This essay interrogates a recurring pathology in Nigeria’s political commentary: the elevation of opportunism into virtue and the laundering of falsehood through performative repentance. It examines the public conduct of Mr. Reno Omokri as a case study in toxic politics—where certainty is loud when expedient, humility is theatrical when power shifts, and consistency is sacrificed on the altar of relevance. Without relying on any single article, the pattern itself is the evidence: allegation, amplification, access-seeking reversal, and moral self-exoneration.
At the psychological level, Mr. Omokri’s conduct reflects reputational arbitrage rather than principled engagement. False claims are advanced with confidence when they energise a faction or confer influence; they are withdrawn when proximity to authority becomes desirable. This is not economic logic in the productive sense—no value is created, no truth clarified. It is manipulation. The currency is outrage; the dividend is visibility. When the market changes, the trader pivots, rebrands, and declares growth. What is missing is accountability proportionate to the harm done.
The most troubling aspect is the attempt to reframe inconsistency as courage. Public admissions of error are commendable when they are concise, timely, and accompanied by restraint. What we see instead is an elaborate catalogue of apologies, interviews, timelines, and symbolic gestures—repentance as performance. This betrays an unresolved need for validation. A grounded moral agent corrects an error once and moves forward; a performative one rehearses contrition to recover status.
Education is also invoked as a shield. Repeated references to legal training, particularly a Master’s degree in Law, are deployed to sanctify reversals and silence critique. This is a category error. Legal education heightens responsibility; it does not dilute it. A legally trained commentator understands the gravity of alleging criminality, the permanence of reputational harm, and the insufficiency of “belief at the time” as a defence in the court of public responsibility. To cite credentials while excusing recklessness is to misunderstand the very ethics that legal training demands.
Home training and moral formation are relevant here—not as insult, but as sociology. Public behaviour often reflects early lessons about consistency, restraint, and accountability. Where these are weak, adulthood compensates with excess: loud certainty, public grovelling, and constant self-justification. The obsession with narrating one’s own redemption suggests insecurity, not maturity. Integrity does not announce itself; it accumulates quietly through consistent conduct.
The wider damage is political. This style of engagement teaches citizens—especially the young—that truth is provisional, loyalty transactional, and character negotiable. It reduces civic discourse to a revolving door of outrage and recantation. Institutions are not strengthened by this; they are cheapened. The public is trained to accept that yesterday’s “irredeemable” is today’s ally, not through persuasion or evidence, but through convenience.
Looking ahead, the trajectory is predictable. Over the next decade, if patterns persist, Mr. Omokri will continue to orbit power centres, recalibrating positions as administrations change, reframing past excesses as growth, and inserting himself into controversies that guarantee relevance. What will erode steadily is credibility. History is unkind to serial converters without conviction. Influence may be rented; trust must be earned—and once squandered repeatedly, it rarely returns.
Nigeria deserves better than politics by spectacle and repentance by press tour. The antidote to toxic politics is not louder apologies but quieter integrity: fewer allegations, more evidence; fewer reversals, more restraint. Until that discipline is embraced, a Reno of dubious character will remain emblematic—not of growth, but of a culture that mistakes noise for substance and performance for principle.
A Reno of Dubious Character and Manufactured Repentance: The Psychology of Lies, Opportunism, and Toxic Politics By Barrister Aguiyi Joseph Obinna
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