Guns end dreams: linguistic choices as trauma narrations in Baki and Adedoyin’s End sars rhythms

Abstract

This paper examines the poetic presentation of the October 2020 #EndSARS protest as traumatic narrations in Baki and Adedoyin’s End sars rhythms. Drawing on insights from literary trauma theory and the concept of trauma discourse, data were purposively extracted from 20 poems to exemplify how language is devised to situate collective traumatic experiences of Nigerian youths in particular, and the general masses at large from the depravities by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad and political class. The thematic coding of the analysis denotes the use of agonizing language to construe the people’s diverse trauma stimuli to include: police brutality, exploitation and incarceration, political exploitation aided by Babel mechanism, agony of the dying and dead youths, and the evil deeds in October (20th) and darkness. The poems viewed the #EndSARS protest as a socially networked and communal demonstration against the political establishment and its agents (security forces) who have executed deprivation, emasculation and deaths among the armless youth population. The study is significant because it highlights the protesters’ unity across ethnoreligious divides to portray a congregation of patriotic and resilient youths determined to excruciatingly chat a new future in their fatherland where they are free to create knowledge, wealth and true nationhood.

Keywords:

• #EndSARS protest
• trauma narrations
• literary trauma
• Nigeria police
• political establishment
• Nigerian youths

Reviewing Editor:

• Jeroen van de Weijer, College of International Studies, Shenzhen University, China

Subjects:

• Language & Literature
• Language & Linguistics
• Language Teaching & Learning
• Literature

1. Introduction

The 2020 #EndSARS protest executed by Nigerian youths depicts collective trauma that narrates the Nigeria Police’s highhandedness of citizens resulting in abuse of human rights, assaults, injuries and deaths. Scholars posit that collective trauma resonates past event(s) to locate its imprints left by the experience on the mind, brain and body in the present, and the damages it does and impairs the prevailing sense of communality in the way the event is experienced and processed (Matei, 2013; van der Kolk, 2014; Zepf, 2001). Collective trauma is therefore situated where the trajectory of the reflective memory of painful past experience goes beyond the individual to affect a social group (of select age bracket) or community. Such memories are often (il)logically coherent narrative but bear emotional traces that may consciously return suddenly and unexpectedly as flashbacks weaved in emotions.

In terms of its origin, trauma studies began as a medical and clinical concept to cater for the experiences of the many returning Vietnam War Veterans. The returning soldiers were suffering from both physical and psychological injuries and needed medical attention. The psychological dimension of this injuries was referred to as soldier’s heart, battle fatigue and, later, shell-shock. On this, Jensen (2020, p. 66) notes that: “understandings of trauma developed greatly during the First World War when psychiatrists using treatments that drew on Freud’s theories encouraged soldiers to tell the story of what had happened to them, often several times, as a way of desensitising themselves to the stressful memory.” The initial situating of trauma in medicine and psychotherapy has been extended in contemporary times to also explain “any form of painful or frustrating experience” (Busch & McNamara, 2020, p. 324). Such experiences are represented in narratives that show the mental integration of trauma related reflections (Smyth et al., 1999). Narratives form the reflective dimension of recalling the ugly past and how common experiences that evoke collective memories (Uwen & Ellah, 2023). This is often organized in a language that situates the experience.

Generally, narratives are plotted in language that aims to instruct, or establish connection with the past, appropriates change and ways of behaviour and situates that narrator’s past experience or event which might be traumatic or mundane (Holmes, 1997; Madigan, 2020). The linguistic coordinates of trauma language is therefore dependent on the intensity of the traumatic experience narrated using linguistic and paralinguistic mechanisms in recalling the past (Matei, 2013). Language here recreates, evokes, re-enacts and situationally connects the visual and mental representation of the experience with the emotional background that resonates trauma. This makes such language complex, reflective, emotional and evaluative to cause a mental reconciliation of the speakers’ difficult but interconnected experiences (Mansfield et al., 2010). It is the interconnections in traumatic experiences that appropriately map the role of language in describing it beyond a mere casual and mono-directional narration to a complex and multilayered discourse that expectedly show that such experiences have severe impact on the survivors’ linguistic repertoire (Busch & McNamara, 2020). In trauma narration, therefore, experience is caused to interface with the memory associated with specific traumatic situation with appropriate linguistic description that situates the severity of the circumstance.

In Nigeria, citizens had in one time or the other faced traumatic experiences, and had often devised appropriate modes, “to condemn, rebuke, criticise, confront, mock, attack, satirise and express discontentment” (Uwen, 2023a, p. 138). The suffering, abuse, deprivation, brutality from security forces, denials of fundamental human rights, and lack of basic amenities form major contending traumatic narratives that spur citizens to confront the political establishment to express government’s abysmal failure. These events form traumatic memories in the socio-cognitive consciousness of Nigerians that they intermittently evoke the memories during advocacies, activists’ addresses, paintings, sculptures, poetry and placards they carry during protests. One of such events was the 2020 Nigerian youths’ protest against the brutality of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (henceforth SARS) Unit of the Nigeria Police popularly known as #EndSARS protest in October, 2020. In its execution, the youth were re-energised and networked to communicate to the world in traumatised language, the ills that have befallen them in a nation they call theirs.

