Mrs. Alamu and the grammar of captivity

There are moments when a nation is not defined by the eloquence of its presidents, governors, legislators, or military commanders. There are moments when a nation is defined instead by a trembling voice emerging from a forest; a voice carried by a shaky mobile phone camera; a voice suspended precariously between hope and despair. The animating philosophy of this column has always been simple: words matter because they connect dots. They matter because they transform isolated events into recognizable patterns. They matter because they help us paint verses on the vast canvas of our shared humanity.

And so, when the abducted Vice Principal of Community Grammar School, Ahoro-Esinele, in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State, Mrs. Folawe Alamu, looked into a camera and pleaded:

“Please help us. I am calling on NUT to help us to talk to them. You don’t need force. All they have to do is negotiate with them and release us. Please we are begging you. The terrorists are already getting impatient. The teachers and the children are still under the sun and the rain while we are in the cold. We are begging you. Don’t let them waste our lives. Don’t forget us here…”

Many Nigerians heard a plea. Others heard desperation.

But beneath the surface of those words lies something deeper: the psychology of captivity speaking through the language of survival. And to understand that language, we must first connect the dots. One dot lies in Chibok. Another in Dapchi. Others lie scattered across Kankara, Kagara, Jangebe, Tegina, Kuriga, Papiri, Maga, Mussa, Ahoro-Esinele, and other countless communities, whose tragedies briefly occupied newspaper headlines before disappearing into the archives of national amnesia.

Different forests.

Different victims.

Different years.

Yet, the same fear.

The same tears.

The same helpless waiting.

And increasingly, the same grammar – vows, regrets, condoles, commiserates!

When connected, these dots reveal a disturbing portrait: a nation gradually becoming fluent in the language of captivity. The tragedy of Mrs. Alamu’s video is not merely that a school principal was speaking from a terrorist hideout. The deeper tragedy is that millions of Nigerians immediately understood the vocabulary she was using. We have heard it before.

“We are begging.”

“Please negotiate.”

“Do not forget us.”

“Answer them quickly.”

The words have become painfully familiar. That familiarity should trouble us. For language often reveals what statistics conceal. Psychologists have long argued that trauma leaves footprints in speech long before it appears in medical records. Human beings under extreme stress do not merely think differently; they speak differently. Their language becomes a map of their emotional condition. Listen carefully to Mrs. Alamu’s appeal. The repetition is striking. “Please help us.” “We are begging you.” “Negotiate with them.” “Don’t forget us.” These are not rhetorical devices crafted by a speechwriter. They are verbal fingerprints left behind by trauma.

The Psycholinguistic Trauma Framework teaches us that language often functions as a symptom. Under conditions of overwhelming fear, vocabulary narrows. Thoughts become repetitive. Sentences become circular. The mind keeps returning to the same threat because the threat dominates consciousness. This is not weakness. It is survival. Trauma compresses language into urgency. The brain becomes less interested in eloquence than in existence. Indeed, what many Nigerians heard as a plea for negotiation may actually reveal something psychologists call Trauma-Induced Cognitive Re-framing under Captivity. Under normal circumstances, citizens evaluate situations using principles, laws, and ideals. But captivity changes cognition. The mind reorganises itself around a single objective: survival.

Everything else becomes secondary.

Justice becomes secondary.

Politics becomes secondary.

National security doctrine becomes secondary.

Even personal dignity becomes secondary.

The hostage’s world shrinks until one question dominates every waking thought: How do I stay alive? From the perspective of government strategists, terrorists are criminals who must be confronted. From the perspective of a hostage sitting under rain and sun with frightened children, terrorists become immediate custodians of life and death. The difference is enormous.

The state thinks in terms of sovereignty.

The hostage thinks in terms of sunrise.

The state thinks in strategic calculations.

The hostage thinks in heartbeats.

This cognitive shift explains why Mrs. Alamu repeatedly pleaded against the use of force. Her words should not be interpreted as political commentary. They are better understood as psychological adaptation. She is speaking from within a survival frame. And therein lies another painful insight. The language of her appeal bears the unmistakable marks of what psychologists call Learned Helplessness. When individuals are repeatedly exposed to circumstances beyond their control, they gradually stop believing they can influence outcomes. They cease expecting rescue. They cease imagining alternatives. They adapt themselves psychologically to powerlessness. Notice the transition embedded in the principal’s plea.

She does not demand action.

She begs for mercy.

She does not invoke rights.

She appeals to compassion.

She does not speak as a citizen addressing a government.

She speaks as a hostage appealing to fate.

That shift in language is heartbreaking because it reveals a deeper injury than physical captivity.

Terrorists do not merely abduct people.

They abduct agency.

They abduct certainty.

They abduct confidence.

Most dangerously, they abduct trust.

Every successful school abduction teaches a lesson.

Not only to the victims.

Not only to the perpetrators.

But to society itself.

