There is a video currently trending, a clip of Chude Jideonwo, the media entrepreneur and self-appointed moral arbiter of Nigerian discourse, holding forth on Peter Obi's supporters. His tone is condescending, his judgment absolute. The Obidient movement, he suggests, is a problem. Their fervor, their refusal to bow, their insistence on accountability, all of it, apparently, is beneath the dignity of serious political engagement.
It is remarkable that Chude Jideonwo still possesses the moral effrontery to speak on any matter of political conduct.
Not because he lacks the right to an opinion. But because the man has apparently developed a form of selective dementia that has erased from his memory the events of 2011, the violence that accompanied them, and his own enthusiastic role in the propaganda machinery that brought Muhammadu Buhari to power in 2015 -a presidency that has left Nigeria in its worst economic condition in history.
Before Chude lectures anyone on political conduct, he owes Nigerians an accounting. Because the man who now sits in judgment of Peter Obi's supporters was once the hired hand who helped package a candidate whose supporters had, in the previous election cycle, killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands in a orgy of post-election violence.
The suit that Muhammadu Buhari wore in those carefully staged photographs? That was Chude's idea . The "Change" narrative that swept a fundamentally unprepared candidate into power? Chude helped craft it. The media machinery that drowned out every critical voice and rebranded a man with a documented history of authoritarianism as a reformed democrat? Red Media was at the center of it .
And now, enriched and insulated from the consequences of the policies he helped install, Chude wants to lecture Peter Obi's supporters about civility.
This is not a call for reflection. It is a call for reckoning.
Before we discuss the 2015 election, we must revisit 2011. Because the contrast between the conduct of Buhari's supporters then and the conduct of Obi's supporters now is so stark that only a propagandist, or someone who has been handsomely paid to forget, could ignore it.
In April 2011, Nigeria held presidential elections that pitted incumbent Goodluck Jonathan against Muhammadu Buhari, the former military head of state who had ruled Nigeria with an iron fist in the 1980s. Jonathan, a Christian from the Niger Delta, won. Buhari, a Muslim from the North, lost.
What followed was a bloodbath.
According to Human Rights Watch, which conducted over 55 interviews with victims and witnesses, the post-election violence that erupted in northern Nigeria killed more than 800 people . The violence spread across 12 northern states: Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara . More than 65,000 people were displaced from their homes.
The pattern was consistent and horrifying. Supporters of Buhari took to the streets to protest the election results. The protests quickly degenerated into rioting. The rioting became sectarian killing. Muslim rioters targeted and killed Christians and members of ethnic groups from southern Nigeria, burning their churches, shops, and homes.
The Christian Association of Nigeria reported that at least 170 Christians were killed and more than 350 churches burned or destroyed by Muslim rioters across ten northern states . In the predominately Christian towns of southern Kaduna State, including Zonkwa, Matsirga, and Kafanchan, sectarian clashes left more than 500 people dead, the vast majority of them Muslim .
A lecturer at a college on the outskirts of Zaria described the attack on his institution: "When you see the mob, they were not in their senses. The students ran away but the mob pursued them into the staff quarters and they had nowhere to go. The mob beat them to death and hit them with machetes. Four Christian students and a Christian lecturer were killed".
In Kafanchan, a Christian leader lamented to Human Rights Watch: "There have been commissions of inquiries set up in the past, but I don't know what they did; that is why we are really skeptical. I want to believe that if they had done justice, maybe a repeat of this wouldn't have come. This time justice should be done".
This was the 2011 election. This was the conduct of Buhari's supporters. And the man who now lectures Peter Obi's supporters about decorum was, four years later, hired to make Muhammadu Buhari electable.
By 2014, the machinery for regime change was already in motion. The United States, under the Obama administration, had identified Nigeria as a strategic priority. Goodluck Jonathan's government had been cultivating relationships with China, pursuing economic policies that did not always align with Washington's interests, and, most critically, Jonathan was a Christian from the South, not the Northern Muslim that the informal zoning arrangement within the PDP had anticipated.
The United States wanted Jonathan out. And they were prepared to spend resources to make it happen.
David Hundeyin, the investigative journalist, has documented this extensively: "The Obama administration repeatedly interfered very directly and blatantly in that election cycle. Barack Obama recorded and posted a video urging Nigerians to 'vote for the next chapter.' Michelle Obama involved herself in #BringBackOurGirls, which was itself merely the 'Big Idea' within the larger marketing campaign that was 'Jonathan must go.' John Kerry travelled to Nigeria and met with the opposition".
Hundeyin's conclusion is stark: "The local players on the ground who took part in the marketing and political campaign to oust Goodluck Jonathan and replace him with the Illiterate were merely useful idiots - yes, that includes you reading this with your guilty conscience. If the shoe fits, I am definitely referring to you. You were nothing but a pawn in a geopolitical tussle between 2 of the Countries That Actually Matter".
