Virtual Reality In 4-19 Manoeuvres

By 

Kòmbò Mason Braide Ph.D.

Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

Friday, 29 August 2003 

kombomasonbraide@msn.com

Weapons Of Mass Deception & Distraction:

Sometime in 1992, a police station in Pennsylvania, USA, received a phone call, reporting that a black armed intruder had been sighted at a local apartment complex. In response, two policemen rushed to the scene, prepared to make an arrest. As they stood outside the building, one of them peeped through a crack in a door, and saw what seemed like a marauder in the dark passage at the top of the stairs, holding a gun. Twice, the police officer ordered the apparent intruder to drop his gun; twice, his command was disregarded.

However, as the officer continued to peep, he noticed that the “intruder” looked very much like Eddie Murphy, a well-known African American actor. Suddenly, the policemen realised that they were in a mortal standoff with a cut-out cardboard effigy  (of Eddie Murphy holding a gun), taken out of a video shop, where it was used to advertise a movie. Both the police informant, and the policemen, had mistaken a semi-realistic imitation for what it imitated.

Those two policemen were the butt of comedians all over the USA after the incident was widely reported in the local media. But their experience was only a blown up version of something that happens daily to millions of Nigerians, given that imitations are now an all-encompassing element of reality in Nigeria. Like the policemen in Pennsylvania, most Nigerians routinely suffer from simulation confusion: we easily confuse realistic fakes for what they imitate. In some instances, such as the above, we are misled, accidentally, by imitations that were never intended to be deceptive, in the first place. For example, realistic toy guns are frequently mistaken for genuine firearms, an error that has led to numerous fatal shoot-outs, oil field abductions, radio station take-overs, fake armed robberies, and even coups d’état in Nigeria.

Frequently, we are being calculatingly hoodwinked, by people who have something to gain by manipulating our consciousness with misleading appearances. Indeed, much of Nigeria’s economy is based on providing Nigerians with deceptive imitations, ranging from fake medicines, “original Taiwanese” electronics, false bank accounts, fake “genuine” spare parts, and fake awards, degrees, and certificates, to false eye lashes, fake chieftaincy, and academic titles, false gold teeth, wigs, false fingernails, false skin complexions, “weave-ons”, padded shoulders, designer perfumes to mask body odour, rainbow-tinted contact lenses, fake buttocks, fake religions, false prophets, fake policemen, false IDs, fake addresses, and even 4-19 elections, and now metamorphosed from “nascent” democracy, to full-blown virtual democracy. As a result, we find ourselves in a predicament, in which we can no longer rely on the substantiation of our senses to tell us what is really real in Nigeria anymore.

Worldwide, the growing role of deceptive imitation is particularly evident in fields like politics, defence, crime, and security, which use disguises as part of strategies to outwit opponents. For example, we find that military strategy is now based on psychological warfare, especially by inducing maximum disorientation in the enemy with such visual deceptions as missile decoys, stealth bombers, and camouflage. Perhaps the most impressive example was the creation of a dummy invasion force that was used to mislead the Iraqi army in the final advance of US marines into Baghdad, during Gulf War II. Less dignified are some American confident tricksters who once placed a counterfeit ATM terminal in a Connecticut shopping centre, to fool the public into feeding in their credit cards, and revealing their account numbers and PIN (personal identification numbers): 419 Americana.

Partisan politics, defence, crime, and security provide good case examples of a world brimming with all manner of expert dupes, impersonators, imitators, pretenders, counterfeiters, and 419ers (including the 419ed), in which some Nigerians  routinely manipulate appearances to get what they want. When we look behind such fabricated appearances, what we often find are advanced forms of art, science, and technology, that make it possible for some Nigerian politicians, soldiers (retired or serving), criminals, or/and policemen, to present a laundered image of themselves, and of products, situations and ideas, that combine elegantly to tell a beautiful story, the exact way they want their story to be believed.

Nigerians, glued to their TV sets, are exposed to (although not always fooled by) a daily barrage of subliminal suggestions, and hard-core propaganda, fabricated in an effort to falsify the reality of Nigerians, and control both their thinking, and behaviour. Definitely, Nigeria is now dominated by assorted groups that use deceptive imitation to gain and control power: i.e. information, wealth, and the management of violence. The most rabid and adroit of these groups can be found in partisan politics, the military, the police, business, and the media. Their most important tool of deception is Nigeria’s primary simulation factory - the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) - which allows some power sadists to manufacture complex simulations that can effectively mislead Nigerians, en masse.

