Nigeria, Oct. 1 -- It was the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who once declared that the state is "the march of God on earth." In those words, government became something more than a bureaucracy; it was elevated to a near-divine agency of history, the vessel through which rationality unfolds. Martin Luther, in his own turn, described secular authority as "God's mask" in the world. Both thinkers, though writing centuries ago, imagined rulers as guardians of morality and legitimacy, entrusted to reflect something higher than the whims of ordinary men.

But when that same "mortal god" begins to patronize the very things it publicly condemns, questions inevitably arise. The story of Nigerian content creator Mandy Kiss is illu...