1.1. SARS and #EndSARS protest

SARS is a Unit in the Nigeria Police created in 1992 to combat armed robbery and other criminalities such as vehicle theft, kidnapping, among other crimes (Bamgbose & Alugbin, 2022). Members of the special unit initially operated under cover, using plain clothes and unmarked vehicles that do not bear any security insignias, and had made excellent achievements in bursting criminal hideouts and combatting crimes across Nigeria (Muhammad, 2017; Malumfashi, 2020). It was later observed that bad eggs populated the special Unit and demonised its initial integrity through their engagement in brutality and extrajudicial killings of citizens leading to non-violent protests across major cities in Nigeria. The emergence of the #EndSARS protest was a critical fulfillment of yearning from the traumatised youth segment of the Nigerians who were saturated in the myriad of challenges. The protest framed the political highhandedness and robbery of the masses’ mandate by the Nigerian political leaders through SARS as catastrophic. The protest confronts and condemns the operations of SARS which had the youths as major victims (Uwalaka, 2021). This was made possible because of the platforms available to the protesters to register and networked through the social media to communicate (through placards) the conscription of the Nigerian society into a traumatised one.

Scholars have different discourses on the #EndSARS protest. For instance, Odogwu (2021) argues that many communication strategies were used during the #EndSARS protest to communicate collective experience and meaning. This corroborates the position that during protest, “different communicative tools are deployed to convey messages … verbal, non-verbal, or semiotic resources that contribute to the organizational structure of the collective discourses” (Bamgbose & Alugbin, 2022, p.133). John and Agbara’s (2021) pragmatic analysis of the #EndSARS placards portrays the protest as a deliberate exemplification of linguistic elements that communicate the impulses of the protesters. Also, Dajo and Akor (2022) argue that the protest has negative impacts on the Nigerian economy. From the media perspective, Usman and Oghuvbu (2021) contend that the social and electronic media helped in the networking and congregation of Nigerian youths that aided the escalation of the protest and other events that surrounded it. In another study, Ukor (2022) presents the communication strategy in #EndSARS as a multimodal dimension of messaging during protest in other to transmit ideological constructs and resistance through semiotic resources embedded in the placards. Resistance, in this context, reorders the inhuman practices perpetrated by SARS. The #EndSARS protest therefore draws wider attention to how the youths navigated through difficulties to network, rest and negate the symbolic power of SARS informed by the loud silence of the Nigerian government on the police brutal engagements with the youths (Aboh & Okpalaeke, 2022). This assertiveness amidst the daring posture of SARS through social networking and self-engagements are aspects of the emerging youth culture of self-assertiveness and expression of issues that bother their collective existence (Uwen, 2023c). These anguished assertions were registered in the traumatic language of the #EndSARS placards used by the youths.

In the literary sphere, scholars have also published works on the #EndSARS protest in Nigeria. For instance, Chu’s (2020) work documents the protest and its impacts as necessary lessons to forestall future reoccurrence of such dimension of protests in Nigeria. Also, Osawaru’s (2020) text draws from the known to expose the hidden truths about the #EndSARS protest while stressing on the decriminalisation of modern sensibilities and the freedom of Nigerian youths from police brutality and dehumanisation. Again, Iloakasia’s (2021) October blues captures a poetic diagnosis of the #EndSARS protest and critically examines the movement as a representation of the Nigerian existence. In another work, the protest is presented as a revolution against the already accumulated evils of agents of government (Adesanya-Davies et al., 2021). Also, Verissimo and Yeku (2022) captures the poetic response to the memories of non-violent protest against the police while Eniola’s (2023) work demonstrates the impact of the social media and extent of youth activism during the #EndSARS protest. These works support the position that literary texts provide clues on the link between traumatic experience and the language used to describe it (Luckhurst, 2008). In the literary context, trauma is framed as the possession of an individual by an event or image such that the reoccurrence of such event or image in the psychic landscape of the individual causes pains or psychological stress (Caruth, 1996, 2014).

Language use in the above context performs the ‘magical and mystical’ roles in re-inventing thoughts and memories that could trigger individual or group’s agitations and cooperation against humiliations (Block & Trager, 1942). The common depiction in the works is that none of the contributions investigated the language of trauma or linguistic choices as trauma narrations in the literary works on #EndSARS. The dearth of such studies situates the research gap which this study seeks to fill. This study is therefore focused on Baki and Adedoyin’s (2021) edited collection of poems entitled End sars rhythms and aims at explicating the linguistic content as narrations of the collective trauma of a people, and particularly Nigerian youths. It is believed that the findings would redirect researches on the traumatic propositions in the linguistic and semiotic resources used in transmitting trauma messages during the October 2020 #EndSARS protest in Nigeria, particularly in literary texts.

2. Theoretical framework

The frameworks relevant to this study are literary trauma theory and the concept of trauma discourse. Literary trauma theory discusses the different representations in trauma literature particularly in the interplay between language, experience, memory and place (Caruth, 1996, 2014; Rothberg, 2000). The role of place depicts the effects of trauma through metaphoric and material means that show the geographical location of the traumatic experience and the situation that evokes the memory within a given sociocultural and socio-cognitive contexts of the speakers and/or victims.

Speaking specifically about literary trauma, Kennedy (2020, p. 54) avers that; “literary trauma theory combines the insights from psychoanalysis and deconstruction to explore the linguistic markers, including gaps and absences in language, that characterised survivor testimonies, literature and film that sought to bear witness to and remember the Holocaust.” This implies that trauma in literature is understood in terms of the reoccurrence of the traumatic image or event in the mind of the victim. The artist’s agenda therefore is to paint scenes, characters, and personas whose memory are sites of traumatic fossils and through the narrations, one is able to probe and organize these bits and pieces of the persona’s or character’s memory into a unified poetic whole. Trauma studies in the 1990s, according to Caruth (1996) and Rothberg (2000), draw its model from Freudian theory that situates the idea that traumatic experiences challenge the limits of language use as not sufficiently representing suffering. On the conceptualisation of a cultural or societal trauma, Madigan (2020) argues that the theory of traumatic events focuses on the discursive struggle over the meaning, and that accurately represented the truth of the events which are widespread in the society. It often has a wide view of the event as traumatic and catastrophic which becomes part of the collective memory of the social group and/or community.

