Political economy of abductions and the matter of words in Nigeria

“Under this new architecture, any armed group or gun-wielding non-state actors operating outside state authority will be regarded as terrorists” – President Tinubu

In the contemporary study of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), discourse is not simply language in use; it is a strategic resource, a form of capital, mobilised by institutions to consolidate, reproduce, or contest power. Scholars such as Norman Fairclough, Teun van Dijk, Ruth Wodak, and Pierre Bourdieu have consistently argued that in political communication, discourse operates as a currency of legitimacy, an instrument through which social actors manage impressions, manufacture consent, and shape public consciousness.

Fairclough’s notion of “discourse as a social practice” highlights the embeddedness of language in institutional power. For him, discourse is not neutral; it is a means of organising meaning in ways that privilege particular interests. Governments deploy discourse to frame events, steer interpretations, and control the narrative space around crises. In highly volatile contexts such as Nigeria’s insecurity landscape, discourse becomes symbolic capital, the state’s most dependable resource when material capacity falters. Bourdieu deepens this insight by demonstrating that symbolic capital – prestige, legitimacy, credibility – is sustained through discursive performances that must appear authoritative even when substantive authority is weak. In this sense, official language becomes a form of political investment, yielding returns in the form of public trust or at least public acquiescence. Van Dijk’s emphasis on the cognitive dimension of discourse further illustrates how strategic lexical choices – ‘rescued’, ‘recovered’, ‘non-kinetic’, ‘escaped’, ‘neutralised’ – shape mental models in the public sphere. Such language does not merely describe events; it programmes perception. It constructs what citizens should understand as success, failure, threat, or progress. This is why governments often prioritise overt discursive coherence over operational coherence.

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In parallel, Erving Goffman’s theory of impression management, enunciated in his 1959 seminal book – The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life – reminds us that institutions, like individuals, engage in the continuous performance of credibility. In contemporary political communication scholarship, this has been extended by writers such as Ted Brader (political persuasion and emotional framing), Jonathan Charteris-Black (political myth, metaphor, and rhetoric), Ruth Wodak (politics of fear; political actors’ image repair strategies), William L. Benoit (Image Repair Theory), Amos Kiewe (political rhetoric and impression shaping), John B. Thompson (political scandal and mediated visibility), and Frank Esser & Jesper Strömbäck (mediatized politics and strategic communication). However, Goffman remains the foundational reference for “impression management” as a conceptual tool.

In the theatre of governance, language becomes the costume. Political actors design statements not as accounts of reality but as ‘presentations of self,’ calibrated to deflect blame, dilute panic, and reinforce the illusion of control. The performance intensifies when institutions face legitimacy crises. Words become defensive armour. The tendency toward spin, discursive gymnastics, and euphemistic reframing becomes even more pronounced in states where security vulnerabilities are chronic. Thus arises a predictable repertoire of phrases: non-kinetic approach, technical defeat, bandits, unknown gunmen, soft targets, collateral damage. These terms sanitise horror, diffuse responsibility, and mystify the mechanisms of failure.

When governments lean heavily on linguistic manoeuvres rather than strategic reforms, they unwittingly create space for counter-discourses, which may originate from victims, civic actors, or – alarmingly – from non-state armed groups. This results in a contest of narratives, a battle for discursive dominance. In such discursive struggles, institutional authority becomes fragile, negotiable, and sometimes openly ridiculed. It is within this theoretical frame that Nigeria’s most recent episodes of mass abductions must be situated. The official narratives around these kidnappings – and the counter-narratives supplied by the abductors themselves – constitute a live case study of how discourse functions as capital, how legitimacy is negotiated in real time, and how the grammar of power can expose, rather than conceal, the state’s vulnerabilities.

Nigeria’s worsening security crisis has acquired a disturbing familiarity, unfolding like a script repeatedly rehearsed yet never resolved. Within days, the abductions of 38 CAC worshippers in Ekuku, 24 schoolgirls in Maga, Kebbi State, and 315 pupils from Papiri Catholic School in Niger State took place with disturbing regularity and precision. These tragedies are symptoms of a deeper structural malaise: a state struggling to maintain its monopoly of legitimate force while non-state actors expand their operational and communicative power. As expected, the government responded with the language of impression management—rescued, recovered, released, escaped. This lexicon, steeped in institutional spin, mirrors the discursive practices described by Fairclough and van Dijk: rhetorical devices designed to project competence, mitigate public outrage, and maintain symbolic capital. But words, no matter how carefully chosen, cannot substitute for action. This time, however, the state’s preferred narrative collided with an unexpected counter-narrative – the recorded conversation between the Maga abductors and their schoolgirl captives. Calm, structured, and unsettlingly coherent, the dialogue reads like a deliberate effort to seize discursive authority. In the end, it unmasks the contradictions in official statements and exposes the political economy that sustains Nigeria’s kidnap-for-ransom industry.

