateau massacre by Fulanis. Suddenly the pictures flood everywhere. They post pictures of the children of the deceased, and tell you how they will suffer as orphans. And they show you pictures of dead cows, and relate it to an unreported incident of how their cows were mindlessly killed. So, the carnage is sold to you as "reprisal killing" and therefore permissible, or even commendable.

But you do know why this is done, don't you? Its emotional blackmail. You the victim, you are to feel sorry for your attackers who have laid your community waste. You are to blame yourself. Perhaps you, your children and your entire lineage deserve to be killed by Fulanis, after all you killed one of their cows, didn't you?

But they are not done. If you speak out, they will post news of body counts in the communal clash in Ebonyi State. They will ask why you are not crying over the dead in Ebonyi but are rather focused only on Plateau ethnic cleansing. "Are the dead in Ebonyi not also Nigerian?" They will ask you.

But you do know why they employ these tactics, don't you? It's called emotional blackmail. The objective is to keep you quiet, out of a sense of guilt. If you didn't speak against Ebonyi, you are not qualified to speak against Plateau. So you keep quiet.

But wait a second,

Have you been told that people who are complaining about hardship in government are those that stole from previous administrations? But you do know its a lie, don't you? There are countries that are prospering and their citizens living well, without corruption.This is the sort of country APC promised. Hardship in times of plenty is never a result of lack of corruption. It's the result of abysmal economic management and policies. But this government will never admit this. Somehow, they are now only content that things are tough. To them, it shows the country is rid of corruption. What madness!!

Have you heard that people hate Buhari because they can no longer steal from public funds, as though we are all in government employment or feed from government? In their eyes, Nigeria has never had a private sector. Everybody fed from government. Of the 200million of us, none has eaten anything that did not come from government. And nothing legitimate came from government. No legitimate business was ever done with or by government. Everything was stolen. So the tougher the hardship, the better the economic outlook is for Nigeria. What sadism!!

Have you not been told that the IGP who could not read from his script was under some bewitchment of agents of previous administrations? Then it was said the script was exchanged by PDP agents. Then it was said the video was doctored to embarrassed the government. Then they flooded the internet with videos of the latter part of the event where the IGP gave a speech without a script and therefore denied that the part that had to do with reading from a script was real. Nobody takes responsibility for anything. It just has to be the fault of the next man!!

Have you heard that this administration is still better than the previous ones because the death tolls don't match? This may sound ridiculous but you will believe if repeated often enough.

During the campaigns, did you not hear that Buhari defeated the Maitatsine uprising because he led the battle "from the front" and so will defeat any such uprising in Nigeria by also leading "from the front"? Well, where was he again when his kinsmen struck and ravished communities in Plateau? APC convention of course!! And where was he when Benue communities were ravaged by his kinsmen. Well, the gentleman was In Ogun, attending to Ajimobi's celebrations!! Perhaps it is I who does not know where a battlefront is or what it means to "lead from the front". Maybe the real battlefront are at merrymaking parties. But what do I know?

Where were you when the propaganda was making the rounds that Buhari had been poisoned by agents of corruption. They concocted this storyline to distract the populace after Buhari spent months abroad on medical trip. When Nigerians started murmuring, the poison narrative was quietly floated purely to distract everyone from the main issue. It was also during these lengthy and secretive foreign medical trips, that we were given several examples of presidents you ruled from wheelchairs and told we were lucky to have one not on a wheelchair but on a hospital bed, which, in their warped opinion, is superior and more tolerable to a wheelchair!! But do you remember that even this was a change in the storyline because Buhari had absolutely denied that he was sick from the onset?

Who was it again that swore never to go for medical trips abroad during campaigns? Was it me?

In fact, when Malaysia recently elected a 92 year old president, our shadowy propagandists went to town with comparisons of what great choice we made in electing the aged Buhari, and how wise we will be re-electing him in 2019, all on account of Malaysia's 92 year old president.

It's a crazy country we live in but its never been this bad. You need to have a very strong mental attitude to contend with the unremitting wave of propaganda of this administration. It's a blitzkrieg.

To take away propaganda from this government, is to unravel this government completely. It is to find that it is very hollow, like a doughnut. But in most cases, once the veil is removed, you'll also find an unconscionable fellow, seated behind a computer, spewing out carefully crafted alternative realities, to improve the political capital of a government that perhaps knows a little about good governance, but has no true affiliation to it.

It is against this backdrop that I still maintain that these are not the best of times to be Nigerian. By degrees, It is becoming very scandalous to rise and be counted among the lot.

Fidel Albert Esq.

Nice write-ups...reason why some of us refer to certain sections of this country that sheepishly follow this failed government as 'slaves that love there chains'.
Still on 'gaslighting',truly an effective mind contro program

Oga OP, what the ruling party is selling shouldn't matter. It's their right to sell. But are Nigerians buying it?

Now that's where the opposition party comes in. Their job is to ensure Nigerians don't buy what they are selling.

The result of the sales tactics will be made known on the election day.

This should be compulsory reading NL101.

Gaslighting works efficiently only on zombies not wailers