Also, drawing from the concept of trauma discourse, the insights envisage the use of linguistic mechanisms to situate speakers’ narration and evaluation of their traumatic experience (Matei, 2013). The intensity of the emotions in the language of trauma largely depend on the socio-cognitive and positional distance between the speaker and the traumatic event. Trauma discourse instantiates how unpleasant experiences are represented in language that utilises memories to shape individual, collective and cultural identities (Rothberg, 2000). In literary genres, such language is deployed in analyzing the impact of the psychological, rhetorical and cultural influence on the comprehension of traumatic experience. The discursive dimension of trauma highlights the influence of the totality of the linguistic cues in assigning meaning to the linguistic components in language that recounts traumatic experience. Drawing on insights from literary trauma theory and trauma discourse, it is a given that the #EndSARS protest was not just a traumatic event but equally a definitive material for a traumatised society as its memory or remembering continuously colours the social or collective interactions and identity of the Nigerian youth and masses described in traumatic language. This justifies the protest as a traumatic event created when “the responsibility for the causes and subsequent mismanagement of a traumatic occurrence is addressed in the national public sphere through a moral framework” (Madigan, 2020, p. 48). Protest is universally accepted civil and ‘moral framework’ utilised by citizens to publicise their grievances against political establishment and anti-masses practices of government and/or its agencies. This position shows connectedness as the selected poems in Baki and Adedoyin’s (2021) End sars rhythms are conceived as traumatic testimonies of the victims of the #EndSARS that reveal the inhuman-inflicted catastrophic experiences of a nation.

3. Methods and materials

The sources of data for this study are primarily drawn from secondary materials. Specifically, the data are relevant excerpts extracted from Baki and Adedoyin’s (2021) edited collection of poems. The book has 42 poems on #EndSARS protest and is titled End sars rhythms. Using the purposive sampling technique, the choice of poems and extracts is based on its communication of traumatic experiences of the protesters before, during and after the protest. Given this background, 40 extracts from 20 poems were used for this study. The number of poems and extracts is deliberately adopted to achieve a clear and precise analysis. It is the view of the researchers that since the entire poems in one way or another thematise trauma, bringing in more excerpts could generate unwieldiness, clumsiness and overlapping of meanings. Upon the extraction of the excerpts, the data were reviewed, harmonized and coded into themes for qualitative analysis. There is the prevention of bias in the data collection because of the positionality of the researchers as participant observers. The researchers are adult Nigerians who had witnessed the operation of SARS, the #EndSARS protest and the aftermath of it. They also have deepened cognitive knowledge on the traumatic dimensions of the experiences in the hands of the daring SARS Unit of the Nigeria Police. This positionality of the researchers as ‘insiders’ facilitated the understanding of the thematic concerns of the poems, the traumatic messages they convey and dimensions of narrations by the poetic personas.

4. Results and discussion

The data for this study are analysed using the qualitative approach. The data are coded into themes based on the similarity of meanings derived from the content as also construed by the researchers’ familiarisation with the concept of the 2020 #EndSARS protest in Nigeria. This knowledge facilitated the search for, generation, extraction, review, harmonisation and coding of data that produce the themes that form the analysis. To achieve this, data that appear very similar and somehow overlying in the content of the traumatic messages were reviewed to ensure the conveyance of heterogeneous semantic imports. Based on this, the dimensions of trauma expressed in the purposively selected poems are categorised into themes that capture the concerns of the protesters. In the analysis, the titles of the poems are in quotation marks (“”), the numbered Excerpts 1- 4 (in single-line spacing) are opened and closed with the slash mark (//) to indicate the lines quoted from the entire poem, but they are italicised in the discussion sections. At the end of each extracts, the title of the poem, and the exact line(s) and page(s) they could be sighted in the text are mentioned for precision and reference purposes. Using the qualitative (content) analysis approach, the themes are discussed below.

4.1. Police brutality, extortion and incarceration as multitraumatic treatments

There are records of very crude, unprofessional and brutal operations of the Nigeria Police in particular, and the security forces in general. Studies have emphasised the unprofessional and coercive approaches by Nigerian security forces, characterized by human rights abuses, intimidation, assault and unlawful arrest and detention (Aborisade, 2021; Akinwotu, 2020; Arisukwu et al., 2021). The perennial occurrence of these inhuman practices perpetrated particularly by the SARS, formed aspects of the traumatic experiences that energised and stimulated Nigerian youths to stage the 2020 #EndSARS protest. The excerpts and poems that capture these traumatic treatments are listed below.

Excerpt 1A

/It is not safe to sit outside my neighborhood/, /… you could be forced into a black van/

/… rent our bodies as wages to the brutality of the police/ (“Bermuda triangle”, lines 6, 9, 10, p. 6)

Excerpt 1B

/… human right abuses/Arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention and torture/…/Their numerous atrocities/The impunity on which they were wrought/Aroused the indignation of the people/ (“The SARS we formed”, lines 22–27, p. 29)

The poetic personas in “Bermuda triangle” and “The SARS we formed” enumerate the frightening existence of the youths in their own country, where everywhere is not only unsafe but could consume the citizens it is meant to secure. The consistency of these trauma-induced practices including the maximum force, arbitrary arrest, brutality, abuses, torture, atrocities and impunity were the unbearable humiliation that aroused the indignation of the people.

