One of the burdens of a deeply entrenched narrative of corruption in Nigerian politics and governance, now deeply woven into everyday rhetoric, is the learned, pathologising self-image it produces among the public. Nigerians, increasingly conditioned to see themselves, their leaders, and their institutions through a lens of dysfunction, find it difficult to unite around critical national questions. And yet, divided by sharp group identities and entrenched biases, this remarkably diverse population displays an almost effortless unity around one tragic consensus: that the Nigerian state and everything it produces, is inherently contemptible.