In February 2025, the Welsh Parliament sat to debate a motion of general interest: there was a move to criminalise politicians lying, where politicians who were found to lie could be made to lose their office. Why this law invokes so much feeling is because it is a cliche idea that politicians are pathological liars, so much so that there are numerous running jokes about it.
After many years, for the past 2 decades, different political scientists have attempted to tackle the question as to why politicians lie so much and why the electorates don’t seem to care about it. Additionally, like the Welsh Parliament, after years of criminalising individual lies which have limited effects while overlooking political lies which have a wide public effect, it would seem societies are beginning to wake up to the need to criminalise politicians’ lies too.
An ancient apophthegm says, “Probitas laudatur et alget“: honesty is praised and left out in the cold. This saying summarises the feel in most political atmospheres where the people proclaim to desire leaders who would be credible and tell them the truth, which polls that show the increasing loss of trust in the politicians and accountability for their utterances have been interpreted to mean. But then on the flip side, it is still known that lying wins politicians more elections than the truth, as there is some empirical evidence that truth-telling politicians have lower reelection rates.
In all of this, the historical problem with tackling political lies, whether in the sense of criminalising it or just flagging it as such in the media, has been the very definition of what a lie is and how easy it can be to show that politicians have lied. Traditionally, a lie is defined as an intentionally false statement made with the deliberate intention to deceive. By this definition, a misleading political statement traditionally had to be shown to be intentionally false and intentionally made to mislead people. This was a huge burden of proof, and might be the reason why, despite the good intentions of the Welsh Parliament, their intended bill might not eventually pass. It is never easy to show a politician’s intent as most deceptive political statements are not framed as outright lies but rather a misstatement of the truth, an omission of relevant truths, an overstatement of a fact and other utterances which can easily be made to pass up for an honest mistake with no intent at harm.
In the Nigerian situation, we had a situation where the current leading political party came up on the backdrop of overly inflamed statements, which were used to sway public opinion and which have, over the years, been shown to have been reflective of the actual reality of things. And in all they did, they were not as special as they seemed to play by the predominant rulebook which reigns in the Nigerian political space, according to many Nigerian political commentators.
Furthermore as students, we have had our fair share of political lying even so much so that an SU president was once caught with his pants down when a video emerged of him promising the votes of “we the students” to the APC which he eventually tried to say he meant he was refer to a largely unknown (and some would say non-existent) group of so called progressive students.
More frequent than outright lies, the form of political speaking we are commonly subjected to in our student community is politicians who make promises merely for the sake of promises and never with the intent of fulfilling them. Press nights are always a time of bewilderment as all sorts of gimmicks are brought to the fore. You have situations where a sitting politician who despite not fulfilled half of what he promised comes with the same manifesto with no clear and different approach to fulfilling it, or even talks of people claiming to want to do hall projects like buy a pumping machine with their own money and yet not know even the price of the pumping machine showing that there is no good intent to fulfill it but just a sentimental promise meant to mislead the electorates to vote him.
Though less common, personal attacks meant to deceive people about the candidature of an opponent are also another thing we see. You have situations of overstatement or understatement of facts of matters just to mislead with a clear intent to make them vote against a certain candidate.
As we conclude, one thing that makes all this observations more interesting is that, while we have stated that the electorates seem to know about the lying of politicians and don’t care most of the time being only moved when the lie becomes too outlandish and unnecessary that it’s perceived as insulting to their sensibility, political lying has one other unique effect.
According to a particular psychological research, the lies of politicians we support personally can affect our lying too, both in frequency and magnitude. Simply put, if you support a very deceptive candidate, you too eventually become more inclined to lie more and tell bigger lies. This is said to occur through priming, which in psychology refers to a non-conscious and implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus affects the response to another. For example, an exposure to a fast food commercial could make you more inclined to eat a pizza later in the day rather than some wholesome food. Now, while we caution that this research can not be taken conclusively as it is still a subject open for further research, it is something interesting as it opens up a new way in which political lies affect the individual, i.e. since the politicians can lie, so can I.
Now right at the end, while we have merely sort to look at political lies from a general point of an overview, given how close we are as UIMSAites to another season of elections and politicking, we are encouraged to consider on a personal basis if really as individuals we want to settle for overlooking political lies? Having now known what it is and what it entails, the next question to be asked is, should we not care more?
Onymous