In the “Bermuda triangle”, the poet’s persona notes clearly that they are in a dilemma; that of not being safe to remember and not being able to forget. This is even more traumatic as the series of complaints of police brutality are brazenly dismissed and swallowed in pretense like the metaphorical Bermuda triangle swallows its victims in the sea. In trauma, the remembrance of the traumatic events actually contributes to the trauma. Like the triangle, the traumatic event is usually beyond the reach of the memory of the victim in reality. It is the stimulus of that event that seems to call forth the pains caused by the event. However, because silence is a dangerous zone for the trauma victim, attempts are often made by therapist to cause the victim to remember and narrate the event as a way of walking through the trauma towards healing. Also keeping quiet may lead to insanity or a pathological identity. The way to combat trauma therefore is to confront it and assert a trauma resistant identity. For the masses, their attempt to confront the perennial humiliations with the protest ignites more fire from the agents (SARS) sponsored by the very government that should protect them. This is also narrated in another dimension in the Excepts below.

Excerpt 1C

/…Spewing terror on the tight reins of the laws/a new virus unleashed deep down the streets/a deadly virus of our own design/ (“State armed robbers squad SARS”, lines 11–13, p. 6)

Excerpt 1D

/I thought “true talk” was a statement/until I tasted your baton on my head/and the butt of your rotten guns/Reshaped the shape of my jaw/ (“Talk true”, lines 1-4, p. 12)

In Excerpt 1 C culled from “State armed robbers squad SARS”, apart from connoting deliberate resemanticisation and criminalisation of SARS, the persona provides a paradoxical legitimatisation of the brutality tight reins of the law operating deadlier than the Coronavirus designed by the government that is creeping deep down the street to devour its victims. Excerpt 1D deepens the traumatic experience of the persona who represents the collective molestation of the youths. Talk true is police brutal sociolect that is mischievously adopted by SARS operatives during the humiliation of ‘suspects’ until they are forced to make confessional statements against themselves. These acts are perpetrated using baton and butt of guns to reshape the jaws of victims. Since reshaping one’s physiology is a process, the persona covertly describes the length of the process (in terms of time) that one has to endure pains in the hands of the brutes.

Another set of excerpts that denote police brutality through deliberate extortion that spells trauma on Nigerian youths are captured below.

Excerpt 1E

/… there is an offering box on the highway/, /where those on pedals are forced off their steering to surrender their tokens to the force of firearms/ (“Bermuda triangle”, lines 16–17, p. 6)

Excerpt 1F

/Our monies?/, /Gone!/, Accessories stolen!/Body bloodied, spirit broken/By our uniform robbers, paid to keep us safe/ (“Talk true”, lines 31–35, p. 12)

Excerpt 1G

/In the constitution of men in black uniform/Bribery is the price tag for innocence/ (“Our voice, our stand”, lines 12–13, p. 28)

Excerpt 1H

/…roadblocks to extort money from the masses/ (“The SARS we formed”, line 21, p. 29)

Excerpts 1E – H succinctly bemoan the craft of SARS who legalise extortion by mounting illegal roadblocks to extort money from the masses. Closely by the roadblock is often an offering box where motorists are coerced using guns to surrender their hard earned monies which end in the pockets of the uniform robbers (men in black uniform) who were ironically employed to ensure the safety of the citizens. The persona here notes that the police is a destroyer of the people they are called to protect. The poet achieves this by using antithetical sentences to reveal that the police system is actually working in contradiction to the purpose for which they were established. In this practice, bribery is the price tag for innocence and momentary ‘freedom’ from brutality in the perceptions of the extortionists. There is an offering box on the highway (where the extorted proceeds are preserved) in “Bermuda triangle” draws a sharp comparison with the practices in Nigerian Churches where worshippers are obligatorily expected to put in their ‘offerings’ as appreciation to the Christian God they serve during worship. The line connects the persona with religious practices of Nigerian Christians wrongly represented by SARS on the highways. The theme of trauma is further established through the persona in “Talk true”. The lines: Our monies? Gone! Accessories stolen! Body bloodied, spirit broken using rhetorical question, surprise, shock and lamentation cumulatively explain the forceful extortion and dispossession that leave unhealed wounds in the bodies and minds of the victims whose spirits are deeply broken. Though the victims were let go at this point, but not without a painful price: their monies stolen, belongings dispossessed and bodies mercilessly tortured which are enough to induce trauma.

Akinwotu (2020) captures a chronicle of unlawful detention of citizens particularly by the Nigerian Police. The author explains that this has been a long regular practice that caused severe psychological ill-health to the victims. The unfortunate aspects of this inhuman trend is that, while the victims are left with the trauma, the perpetrators often get away with the offence. The unlawful incarceration of Nigerians youths and the accompanying traumatic experiences are captured through the poetic personas in the Excerpts below.

Excerpt 1I

/forced into a black van to a small bleak godforsaken laterine/ (“Bermuda triangle”, lines 4–5, p. 6)

Excerpt 1J

/Now kept unsafe in an unknown cell/By people paid to keep us safe/ (“Talk true” lines 36–37, p. 12)

Excerpt 1K

/We were made denizens of shut cages/Only peeping through bars to see what tomorrow brings/ (“Spare us! Spare us!” lines 5–6, p. 13)

Excerpt 1L

/Arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention and torture/ (“The SARS we formed” line 23, p. 23)

In Excerpts 1I and 3 L, the personas narrate using language of pain, the trauma experienced by victims forced into police black vans, of SARS bid to enforce arbitrary arrest. The cells are also described in worst incarcerating conditions. For instance, small bleak godforsaken laterine, apart from depicting that the victims are being overcrowded in the small space, it further employs olfactory imagery to portray the suffocating stench from the unkempt and dirty room meant for convenience. Kept unsafe in an unknown cell, only peeping through bars to see what tomorrow brings and unlawful detention are traumatic narrations of lawlessness, uncertainty, horror, hopelessness and exemplification of perpetration of injustice as the victims (judging from prior experience) do not expect anything good, courteous or civil from their captors. Tomorrow is capable of worsening situations as the humiliating calculation of the police is unpredictable. Again, the persona’s lamentation that we were made denizens of shut cages painfully narrates the length (in terms of time) of unlawful incarceration. Shut cages connotes mental and physical confinement as aspects of trauma that destabilises the psyches of the victims. This restriction demobilises and restrains the captured youths from connecting with the enterprising society and space that offer them freedom and liberty which the Constitution supposedly guarantees.