The "local players" Hundeyin refers to include, preeminently, Chude Jideonwo and his partner Debola Williams. Their company, Red Media, was contracted in 2014 by the Director-General of Buhari's campaign organization, Rotimi Amaechi, for a specific purpose: to "launder the image of the Nigerian leader whom many believed was a perpetual runner and unelectable leader".
The contract was not small. According to LeadersNG investigation, N200 million was budgeted for propaganda operations involving Red Media and other contracted entities . The money, according to investigation, was "sourced from the NNPC through the SSA to the President on Social Investment Programs".
Rotimi Amaechi himself, speaking at the Red Media Summit Gala, gave an insight into what the operation entailed. He said of Jideonwo and Williams: "What they did [was] make us look like we were battling the PDP dollar for dollar. Meanwhile, we had no money".
Amaechi continued: "They got the President to wear a suit. He told me he hadn't worn one in one million years. And he's not worn one since" .
Think about that. The "Change" narrative, the rebranding of a man who had presided over a military regime notorious for its brutality, the transformation of a perennial loser into a democratic savior, all of it was constructed by a media consultancy firm paid with public funds funneled through the presidency.
The suit was not real. The change was not real. But the money was very real. And the consequences, the policies that have impoverished Nigeria, the insecurity that has spread across the nation, the economic devastation that has left millions hungry -those are also very real.
The 2015 election was not won by media propaganda alone. It was supported by an extensive network of NGOs, civil society organizations, and international foundations that provided funding, technical assistance, and legitimacy to the opposition campaign.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington D.C. think tank with deep ties to the U.S. foreign policy establishment, ran a series called the "CSIS Nigeria Forum" leading up to the 2015 elections. The series was supported by the Ford Foundation.
What this series was brought "leading Nigerians to Washington, D.C. to engage with U.S. policymakers and Africa experts on ways to promote peaceful, credible, and free elections". It featured sessions on "Security and Nigeria's National Elections" with Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield. It hosted opposition figures, including APC presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari himself, in Washington D.C. on January 26, 2015, barely two months before the election.
The National Democratic Institute (NDI), another U.S.-funded organization with a long history of involvement in foreign elections, was also active. According to CSIS documentation, the September 25, 2014 session of the Nigeria Forum "began with a recently completed micro-analysis by the National Democratic Institute examining voter participation patterns in the 2011 elections".
These organizations do not operate in a vacuum. They are funded by the U.S. government, by Western foundations, and by corporate interests that have a stake in the outcome of Nigerian elections. Their presence in the 2015 election cycle was not neutral. It was designed to shape the outcome in ways favorable to Western interests.
The academic literature confirms this. A chapter in the book "Media Ownership, Politics and Propaganda" (Taylor & Francis, 2022) documents how "a select number of media houses championed the cause of one of the opposition parties in the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria". These media houses, including The Nation newspaper, Leadership newspaper, and The News magazine -"either were owned or had links with politicians of APC".
The media was not reporting on the election. It was participating in it.
The 2015 election was not the work of media consultants alone. It was enabled by a class of Nigerian elites -intellectuals, activists, artists, and professionals who believed, or pretended to believe, that Muhammadu Buhari represented a break from the corruption and mismanagement of the PDP era.
Some of these individuals have since admitted their error. Aisha Yesufu, who was among the most vocal campaigners for Buhari in 2015, wrote in 2024: "Jonathan's administration collected a loan of $460m to install CCTV in Abuja and there was no CCTV and you are calling on fellow citizens to apologize for voting out Jonathan. And you do not see that you are worse than Jonathan, Buhari and Tinubu combined?".
She added: "Those who voted for Buhari did the nation a great favour since the people now see how 2018 is way better than 2023". This was sarcasm. She was pointing out that Buhari's second term was worse than his first, and that the country has only continued to deteriorate.
Others have not admitted anything. They have instead become richer, more insulated, and more self-righteous.
Consider the roster of individuals and organizations that were contracted or co-opted for the 2015 propaganda effort. According to LeadersNG investigation, the "67millionyouth Initiative" -ostensibly a non-partisan youth mobilization group was actually "a proxy working for President Muhammadu Buhari's re-election bid". The initiative was overseen by Ismael Ahmed, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Social Investment Programs, with funding from the NNPC.