The public relations-driven world of Nigerian politicians portrays a fantasy-loaded universe of fabricated glamour and mystique. Among the several varieties of deception, advertising presents a utopia of human perfection and endless celebration, for selling a Nigerian politician to Nigerians. Nigerian politicians often give well-rehearsed, and choreographed performances, specifically for the consumption of press cameras, complete with overtly adoring sycophantic rented crowds for added effects, to create a simulated identity, for sustained propagation in the media (newspapers, tabloids, radio, television, or even in cyberspace), of politicians who, we are made to believe,  embody the desires of Nigerians. The Nigerian media, particularly the NTA, which claims to provide a window onto national events, is itself increasingly in the business of producing compelling dramas about high wire risk taking, and foul play in the virtual reality of Nigerian politics, where condemned “phantom” coup plotters spend less time in prison than “detained” suspected assassins, given that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The Nigerian media relies on, and applies a combination of the same techniques: i.e. engineered or doctored scripts, a distorted sense of loyalty, and achievements, “creative” story telling, video expurgation, and electronic image manipulation, (made popular during the so-called “phantom”, and “set-up” coup trials of 1995 and 1997). They all end up telling stories that include the usual elements: a mastery of danger, the capacity to effortlessly satisfy the wishes of Nigerians, the ultimate restoration of the collective self-worth of Nigerians, and guarantee of rosy future.

Frantic efforts are made to lure Nigerians to believe that the fabricated stories actually accurately depict real people, and real events. As a result, the Nigerian media ends up profoundly falsifying what it portrays, mixing up faithful and manipulated images, on the one hand, and fact and fiction, on the other hand, in seamless possibilities, such that it becomes progressively impossible to tell where fiction ends, and fact begins, (or vice versa).

An example may be appreciated from the administrative and operational structure of state television stations, whose news programmes are well known for reciting a daily litany of woes, (like oil spills, abductions, armed robberies, police extortion, HIV/AIDS, obituaries, road accidents, crimes, personal and/or communal disasters), with all the potential for evoking pity, fear, paranoia, outrage, belligerence, or/and threat in the minds of their target listeners, and/or viewers. However, this sensory bombardment of tales of havoc and general mayhem is always spiced up, or framed by a larger message of security, safety, and hope in the form of state-sponsored philanthropy, including a massive overdose of unrelenting spiritual opium, via televangelism, moral chauvinism and personal ethical misinformation. The overall effect is the conception of another variant of symbolic arena, indeed, a separate reality which gives viewers, and/or listeners the feeling that their government is proficient in containing threats and fears, (at least by the special grace of some heavenly entities).

What is particularly telling is just how similar this paradigm is to those found in many forms of pure fiction. Both fiction and government-sponsored propaganda initially invoke empathy, anger, expectations, fear, or/and sympathy in their audiences, and then convert those same emotions into reassurance, and anticipation. Fiction accomplishes this primarily with a happy ending. NTA does it by embedding stories about danger, disaster, starvation, and suffering in programmes that overflow with the benevolence and camaraderie of the Nigerian political elite, including throwing in a good measure of other stories with happy endings. Each, in a different way, is designed to provide a satisfying emotional relief for their victims, the Nigerian electorate.

Fortunately, as imitations and play-acting increase in magnitude and impact, a learning process is beginning to take place, in which Nigerians are developing new strategies for effectively unmasking executive deception. One might say that Nigerians are seriously involved in a game of catch up. As impersonators, pretenders, fakes, counterfeiters, and political 4-19ers are becoming more convincing by the year, Nigerians are getting adept at not being fooled.

The Nigerian press is increasingly creating the false impression that it is exposing executive deception. It is not. But then, whether or not it is actually doing so, is trivial. A point of absurdity is reached when all those pseudo-exposes create the impression that the Federal Government of Nigeria is involved in some kind of top secret UFO cover-up. Here, simulation-busting becomes the ultimate 419: a fraud that creates the fraudulent impression of fraud.

Kòmbò Mason Braide (PhD)

Friday, 29 August 2003 @ 5:23 pm.