Also, denizens, a telescoped construct from den and citizens symbolises dehumanisation. A den is the dwelling place for carnivorous animals and any occupants other than same species become prey devoured as food. To become citizens in dens, as the persona portrays the cells, sparks the understanding of readers to weigh the long dehumanisation of humanity in the hands of SARS. In “True talk”, captured in Excerpt 1 J, the persona brings to fore a painful irony by describing the crimes as being perpetrated by people paid to keep us safe. This paradoxical expression describes how SARS reverses its role of protecting citizens to the people’s torture and incarceration. The language of trauma is succinctly employed here to highlight the pains of brutality, torture, extortion and incarceration borne by the youths. The tenets of literary trauma theory and trauma discourse are evidently evoked here to show how language is weaved to narrate traumatic experiences of the youths. The language re-enacts memories of multitraumatic treatment induced by police brutality and extortion as recurrently processed in the minds of the traumatised youths.

4.2. Political exploitation and babel mechanism as societal traumas

There are several studies that consider Nigerian political leaders as exploitative, corrupt, and wasteful, and the reason for the perennial poverty in the nation. For instance, Bankole and Olaniyi (2014, p. 24) argue that the major reason for Nigeria’s “socio-economic development stagnation is leadership crisis and corruption with a government replete of clueless, parochial, uninspiring, attitudinal debauchery and selfish leaders.” This is corroborated by Awofeso and Odeyemi (2014) claim that Nigeria’s political leaders have cases of monumental diversion of public funds into their private pockets and have plunged the country into extreme poverty, economic dependence on other nations and technological backwardness. Given this existing ugly socio-political situation, the youths with the prior socio-cognitive knowledge see this as a core component of their reasons for the protest. Some of the Excerpts that portray the traumatic experience of Nigerians in the hands of the political class are written below.

Excerpt 2A

/I have a question for these guns/Whose side are you on?/Let me help you: The agbada with green padlock?/Who rob you while you rob us/Why don’t we both kill the robbery/The agbada steal your life and humanity/hence, the bitter wine of brutality you spill on us/While you let them set you on us like a Rottweiler on a hapless victims/(“Guns end dreams” lines 4–11, p. 20)

Excerpt 2B

/We’ve long been plagued by the anger of hunger/And blinded by their tirade of empty promises/We’ve watched our commonwealth badly decimated/By the die-hard gluttons upon the seat of power/…/We are battered youths of mad jungle/Standing against the antics of crazy leadership/We’re the voice of voiceless forsaken citizens/Demanding an end to the parasitism of power/(“Plagued by the anger of hunger” lines 13–20, p. 36)

In Excerpt 2 A, the persona metonymically interrogates the guns (SARS) on whose side they were: the agbada (corrupt political class) or the traumatised youths. This call to comradeship graduates to the persona asking the police to team up with them because they have a common enemy. The persona notes that part of what informed the police brutal mechanisms on the masses is because they too have been continually rubbed by the political leaders. And instead of confronting politicians who are responsible for the ineffectiveness and failure of security and other institutions, they are rather as wild and harmful as a Rottweiler (a very dangerous species of dog) on the hapless youths. The persona in Excerpt 2B has a deepened knowledge on the rotten Nigerian sociopolitical landscape. The people have been enduringly traumatised in anger and hunger stimulated by acculturised empty promises and decimation of the commonwealth by the die-hard gluttons and insatiable politicians. The battered youths are awaken to confront the political establishment and its endless parasitism that has devoured the future of the youths.

This collective resolve is a new norm and departure from what this study calls babel mechanism. This mechanism is the utilisation of the tripod of religion, tribalism and ethnicity in the exploitation equation of the Nigerian masses. The babel mechanism appeals to the masses’ linguistic and other affiliations in the disposition of sentiments involving corrupt politicians. In Nigeria, language is a strong unifying as well as divisive tool. Language is the embodiment of a people’s sentiments, values and other issues that are of interest to the identity and self-assertion of a people. The mechanism enables the merciless messiahs to appeal to the fake definitive and divisive tools of linguistic, religious, ethnic, tribal, sociocultural, regional and doctrinal connections that divide and define favorable sentiments of the impoverished citizens. The youths here, have developed a new consciousness that it is only in the divided state of the people that the oppressors can thrive. This makes #EndSARS protest a national phenomenon.