Here is the full conversation as transcribed: Abductors: We had dialogue with the government before we agreed to release you. Today is what date? Girls: 25th November. Abductors: Were you starved of food? Girls: No. Abductors: Were you well-looked after? Girls: Yes. Abductors: Were you molested verbally or physically in any form? Girls: No. Abductors: How many helicopters did you see hovering over where you were kept? Girls: Many. Abductors: Were they able to rescue you by use of force? Girls: No. Abductors: So, you can see the government failed to use force to secure your release. We just decided to release you after “peaceful” dialogue between our leaders and the authorities. Insha Allah, today you are all going home to be with your parents. Girls: Thank you, and thank the Almighty Allah.

This dialogue is not just a conversation; it is a political text, a testimonial, an indictment, a confession, and a revelation. It is the abductors speaking with more coherence, more clarity, and tragically, more confidence than the government. When constructively deconstructed, the following five strands of one poignant fact emerge from the conversation:

(i) “We had dialogue with the government.” This is the most explosive line. It contradicts every official claim of “no negotiation with terrorists.” It points somewhat grimly to a seemingly willing participant in the kidnap economy, whose words flip the logic of its actions. When abductors speak of agreement, they speak of bargains—ransom arrangements, concessions, or logistical assurances. The economy of abductions, therefore, is not merely criminal. It is systemic, structured, and state-entangled.

(ii) “Were you starved? Were you molested? Were you abused?” These carefully curated questions show deliberate agenda-setting. The abductors seek to shape the narrative before the girls are handed over. They pre-empt post-release testimonies. They want to sanitize their operation and establish themselves as rational actors—a dangerous PR tactic used by insurgent groups globally. But behind this calmness lies the real power play: they know the government will not contradict them.

(iii) “How many helicopters did you see hovering?” “Were they able to rescue you?” This portion is the most humiliating for the state. It acknowledges state presence yet mocks state impotence. Helicopters hovered; yet, they did nothing. Aircraft circled but achieved nothing. The hardware was visible but the political will was invisible. The abductors used the state’s reluctant show of force as evidence of their superiority.

(iv) “Government failed to use force to secure your release… we decided to release you.” This is a direct slap in the face of the security architecture. It reduces the state to a spectator in its own territory. It positions terrorists as the ones making sovereign decisions, who to hold, when to release, and on what terms. It also implies that the state’s “non-kinetic” approach is less a strategy and more a surrender.

(v) The final “Thank you” chorus. This is the saddest detail. It is the psychology of captivity. But it is also the triumph of propaganda. The captors stage the gratitude. The girls comply. And in the end, terrorists achieve what government has failed to: believable messaging.

The entire thrust of this editorial is that words matter because they reveal power, expose truth, and betray complicity. The conversation reinforces every central point: Firs, government language is evasive; abductors’ language is explicit. Officials say: rescued, recovered, non-kinetic.

Abductors say: agreement, dialogue, government failed. One side speaks in spin. The other in confession. Second, the abductors’ narrative renders official statements false. The girls were not “rescued.” There was an “agreement.” Helicopters were seen but ineffective. Release was a decision of the captors, not an operation by the state. Third, the dialogue exposes the political economy behind abductions. When criminals can negotiate with government and mock its inability to use force, it means abductions are profitable, predictable, and protected by political interests. Fourth, it exposes the collapse of state authority. When non-state actors film evidence of their “negotiations” with the government, the symbolic monopoly of legitimate force has shifted. The state no longer shapes the narrative; it reacts to it. Taken together, this dialogue not only challenges the state’s narrative but also reveals the depth of Nigeria’s security crisis. It confirms what many fear: that terrorists are no longer merely actors in the security landscape; they are active participants in shaping the discourse around their own actions. And in some tragic instances, they speak with greater coherence than the institutions tasked with stopping them.

What does this mean for Nigeria? It means that the state’s reliance on discursive control – on spin rather than strategy – has reached its limits. It means that impression management cannot substitute for coherent security policy. It means that appeasement, whether labelled “non-kinetic” or disguised as “dialogue,” is unsustainable. And it means that when the government quibbles over verbs, terrorists continue to shape the nouns – lives, communities, destinies. Here we are, then, in a state where mass abductions have become normalized, where citizens navigate their daily lives with a quiet dread, and where the government’s strongest defence is often rhetorical rather than operational. Yet, this critique must be accompanied by a constructive imperative. Nigeria must move from discursive reaction to strategic reform. This explains why President Tinubu’s sweeping overhaul of Nigeria’s security architecture aimed at confronting violent crimes more aggressively is quite commendable. “Under this new architecture, any armed group or gun-wielding non-state actors operating outside state authority will be regarded as terrorists,” he said.

This by implication, requires strengthening intelligence architecture, restoring operational coherence across security agencies, rejecting ransom-based negotiation economies, and rebuilding public trust through transparency, not linguistic inflation. It demands that words regain their ethical weight, aligned with action rather than deployed as a shield against accountability. For in the end, the matter of words is not a stylistic concern. It is a substantive one. Insecurity thrives in silence, but it also flourishes in the dissonance between what is said and what is done. If Nigeria is to reclaim its security, it must first reclaim its discourse, away from spin, towards truth; away from appeasement, towards justice; away from discursive gymnastics, towards coherent, accountable governance. Hopefully, this is what the new national counterterrorism doctrine seeks to achieve. Perhaps then, the political economy of abductions can be effectively dismantled and the dignity of the Nigerian state restored.

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

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