There is something deeply unsettling about the way language has become one of Nigeria’s most contested battlegrounds. For decades, violence has carved its marks on our national psyche, but in recent years, the more insidious weapon has not been the gun—it is discourse. And the latest episode in the tragic serial of mass abductions has once again laid bare how power, fear, insecurity and state fragility are negotiated not only through bullets and bargains, but through conversation, scripts, performances, and discursive capital. Before we even get to the tears and tremors of the abducted schoolgirls, it is important to understand the highly choreographed language that framed their ordeal.
Special to USAfrica Magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published online on the Internet.
Agbedo, Professor of Linguistics and Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, is a contributing analyst to USAfricaonline.com
Governments under pressure speak in carefully measured cadences, emphasizing “ongoing operations,” “strategic engagements,” “on top of the situation,” or “working with security agencies.” Violent non-state actors, on their part, engage in discursive gymnastics – mixing piety with menace, benevolence with brutality, and patronage with terror. They create narratives that reframe their atrocities as acts of necessity, justice, divine duty, or even mercy. The public, meanwhile, must sift through these competing narratives – governmental spin, insurgent propaganda, mediated reporting, and community whispers.
It is in this cacophony that the abductors of the recent victims staged what might be one of the most chilling episodes of discursive manipulation Nigeria has witnessed. The abductors’ conversation with the schoolgirls was not casual talk; it was a meticulously crafted discursive performance—a narrative designed to shape public perception and undermine state authority.
Let us revisit the grotesque theatre:
“Were you starved?” — “No.”
“Were you well looked after?” — “Yes.”
“Were you molested verbally or physically?” — “No.”
“How many helicopters hovered over you?” — “Many.”
“Were they able to rescue you by force?” — “No.”
“We decided to release you after peaceful dialogue…”
Each question functions like a leading question in a courtroom, but here, the judge, jury, and executioner are the same. The girls are forced participants in a narrative crafted to invalidate state capacity (“helicopters came but could not rescue you”); elevate the abductors’ moral standing (“we released you out of goodwill”); position the terrorists as rational actors (“we negotiated peacefully”); project state failure and terrorist success in managing the crisis. This is not conversation; it is ideological branding. And then came the final blow: ‘thank you’ as the saddest sentence in the saga. The forced chorus – “Thank you and thank the Almighty Allah” – is where language, psychology, and terror finally dissolve into one another. That “Thank you” is not gratitude. It is not respect. It is not relief.
It is survival.
Psychologists have long described the phenomenon where victims develop empathy, emotional bonding, or performative compliance toward their captors as Stockholm Syndrome. But in reality, it is rarely as romantic as popular culture portrays it. More often, it is simply the mind’s attempt to navigate terror, uncertainty, and helplessness. That “Thank you” is a coping mechanism, a survival strategy, a performance of submission to minimise harm, a response conditioned by fear, and, most tragically, a reflection of how deeply terror rewires the human instinct. Hearing children – frightened, displaced, brutalised by circumstance – recite gratitude to their abductors is perhaps the most devastating indictment of how low our collective security architecture has fallen. This is not just the psychology of captivity; it is the psychology of abandonment.
The children’s gratitude did not emerge merely because they were released, but because the institutions meant to secure their freedom appeared distant, ineffective, or absent. When helicopters hovered without rescue, when force remained symbolic rather than decisive, and when negotiations—however pragmatically justified—became the pathway to freedom, the captors were inadvertently positioned as arbiters of mercy. In such circumstances, the mind of the captive learns quickly where power resides. That the children eventually returned to their parents and guardians is a relief, but it is not closure. Release does not erase captivity. The psychological residue—the confusion between fear and relief, authority and violence, protection and threat—does not dissolve at the point of reunion. Long after physical freedom is restored, the emotional imprint may linger: in trust deficits, anxiety responses, disrupted notions of safety, and a distorted understanding of who truly holds power in society.