In this sad and tragic struggle, the unifying emblem was not geopolitical affiliation, tribal and ethnic affinity nor religious inclination. Rather, the Nigerian flag as an emblem of the nation state was the unifying force. The protesters were seen eating together, dancing together and protesting together spreading across the nation, whipping up sentiments from all major social groups within the country as well as diaspora and international supporters and sympathizers whose attention was drawn to the recklessness of Nigerian leaders. It therefore implies that the Nigerian leaders; the merciless messiahs of the masses have long been standing on this tripod to exploit them. Again, because of the pain of the trauma already in the society manifesting in poverty, deprivation, exploitation, rotten system and hopelessness, the #EndSARS becomes a forceful narrative that had the potential of impinging in the collective memory and consciousness of the society that suffers from the trauma induced by leadership failure. This is relayed by the most active, critical, proactive and pragmatic group in the society- the youths who spell the narrative of the political and cultural trauma. Cultural trauma is presented as trauma base on the cultural processes obtainable in the group for the description of what is traumatic and what is not. Eyerman et al. (2017, p. 13) posit that “cultural trauma is a discursive response to a tear in the social fabric, occurring when the foundations of established collective identity are shaken”. This holds because of the collective memory of the corrupt leadership by the Nigerian society as a traumatic narrative. Drawing on insights from literary trauma theory and trauma discourse, the poetic language is employed by the personas to narrate the youths’ collective protest against political exploitation and condemnation of the babel mechanism to chat a new cause of collective confrontation on the political establishment that impoverishes the people.

4.3. Heroic eulogisation of the dying and the dead as traumatic passage

In many cultures across the globe, heroes are social actors who have shown some rare courage, determination, bravery, selflessness and willingness to have taken risks to save others from certain danger (Sun et al., 2023). Uwen and Eyang (2023) add that the heroic efforts of the dead are often described to show bravery, courage, determination and patriotism while he or she was alive. Heroes are often aware of the danger associated with their daring action but are courageous enough to do so in order to change a narrative for the benefit of the living. At the peak of the #EndSARS protest, protesters were allegedly aimed and killed by government security operatives. Excerpts from poems that portray the dying and dead protesters as heroes of the time are shown below.

Excerpt 3A

/Though, the bodies might have been put to rest/The burning fires of the minds are forever ignited/(“How our lights were put off” lines 20–21, p. 11)

Excerpt 3B

/… Our comrades were prematurely shown the portal to eternity/Yet, they faced death confidently: shoot us, they dared/Of a truth, heroes, they were/We shall always immortalize your courage/Your sacrifices shall never be in vain/To all fallen heroes of Lekki massacre, we forever bow in reverence/ (“In Lekki, heroes prevailed…” lines 25–29, p. 16)

Excerpt 3C

/But this is our truth and cry/Bloods of martyrs, our heroes/Shall never spill in vain/To their memories ever alive/Shall our pledges be made/ (“To our heroes up” lines 9–13, p. 16)

Excerpt 3D

/Voices of the dying singing the anthem/Voices calling for “peace and unity”/”If they ask what happened here, tell them we died for her”/…/We mourn our unsung heroes/We will tell the generation yet unborn/They died that we may live/ (“Our motherland wept” lines 25–27, 36–38, p. 20)

Excerpt 3E

/For mama Ngozi’s son pumpkin died there/Alongside poor Adedoyin’s brilliant grandchild/With Musa the cobbler that bled to death/Just for protesting #EndSARS, #Endpolicebrutality/ (“The labour of our protesters shall not be in vain” lines 36–38, p. 20)

On the age bracket of the heroes, the persona in “In Lekki, heroes prevailed…” painfully announces that our comrades were prematurely shown the portal to eternity to show that the murdered population is young and enterprising. To communicate the rare courage of heroes, the persona further informs readers that the victims faced death confidently: shoot us, they dared/Of a truth, heroes, they were. Aware of the destructive and murderous power of live bullets, they dared the gun bearers to shoot to bring out the heroic spirits in them. Another heroic symbol displayed is that of nationhood and patriotism. The persona in “Our motherland wept” captures it this way/Voices of the dying singing the anthem/Voices calling for “peace and unity”/If they ask what happened here, tell them we died for her/. These lines show the re-energization of the dying who sang the national anthem even unto death by re-echoing a popular verse in it peace and unity for the living. In their dying states, they summoned courage and groaningly drop a message for the living, to inform others that they were murdered at the metaphoric Lekki tollgate which symbolizes death and horror. Another attribute of heroes is to die for the liberation of the living. This is also exemplified where same persona says tell them we died for her, they died that we may live. To establish who a hero is, the living have to objectively assess and accept the deeds of the dead as heroic. This is again shown in Excerpt 3B: Of a truth, heroes, they were, Excerpt 3 C: Bloods of martyrs, our heroes and Excerpt 3D: We mourn our unsung heroes. The lines reconfirm the collective labelling of the dying and dead as heroes. Beyond situating the deeds as heroic, the next and final stage is the strategies for commemoration and immortalisation of the heroes. The youthful personas traumatically express this across the poems. For instance, the burning fires of the minds are forever ignited in “How our lights were put off”, We shall always immortalize your courage/Your sacrifices shall never be in vain in “In Lekki, heroes prevailed…”, To their memories ever alive/Shall our pledges be made in “To our heroes up” and We will tell the generation yet unborn/They died that we may live in “Our motherland wept” are all traumatic dirges that eulogise the heroic deeds. The living, through the personas, have pledged to continually propagate the heroic exploits of the dead and pass on the message of their courage, resilience and sacrifices to the generation yet unborn. By so doing, the memories are retentive and form aspects of knowledge to be transmitted from generation to generation.

Again the persona in Excerpt 3E uniquely deploys traumatic language to express national tragedy and discourse, and the category of Nigerians that participated and paid the supreme price of death during the #EndSARS. Announcing the agonising death of mama Ngozi’s son, poor Adedoyin’s brilliant grandchild and Musa the cobbler in “The labour of our protesters shall not be in vain”, the persona identifies the dead participants as children of the less privileged and downtrodden Nigerians. For instance, the parents of the killed youths were among the poor masses: mama Ngozi whose son was killed sells pumpkin, Adedoyin whose grandchild was shot is poor and Musa who also lost his life was a mere cobbler. This memory evokes the state of the angry, hungry, oppressed and agitated youths who have long been traumatised through the exploitation of the political class. It is also nationalises the deaths across ethnolinguistic regions of Nigeria as revealed in the names.

