ABSTRACT
The rise of disinformation hand-in-hand with disruptive politics around the globe has transposed and repurposed the theoretical and ideological inquiry about democratic threats induced by illiberal media and information practices. This information disruption within the mediated and discursive spaces, which in recent times has also been spearheaded by state actors, likewise indicates the causal links and evidence to prevailing threats to deliberative democracy in a way. Taking cognisance of these threats, how does state-sponsored disinformation evolve, and what triggers the phenomenon? In unraveling this research puzzle, this chapter unpacks cases of disinformation in Nigeria—and primarily expounds the genealogy of state-sponsored disinformation in the country. Linking electoral, partisan, ideological patterns of disinformation and propagandocracy together, and in view of the theoretical endeavour thrust upon this corpus of work, the chapter argues that the subtle deployment of disinformation by the state in governance is indicative of the re-animation of disruption of democracy and a rising pattern of an encroachment on the rights of the public to know in the post-truth era. Hence, the study heralds the urgency for enriching both the contextual and conceptual prisms of disinformation and how state-sponsored disinformation and the illusion of truth have panned out in Africa's biggest democracy.