Among those identified as having been contracted for the 2015 campaign were:
- Debola Williams, co-owner of Red Media with Chude Jideonwo
- Banky W (Bankole Wellington), the R&B artiste, who was contracted to use his following to sway young people
- Simi, the singer, also alleged to have been contracted
Banky W, it should be noted, had earlier in 2018 announced the dissolution of his record label Empire Mates Entertainment (EME) and pivoted to "marketing, advertising, public relations, branding, shooting of television commercials and documentaries". The timing is instructive. The pivot to propaganda paid better than music.
The 67millionyouth Initiative budgeted N200 million for its operations -sourced from the NNPC through Ismael Ahmed. Some of this money went to the artists and influencers who lent their credibility to the Buhari campaign.
What did they get in return? For Chude Jideonwo and Debola Williams, the reward was continued relevance, access to power, and a platform that has only grown since 2015. They have become wealthy, respected, and untouchable. They have built careers on the foundation of a propaganda campaign that helped install a government that has overseen Nigeria's worst economic crisis in a generation.
Now let us return to Chude Jideonwo's recent comments about Peter Obi's supporters. What, exactly, is his complaint?
If Chude's complaint is that Peter Obi's supporters are passionate, even fervent, then his memory must be extraordinarily short. The Obidient movement has engaged in online debates, occasional confrontations, and vigorous advocacy for their candidate. They have been accused of insults and online bullying -accusations that are sometimes warranted, sometimes exaggerated.
But compare this to the behavior of Buhari's supporters in 2011. Not online debates. Not insults. Killings. Burnings. Mass displacement. Sectarian violence.
Where was Chude Jideonwo's lecture on civility in 2011? Where was his concern about political conduct when his candidate's supporters were murdering Christians in the North and burning churches across ten states? Where was his moral outrage when mobs in Kaduna were hacking students to death with machetes?
The answer is that Chude was not in Nigeria in 2011 worrying about political conduct. He was preparing to rebrand the man whose supporters had done the killing.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Chude wants to criticize the Obidient movement for being too passionate, too demanding, too unwilling to accept defeat. But he and his partner were paid N200 million to manufacture a narrative that made a man with a documented history of authoritarianism and a violent supporter base electable.
If Peter Obi's supporters have been uncivil at times, they have not killed hundreds of people. They have not burned churches. They have not displaced 65,000 people from their homes. They have not, in the aftermath of a lost election, taken to the streets to murder their fellow citizens.
The same cannot be said for the supporters of the candidate Chude Jideonwo was paid to package.
The 2015 election was won. Muhammadu Buhari became president. And Nigeria has not recovered.
Since 2015, the Naira has collapsed from under N200/$ to over N1,600/$. Over 767 manufacturing companies have closed. 7.2 million MSMEs have shut down. Nigeria has become the world capital of multidimensional poverty, with 133 million Nigerians now classified as poor.
The policies that Chude and his colleagues helped enable -the subsidy removal, the currency devaluation, the trade liberalization, are the direct descendants of the SAP era that devastated Nigeria in the 1980s. And they have had the same effect: deindustrialization, immiseration, and dependency.
Chude Jideonwo is now rich. He feels insulated. He lives in a bubble where the policies he helped install do not affect him. He can afford to lecture Peter Obi's supporters about civility because he does not have to worry about where his next meal comes from. He does not have to worry about whether his children can afford school fees. He does not have to worry about the price of fuel, the availability of electricity, the security of his neighborhood.
He sold his credibility for a contract. He got his money. And now he wants to tell the people who are suffering from the consequences of his work that they are the problem.
Chude Jideonwo's selective amnesia is not a personal failing. It is a class characteristic. The Nigerian elite that profited from the 2015 regime change, the media consultants, the NGO executives, the "respected" intellectuals, the artists who lent their names to the propaganda, have collectively decided to forget what they did.
They forget the violence of 2011. They forget the contracts they signed. They forget the narratives they manufactured. They forget the policies they enabled. And now they sit in judgment of those who dare to demand something different.
Peter Obi's supporters are not perfect. But they have not killed Nigerians. They have not displaced tens of thousands. They have not burned churches. They have not, in the aftermath of an election, taken to the streets to murder their fellow citizens. They have used words, not machetes. They have used social media, not mob violence.
If Chude Jideonwo wants to lecture anyone about political conduct, let him start with the supporters of the candidate he was paid to package. Let him explain why the man whose image he laundered presided over Nigeria's worst economic crisis. Let him account for the N200 million that was funneled through his company from the NNPC. Let him tell Nigerians why he is rich while they are poor.
The suit that Muhammadu Buhari wore in 2015 is long gone. The "Change" narrative has been exposed as a lie. But Chude Jideonwo is still here, still wealthy, still lecturing, trying to pretend that he did not play a central role in the catastrophe that has befallen Nigeria.
He owes Nigerians an apology. He owes them an accounting. And until he provides it, his opinions on political conduct should be treated with the contempt they deserve.