Also, the poetic characters signal the poet’s deliberate presentation of, and call for unification of the multiethnic, multilingual and multicultural Nigeria. Ngozi, Adedoyin and Musa are naming identities of Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa which are the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria. This symbolises unity in the diversity of participants and their unification to fight for justice even in death. The language in Excerpts 3 A-E describes the attributes of agony and trauma for the dead and the living. The language is composed of memories that recall traumatic sites of youths who died in instalments from the hot bullets of security operatives ironically paid to secure the citizens. Language here utilises sociolect to perform the role of re-inventing thoughts of collective pains, cry and agitations of the exploited masses. Relating this to the principles of literary trauma theory and trauma discourse, the language of the personas captures the traumatic transition of the energetic youths from viable life to premature death, a phase that was filled with agony and pains. The language captures the horrible site and experience as scars of unhealed wounds in the memories of the living

4.4. Metaphorisation of October and darkness as trauma stimuli

Another categorisation of the poems are excerpts that dwell on the metaphorisation of time. Time here is metaphorically presented in two dimensions: the traumatic depiction of the month of October and the dark hours of the day. Ranging from year, month, week, day and hours, time is of essence and it represents different experiences in human existence. Time, described on the basis of what occurred in the past in this context, is used to evoke emotions that situate memories of past (traumatic) events. October and night (darkness) are used as symbols of trauma stimulus as captured in the Excerpts below.

Excerpt 4A

/In the month of independence, they murdered her youths!/In the month of her freedom, freedom died!/In the month of her liberation, they mocked liberty!/When she aged sixty, she was made barren!/ (In Lekki, heroes prevailed…” lines 19–22, p. 16)

Excerpt 4B

/Just now I discovered/That I was weeping for you/All through this hour/Your spirit witnessing the nightmare/In black October in falling tears/…/You continued to sing/You were on your knees/Bending over. Blood battered/All over you/ (“The night when doves cried”, lines 3–8, 15–18, p. 19)

Excerpt 4C

/October 20^th, 2020/A date to be remembered and scribed in all books of history/A day our leaders declared war against their youths/A day their blood washed at the Lekki toll gate, Lagos/A date never to be forgotten/ (“EndSARS, a dirge to the fallen heroes” lines 19–23, p. 24)

In Excerpt 4 A (culled from “In Lekki, heroes prevailed…”), the poet through the persona, most succinctly presents October as a dark irony of the month it ought to represent in the lives of Nigerians. Nigeria gained her independence in October 1, 1960 which connotes freedom from the political dictates of the British. Ironically, October 2020 murderously severed lives from youthful Nigerians. The poetic language traumatically presents the painful reversal of the expectations in October as the month of independence to the murder of youths, from freedom to the emasculation of it by the oppressive security forces, from liberation to public mockery of constitutional liberty, and the lamentation on the barrenness of Nigeria at 60 (counting from 1960 to 2020), a supposed age that is synonymous with fruitfulness, abundance, legacies and fulfilment. Nigeria ought to boom in fruitfulness in accordance with the expectations of the youth. Again, the poetic persona and narrator in the poem “The night when doves cried” bemoans the evils in October. The title is metaphoric because the peaceful dove crying at night portends danger for the youths and citizens. The persona’s words Just now I discovered/That I was weeping for you/All through this hour express the suddenness and spontaneity in discovering his weeping in hours as he witnesses the nightmarish murdering of his contemporaries in same struggle to liberate a nation caged by extortionists, exploiters and oppressors.

In the next line In black October in falling tears, the poet recalls the tragic memory that is associated with October. It is a black October because it is a traumatic symbol of murder, evil, death and helplessness. “EndSARS, a dirge to the fallen heroes” categorizes the metaphorisation of October as the month that defriends Nigerian youths and displaced them from their fatherland to forcefully commune with ancestors. The persona here is specific in mentioning October 20^th, 2020, as a historic date that would be remembered for declaration of war by the government and its agents against a young enterprising population that were protesting for justice. Describing 20^th October as the day blood washed at the Lekki tollgate recalls the dimension of organised crime against the youth whose blood runs like a sluggish stream at the Lekki tollgate. The pool of blood was a product of piercing live bullets of Nigerian security agents, it is the blood of pains, agony, destruction, hopelessness and death. The crimes were so sudden and horrible that the persona promises never to be forgotten. In all, the language of the personas objectively demonises October as a stimulus of trauma in the memories of the living who shared the murderous experience.

The other Excerpts below are drawn from poems that recall the evil deeds of the very night that the youths were massacred. The poems recount the stages in the masterminded massacre: the arrival of the men in uniform, the switching off of the lights to pave way for the evil deeds, the massacre and perseverance of the youths in the face of agonising death.

