By Stephen Adewale

In Nigeria’s ever-unfolding theatre of the absurd, comic relief is never in short supply. The latest act features Lere Olayinka, an aide to Nyesom Wike, who took to national television with the kind of confidence only ignorance can produce. With breathtaking certainty, he declared that anyone who studies Yoruba should either be confined to a classroom or peddling herbs as a traditional healer. In the cramped corridors of his imagination, the study of language apparently leads nowhere beyond blackboards and potions.

One would have expected a swift and resounding response from scholars of language to defend the dignity of their field. Yet, the silence has been louder than the gaffe itself. Perhaps they are still busy translating his babble into coherent thought. Or maybe they’ve wisely concluded that when nonsense shouts, intellect need not whisper back.

As if the recent parade of ignorance wasn’t enough, we’ve now been gifted yet another masterstroke in the ongoing effort to airbrush reality from Nigeria’s collective memory. Today’s Leadership headline quotes the Honourable Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, urging the media to “Take Terrrorists Off Front Pages, FG Begs Media.” Speaking at the seventh edition of the 2025 Ministerial Press Briefing, he declared with admirable theatrical flair: “We must deny these groups the undue publicity they crave. We must take them off the front pages and accurately report them as the criminals they are.”

At first glance, it sounds like a noble plea: let’s shield Nigeria’s image, woo foreign investors, and boost economic confidence by laundering the headlines. But beneath the patriotic perfume lies the familiar stench of erasure. This is a quiet campaign to bleach our collective memory, to redact the blood and dust from the pages of our present. As a historian, I cannot sit silently, unlike some scholars who seemed to misplace their voices when their disciplines were ridiculed. History demands witnesses, not cowards. The Honourable Minister’s statement calls for condemnation because when the government starts deciding what is remembered, it’s only a matter of time before nothing real is remembered at all.

While I share the Honourable Minister’s view that sensationalism and false reportage have no place in responsible journalism, his sweeping pronouncement dangerously blurs the line between misinformation and legitimate reporting. It risks branding all coverage of terrorism and insecurity as either exaggerated or entirely fictional. This is a dangerous conflation. It implies that the daily experiences of Nigerians who are kidnapped on highways, displaced from their homes, or killed in cold blood by terrorists and criminal elements are either fictional or unworthy of national attention. Such framing not only undermines the credibility of genuine reporting but also trivialises the lived realities of countless victims. The media’s duty is not to preserve the government’s image but to bear witness, inform the public, and preserve truth. To suggest otherwise is to suppress accountability and distort the historical record.

The more reasonable and democratic counsel would have been to urge the media houses to abide by an elementary rule in journalism which is to diligently verify stories before releasing them to the public. But the Honourable Minister, in a breathtaking display of omission, sidestepped this. Instead, his words reek of a deeper intention: not to uphold truth, but to erase it. What this government fears is not falsehood, it is memory. It is as though the government, exhausted from years of failure, now seeks to simply redact suffering from the national document. Yet no breaking story is more urgent, more sacred, than that of Nigerians being slaughtered on highways, kidnapped from their homes, or stripped of their meagre livelihoods by forces the government has repeatedly failed to confront. If a government continues to abandon its people, then every consequence of that abandonment deserves to scream from the front page. And if we indulge this absurdity and tolerate this call to silence our pain, we may soon find ourselves living in a nation where tragedy is illegal to mention, and truth a crime punishable by omission.

Such a statement raises profound concerns. It signals a quiet but dangerous effort to curate the present in service of a more palatable national image. While erasing terrorism from headlines may soothe the image-conscious, it does irreparable damage to the task of historical reconstruction and strikes at the core of truth and accountability. For historians, this is no benign media advisory. It is a veiled invitation to forget.

Beneath the Minister’s carefully tailored “appeal” lies a deeper, more unsettling message: the government has grown weary of the unrelenting documentation of the violence and insecurity that has haunted Nigerians for over a decade. This is not just about controlling media tone, it is a strategic move to halt the chronicling of one of the most painful chapters of Nigeria’s modern history, and with it, the chance to ever confront it with clarity and courage.

In effect, the government is once again broadcasting its fondness for selective amnesia. As long as the front pages remain polished, the daily agony of citizens can be conveniently swept under the national rug. The real message to the press, and by extension, to historians is simple: it’s now more fashionable to pretend than to preserve and record.

But history is no respecter of silence. It is an unforgiving archivist. And for a nation already staggering under the weight of unresolved trauma, this push to rewrite the present by omission is not just irresponsible, it is historical sabotage dressed as patriotism.

To this day, Nigerians remain uncertain about the true scale of kidnappings, deaths from terrorism, or even the actual figures of unemployment and underemployment. The absence of reliable data is no accident. It is the product of a state apparatus that consistently avoids documentation, not out of incapacity, but out of fear that facts may tarnish its image. Rather than confront national crises with transparency, the government has cultivated a culture of silence, where statistics are suppressed and inconvenient truths buried.

Now, with the Minister of Information’s veiled instruction to the media to downplay negative news, this culture of erasure reaches new heights. It is not merely a policy suggestion, it is a quiet war against memory, and a strategic attempt to exile suffering from the public record. Even as other institutions waiver, historians who are guardians of national memory must not remain passive. To acquiesce in silence is to aid in the construction of a future built on omission rather than truth. And if this continues unchallenged, generations to come may inherit not the reality of Nigeria, but a sanitised fiction crafted to conceal its deepest wounds.

In any sane and responsive society, the death of even one citizen would command national attention, prompting outrage, reflection, and swift action. Yet in Nigeria, the reverse is true as human life has been so thoroughly devalued that tragedy barely registers beyond fleeting headlines. Each day, Nigerians set out in search of the most basic necessities, only to be ensnared by wholly preventable calamities such as decaying roads that double as death traps, unchecked kidnappings, and an ever-expanding catalogue of man-made misfortunes. That a democratically elected government would dare instruct the press on how, or whether, to report such suffering is not just alarming; it is a grim indictment of the state’s moral and institutional decay.

No nation can rise above the quality of its education, and none that discards its history can hope to forge meaningful progress. While it is essential for the media to avoid sensationalism and uphold truth, media executives must also resist the velvet-gloved pressure of state censorship masquerading as patriotic counsel. For history is not built on silence. History is built on records, on the raw, unfiltered truth captured in the moment.

If this directive is allowed to stand unchallenged, it will not merely distort the narrative, it will gut it. Future historians will be left to sift through the ashes of truth, piecing together a national story from fragments, omissions, and propaganda. This is not just a quiet assault on journalism; it is an audacious attempt to bleach the present, to leave behind a history so hollow that it echoes. To let this happen is to condemn generations unborn to a past that never truly was. To allow this quiet censorship to pass unchecked is to quietly endorse a version of the past crafted not by facts but by fiction. It is to enable historical evidence that was polished for the comfort of the powerful, and stripped of the pain, courage, and chaos that define real nations. And when truth is exiled for convenience, what remains is not history, but myth.

The government must return to its foremost duty which is to protect lives, safeguard communities, and decisively curtail insecurity. That is the real path to positive headlines and national pride. But as long as it fails to meet these obligations, it must learn to live with the media reflecting the harsh realities Nigerians face daily. You cannot abandon the people and expect silence in return. If the news is disturbing, it is because the nation is disturbed. And no amount of editorial whitening can cleanse a bloodstained truth.

Stephen Adewale, former Chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Ondo State, writes from the Department of History, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife