The Algorithm of Absurdity: A Satire Against the Ghosts in Abia’s Machine
Behold, the Spent Engines of Yesterday! Those wheezing contraptions of corroded influence, those Phantom Operatives haunting the corridors of expired power! They emerge now, not with ideas, not with progress, but with the only currency left in their bankrupt treasury: The Audacious Lie. Their target? The inconvenient specter of accountability – Governor Otti – whom they accuse of… gasp… fabricating data!
Oh, the Cosmic Irony! It stings like cheap pepper in the eyes of Minerva’s owl. These very architects of Calculated Obfuscation, these masters of the Selective Statistic, these weavers of Electoral Mirage, now clutch their pearls and shriek “Deceit!”? It is Plato’s Cave projected onto a broken projector, shadows accusing the sunlight of forgery!
Consider their Machinery of Mendacity:
- The Alchemists of Ambiguity: Their operatives, faces obscured like Platonic Forms of Corruption, transmute baseless suspicion into trending hashtags. A budget line becomes a “slush fund”; a verified infrastructure project morphs into “digital vaporware.” They peddle doubt like Descartes’ malicious demon, whispering, “What if nothing is real?” – except their own desperate need to keep reality obscured.
- The Pantomime of Proof: Demanding “evidence” of fabrication while offering none of their own, save the Nietzschean Will to Power disguised as concern. They point at meticulously gathered figures – roads paved, schools renovated, hospitals equipped – and cry, “Simulacrum! Baudrillardian hyperreality!” Their only “data”? The hollow echo chamber of rented crowds and anonymous social media avatars – Kafkaesque Accusers hiding behind digital pseudonyms.
- The Dialectic of Distraction: Ah, their masterpiece! While Otti’s team presents audited accounts and project milestones, the Spent Machinery counter with: “But what about the price of garri in 1999?” or “Consider this unverified rumour from a ‘concerned stakeholder’ (who happens to owe us favours)!” It’s Schopenhauer’s art of controversy – win the argument not by truth, but by noise, confusion, and muddying the epistemological waters beyond recognition.
- The Cult of the Faceless: Who are these “forces”? These Hegelian Geists haunting Abia’s political consciousness? Are they the ghosts of contracts unfulfilled? The spectres of misappropriated funds? The Sartrean “Hell is Other People” made manifest as anonymous Twitter handles? Their facelessness isn’t mystery; it’s the cowardice of parasites who dare not stand in the light their own accusations would require.
Hit them hard? Let philosophy be the hammer:
- Their accusations are Sisyphean Labors – doomed, repetitive, pushing the boulder of falsehood uphill only to watch truth roll it back down, crushing their credibility anew each time.
- Their “facts” are Humean Impressions – fleeting, baseless sensations conjured from the desperate ether of irrelevance. Where is the substance? Where is the constant conjunction of evidence?
- Their entire operation is a Machiavellian Farce stripped of even the Prince’s cunning – a blunt, clumsy, transparent grab at relevance using the only tool left: The Big Lie, repeated until their own echo chamber believes it.
Governor Otti, the “Fabricaor”? The accusation reeks of Psychological Projection worthy of Freud. It is the Ouroboros of their own decay – the snake eating its tail, mistaking its self-consumption for an attack on others. The data, the projects, the tangible progress – these are the Kantian Noumena, the things-in-themselves, shining through the Phenomenal Smoke they desperately billow.
To the Spent Machinery, the Phantom Operatives, the Faceless Forces: Your algorithms are outdated. Your fuel is the exhaust of past misdeeds. Your output is noise – increasingly desperate, increasingly absurd. The people see the roads. They see the schools. They feel the change. Your Orwellian Newspeak – “fabricated progress,” “deceitful development” – rings hollow against the concrete reality taking shape.
Your era is over. Not because Otti fabricates data, but because you fabricated an entire reality of stagnation for too long. The curtain is pulled back. The wizard is exposed, frantically peddling lies from behind his crumbling console. The only thing being “fabricated” now is your own richly deserved obscurity. Embrace the void you cultivated. The rest of Abia is moving on, armed with something you seem to find deeply inconvenient: verifiable facts.
Dr Chukwuemeka Ifegwu Eke writes from the University of Abuja Nigeria