The lesson is simple and devastating:

You are on your own.

That lesson gradually corrodes the foundations of citizenship.

Parents learn it.

Teachers learn it.

Communities learn it.

Children learn it.

And once children begin learning helplessness from national experience, society begins mortgaging its future. This brings us to perhaps the most painful dimension of the Oyo tragedy: the children. Throughout her appeal, Mrs. Alamu repeatedly returns to them. “The teachers and the children are still under the sun and the rain.” At first glance, the statement appears descriptive. In reality, it is profoundly revealing. Children experience trauma differently from adults. Their sense of security is relational. They derive safety from trusted adults who appear capable of protecting them. Teachers often function as secondary attachment figures. They represent order, authority, predictability, and care. But what happens when children witness those figures terrified? What happens when the protector becomes visibly vulnerable?

Attachment Disruption Theory offers an answer. The child not only experiences fear. The child experiences the collapse of reassurance. The child learns that even the adults are afraid. And when the adults are afraid, the world itself becomes frightening. This is why school abductions are uniquely destructive. They attack more than educational institutions. They attack childhood itself. They transform classrooms into memories of terror. They convert school uniforms into symbols of vulnerability. They replace curiosity with hyper-vigilance.

The consequences often endure long after physical freedom is restored. Many abducted children eventually return home. But not all return psychologically. Some return carrying nightmares. Others return carrying distrust. Some become withdrawn. Others become aggressive. Many struggle academically. Some never return to school. The chains may leave the body while remaining attached to the mind. This is the invisible wound that rarely appears in official reports.

And yet it may be the most enduring consequence of all.

Perhaps the most haunting sentence in Mrs. Alamu’s appeal is this: “The terrorists are already getting impatient.” Those six words reveal an entire psychology of captivity. The captives are not merely enduring suffering. They are monitoring the emotional states of their abductors. They are studying moods. Interpreting gestures. Reading behavioural signals. Adjusting their own conduct accordingly.

This phenomenon has been widely documented in captivity studies. Survival often requires extraordinary sensitivity to the emotions of those who possess power over one’s life. The hostage learns to think through the eyes of the captor. Not out of agreement. Not out of loyalty. But out of necessity. Captivity becomes a cruel classroom. And fear becomes the teacher.

Meanwhile, the nation watches another viral video. Another desperate appeal. Another cycle of outrage. Another round of statements. Another debate. And then, too often, another forgetting. That forgetting may be our greatest collective failure. For every kidnapping leaves concentric circles of trauma. The victims are traumatized. Their families are traumatized. Their communities are traumatized. The nation itself becomes traumatized through repeated exposure to recurring horror.

Over time, insecurity ceases to shock. Abduction becomes normalized. The abnormal becomes ordinary. The extraordinary becomes routine. The unacceptable becomes tolerable. A society enters dangerous territory when it begins to accept as normal what should permanently disturb its conscience. This is why Mrs. Alamu’s voice deserves to be heard as more than the voice of a captive principal. It is the voice of a nation standing before a mirror. Inside that mirror we see frightened children. Exhausted teachers. Anxious parents. Distrustful communities. And a state struggling to convince its citizens that protection remains possible. The immediate priority, of course, remains the safe return of every abducted child and staff member. Nothing should distract from that urgency.

Yet, after rescue must come reckoning.

We must rescue our schools from fear.

Rescue our children from the invisible wounds of trauma.

Rescue our teachers from becoming sacrificial symbols of institutional fragility.

Rescue citizenship from the humiliating necessity of begging for survival.

Above all, we must rescue language itself from becoming accustomed to captivity.

For nations often reveal their deepest truths not through official statistics but through the words their citizens are compelled to utter in moments of crisis. Mrs. Alamu’s plea is therefore more than a hostage’s appeal. It is a linguistic monument to a society standing at a dangerous crossroads. Her words carry the psychological fingerprints of trauma, helplessness, attachment disruption, and adaptive survival. Yet they also carry a warning. A nation in which schoolchildren learn the vocabulary of abduction before the vocabulary of aspiration is a nation writing a dangerous chapter in its history. The forests of Oyo may eventually release their captives. But the deeper question is whether Nigeria can release itself from the recurring cycle that produces such pleas. That question lingers long after the viral video ends.

And perhaps that is where the enduring relevance of WordMatters resides. For words matter because they connect dots. Words matter because they preserve memory against forgetting. Words matter because they transform private pain into public conscience. Words matter because they help us paint verses on the canvas of humanity, where every trembling plea from a forest is not merely a cry for rescue but a summons to collective reflection. Until the day no Nigerian child must learn the grammar of captivity, the dots will continue to demand connection, and the canvas of our humanity will continue to await a kinder verse. Verse of compassion. Verse of responsibility. Verse of collective humanity.

 

.Agbedo, a professor of Linguistics, University of Nigeria Nsukka, Fellow of Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, is a public affairs analyst.