This is the deeper cost of Nigeria’s abduction crisis—one that cannot be negotiated away, euphemised through official language, or managed by impression control. When children learn, even briefly, that survival depends not on the state but on the goodwill of armed men, the damage extends beyond the individual to the moral foundations of the polity itself. In that single chorus of “Thank you,” the nation confronts a haunting mirror—not of children who were weak, but of a system that failed them.
Contrary to public posturing, the abductors insist that negotiations took place. Not rescue. Not coordinated intelligence. Not a tactical response. Negotiations. Dialogue. Appeasement. Successive Nigerian governments have denied involvement in negotiation with terrorists – often citing concerns about legitimising violent groups or encouraging future abductions. But the vocabulary of state action routinely betrays itself: “strategic engagement,” “backchannel communication,” “ceasefire talks,” “conditional release,” “community liaison,” “non-kinetic strategy.” These are euphemisms – discursive veils – masking what the abductors have now bluntly exposed. When terrorists become confident enough to publicly narrate the state’s own negotiation strategy, the monopoly of coercive discourse has shifted. And this is where things get even darker.
In conflict and insecurity literature, narratives are everything. Governments rely on a narrative of capacity, legitimacy, and authority. Terrorists rely on a narrative of grievance, competence, and inevitability. Communities rely on a narrative of survival, endurance, and sometimes resignation. But in this case, the terrorists have gone a step further. They have produced a counter-narrative designed to delegitimise the state, manufacture consent, and broadcast their power. By scripting the girls’ responses and releasing the footage, they have undermined the government’s claims that no negotiations were held; portrayed themselves as benevolent guardians rather than predators; framed the state as militarily impotent; cast themselves as rational actors seeking “peaceful dialogue;” and delivered a subtle message to future victims: “Compliance is your safest bet.” This is discursive warfare. Pure and simple.
This entire episode, taken as discourse, reveals several uncomfortable truths. First, the state’s linguistic credibility is eroding. When terrorists set the narrative, governments scramble behind them. Second, the value of discursive capital has shifted. Non-state actors are increasingly shaping national conversations. Third, the psychology of captivity is becoming normalised. Victims thanking abductors is a sign of a society losing its moral equilibrium. Fourth, negotiations – denied or admitted – have become a structural feature of Nigeria’s insecurity ecosystem. Finally, language has become a battlefield, and we are losing ground not through silence but through poorly managed speech.
A dispassionate, constructive, and critical reading of this tragedy points to one urgent truth. Nigeria’s security crisis is now as much discursive as it is operational. If the government wishes to reclaim authority, it must stop relying on performative statements and embrace transparent crisis communication; rebuild public trust through candour, not spin; invest in strategic communication units grounded in evidence-based narrative management; and most importantly, develop the capacity to prevent abductions, not just negotiate releases. The abductors’ scripted “interview” with the girls should worry every citizen—not only because of its cruelty, but because it shows that terrorists now understand something the state has forgotten: Narrative is power. And whoever controls the narrative controls perception. And whoever controls perception controls legitimacy. When traumatised children are compelled to thank their oppressors, it is not just a personal tragedy; it is a national symbol of how insecurity has inverted our moral universe.
The “Thank you” chorus will haunt us for a long time. It is the echo of a nation where children have learned to perform gratitude under duress; where terrorists now speak like diplomats; and where the government often sounds like it is negotiating not just with insurgents, but with the truth itself. Until Nigeria reclaims both the security terrain and the narrative terrain, the cycle will continue—abductions, denials, negotiations, releases, and choreographed videos of victims thanking their captors. It is a cruel script. But scripts can be rewritten. If only the state remembers that in the theatre of national security, silence is not always the problem. Sometimes, it is the wrong speech—spoken too late, too poorly, or too unconvincingly—that becomes the real danger. Nonetheless, with President Trump’s ‘guns-a-blazing’ military operation threat finally taking off in earnest, perhaps, the ‘thank you’ psychology of captivity will begin to lose much its steam and somehow, the political economy of school children abductions will ebb substantially, henceforth.