Excerpt 4D

/Quaked the hills of our merciless messiahs/Who slithered silently like snakes in a mission/And struck the unarmed bodies at Lekki with darkness/…/Darkness never ends life/ (“How our lights were put off” lines 7–9, 20, p.11)

Excerpt 4E

/They dimmed light and dashed hopes/And made them a red sea of flesh/ (“To our heroes up” lines 7–8, p. 17)

Excerpt 4F

/They were mowed down/after the cameras were/switched off from the eyes/of the world. Bullets pierced/the bodies of armless protesters/whose voice were chanting freedom/ (“Requiem for victims of Lekki massacre” lines 12–17, p. 36)

Excerpt 4G

/While the sky swallowed the stars/gunshots overshadowed their screams/(“Journey to hope” lines 9–10, p. 46)

Excerpt 4H

/This, clustered with brutality/We’d not wear the insignia of fright anymore/…/Our lives at the mercy of stray bullets/We would give in only in death/Look at the grave cries “spare us, spare us”/ (“Spare us! Spare us!” lines 17–18, 21–23, p. 13)

The persona in “How our Lights Were put off” in Excerpt 4D narrates the coming of the bullies. He notes that the merciless messiah (the Nigerian military) came unnoticed like venomous snakes in a mission, a mission which Excerpt H reveals: clustered with brutality. Other personas narrate the next stage thus: They dimmed light and dashed hopes (“To our heroes up”), after the cameras were/switched off from the eyes/of the world (“Requiem for victims of Lekki massacre”) and While the sky swallowed the stars (“Journey to hope”). These lines show the premeditated brutal mechanism of the security forces. They came to switch off the lights to pave way for darkness as the sky swallowed the stars (“Journey to hope”) in the dark hours of the day. Darkness here dashed hopes and concealed the intended evil from the eyes of the waiting world. This gives way to the execution of the mission which was maiming, brutality, killing and agony. Again, the language of trauma is deployed to capture it this way: And struck the unarmed bodies, And made them a red sea of flesh, Bullets pierced/the bodies of armless protesters and gunshots overshadowed their screams in Excerpts 4D, E, F and G. The lines succinctly situate the gravity of the massacre and the number of deaths described as a red sea of flesh of armless bodies of the youths.

The last and final stage is the one that foregrounds the theme of perseverance. For instance, the long gathering at Lekki tollgate described in Excerpt 4B All through this hour/…/You continued to sing/You were on your knees/Bending over and the extract from “Spare us! Spare us!”: We’d not wear the insignia of fright anymore/…/We would give in only in death altogether show daring perseverance in the face of death. Gathering at night alone takes a daring spirit, and the length of time shows revered perseverance amidst danger and the predictable consequences. On this, Egbunu and Umar (2018) posit that perseverance is the potent panacea in the face of traumatic, threatening and obstructive realities. A panacea collectively devised so to commune, to cope, to console and to dare for justice and hope which the persona in “How our lights were put off” describes as darkness never ends life. Darkness is not just the switching off of the street lights at the toll gate but the appeal to the ethnic, tribal and religious ideologies of the protesters which caused the perennial blindness to their collective communal vision for emancipation and justice. Again, the tenets of literary trauma theory and the concept of trauma discourse are overtly engaged through the deployment of language of trauma with elements of pains and agony while psychologically nurturing unhealed wounds. The lingering trauma arises from witnessing the horrible experiences that October and darkness represent in the memories of the youths.

5. Conclusion

Drawing on insights from literary trauma theory and the concept of trauma discourse, the study has demonstrated that contemporaneity of trauma studies has migrated beyond a recurrent psychological denominator in social discourse to the chronicling of unpleasant human experiences in literary works. Baki and Adedoyin’s End sars rhythms has not only introduced a new dimension of discourse on #EndSARS protest the literary (poetic) perspective, but dwelled on deploying the language of trauma to exhume the collective traumatic experience of the living and dead participants in the demonstration. This presents literature (poetry) as the mirror for the restatement of social and psychological happenings in the society where these traumatic events occur, and are interrogated. The poetic iterations serve as a self-assertive tool for the multitraumatic treatments of the masses by the government and its agent – SARS. The trauma inflicting vices include police brutality and extortion, political exploitation and leadership failure, the traumatic experience of the dead and living protesters, and the metaphorization of October and darkness as trauma evoking circumstances. The poets achieved this through appropriate deployment of linguistic choices which deepened the traumatic narrations of the agony, extortion, torture, unlawful detention, deprivation, extrajudicial killings executed by SARS and supervised by the government that ought to protect her citizens.

The language of trauma connotes condemnation, confrontation, mockery and expression of discontentment amidst excruciating pains, agony and deaths effected by SARS and its cronies. The language captures the recognition of how past horrible experiences situate unhealed wounds, and hunt the present with a projection of the future in the minds of the victims and survivors. The language acknowledges the past and define the evocation of trauma through occurrences that serve as stimuli of the traumatic events to the memory of the people. The traumatic language here is that of recurring pains expressed by exploited masses that breaks the geopolitical, regional, ethnic and religious chasm. The social networking and congregation of the hapless and armless youths against their oppressors without recourse to their diversities and backgrounds is emulative development, and it introduces a new normal where unity is seen as formidable force against a common enemy. The study is significant because it has defined, through the traumatic lens of language, the place of the October 2020 #EndSARS protest in literary discourse that would spark more investigations in the fictional standpoints.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

God’sgift Ogban Uwen

Edem Ekpo Ene teaches Literature courses at the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Calabar, Nigeria. His research interest include: African and diaspora poetry, and Identity studies. Mr Ene has publications in reputable journals; he is a member of several academic associations and has attended and presented papers in conferences.

Edem Ekpo Ene

Dr God’sgift Ogban Uwen is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Calabar, Nigeria. His research interest include: Sociolinguistics, Applied English Linguistics and Semiotics. He reviews for, and has published in several Scopus indexed journals including Journal of Language, Identity & Education, European Journal of Humour Research, Language Matters, International Journal of Multilingualism, Forum for Linguistics Studies, Journal of Black Studies, among others. He is an academic mentor and a resource person, a member of revered academic and professional associations, and has attended several local and international conferences.