There’s a new shortcut to instant popularity in naija: add Seyi Tinubu’s name onto any wild claim and boom, you’re headline gold – no need for facts, proof, or even a little hint of evidence.

And the biggest cheerleader of this incredibly banal fancy is none other than former Vice President and serial presidential bridesmaid, His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar!

This elder statesman, whom you would think ought to have mastered discretion, either on account of the high office he once occupied or his travails from the William Jefferson scandal to the Intels affair and the detention and corruption trial of some of his allies and children, obviously has no chill, no filter.

Take the so-called “military parade,” for example, during which Seyi inspected a group of youths in Boy Scouts-like uniforms in Abeokuta. Before you could say, Boy Scout, Atiku, screamed to the world that they were soldiers on a parade, for Seyi. He thought and believed the worst, even at face value, when he just needed to look and he’d see those were only youth volunteers!

Then there was the funny, if not ridiculous, Elizabeth Jack-Rich drama in which scandal-monger Jackson Ude, imitating the former vice president, alleged that Seyi was having an affair with the wife of former presidential aspirant, Tein, only for the family to dismiss it as rubbish. But Jackson and others who aimed to trend on Seyi’s name had cashed out and gotten their trend.

And now, there’s the pièce de résistance: Seyi allegedly masterminding the abduction of a student leader after a ₦100

million bribe was rejected. Again, His Excellency, the former vice president, is leading the Twitterverse battalion to amplify what even the often critical socio-cultural group, Afenifere, has dismissed as “salacious, fallacious, and utterly fabricated.”

At this rate, Seyi Tinubu’s name might as well come with a “trending is guaranteed” stamp.

Forget truth or proof. Even forget investigating.

Just put Seyi’s name into your story and you enjoy 24 hours of viral fame! Guaranteed.

Mike Ochuko, a social commentator writes from Asaba via mchuks1990@gmail.com