By: Adetimilehin Inioluwa Victor
A Trauma Map of Nigerian Oratory: Lagos is Loud, Warri is Wise, But We’re All Just Surviving
You’re on the phone in traffic. The person on the other end says, “Speak up, I can’t hear you!”
As you adjust your voice, a bus conductor yells toward your Bolt just as you alight: “Hess! Aunty in the pink jacket, better keep that phone, boys are not smiling!”
His voice is so loud, it startles you. Jars you. There’s a generator humming in the background. Your boss is waiting. Your mother is calling. Your friend teases:
“Omo butty, you no fit survive Lagos with this your bedroom voice o!” You shoot him a bombastic side-eye. You hiss. You say, “Alaye, comot for road-leave that thing jor.” In an accent too strange for the ruggedness of Lagos pidgin.
Unbeknownst to you, in your frustration, your tone has shifted. Your volume has risen. Your journey into becoming a spoken mix of Harvard-educated Lagos agbero has begun.
They say we’re loud. That we interrupt too much. That our English is crooked like our roads. That we joke in serious moments and spiritualize every crisis.
But what if we were trained by chaos? What if communication, for many Nigerians, was never really about dialogue, but dominance? We were raised in homes where “because I said so” was considered sufficient logic, where affection sometimes arrived dressed as threat, and where praise came with the weight of expectation.
You learn early that silence is not neutral. To speak is to be acknowledged. To raise your voice is to register your presence in a system that often pretends not to see you.
Repetition is not just a figure of speech; it is a necessity. You say it twice because you’re not sure the first time landed. You say it louder because your environment isn’t actively listening. Not the bus conductor. Not the teacher. Not the government. And so, over time, we evolved rhetorical styles that are essential for our survival.
Some of us speak in agbero grammar—that fierce, urgent tone honed by traffic, stress, and the need to sound bigger than your struggle. “Do you know who I am?” Others move with Warri wisdom, blunt sarcasm. These aren’t quirks or linguistic ineptitude.
They’re muscle memory. Coping mechanisms. Proof of adaptation. They are linguistic infrastructure adaptable to local everyday realities. Everyone knows that “posh” English won’t do you any good on Lagos mainland; it may even cost you money. “Oga mi, na Oshodi I dey go ooo, no be Osaka.” Because in Nigeria—like many other high-context languages—speaking is never just about what you say. It is about how you say it, why you say it, and what you’re not saying.
This essay is not an attack. It’s a map. A trauma map of our oratory. One that acknowledges that the Nigerian oratory flair is not just about grammar, but also about grief, grit, and survival.
I. The Crusader’s Certainty: I know what I’m saying
The Preacher doesn’t speak to be questioned. He speaks to anchor the room. In a country where systems are unpredictable and truths are often relative to power, the Crusader finds safety in certainty.
His tone is declarative. His phrases are structured like doctrine. Whether in church pulpits, WhatsApp broadcasts, or barbershop arguments, he communicates with the cadence of someone who cannot afford to be unsure. When several people look up to you for guidance and sustenance, you cannot “not be sure.”
This style is often misread as arrogance. But underneath the declarative tone is a survival instinct. Certainty becomes a form of self-preservation. When everything outside feels unstable, the mind finds peace in constructing internal absolutes. To doubt publicly is to risk being seen as weak or foolish.
So, the Crusader learns to sound convinced, even when he doubts or is unsure.
Psychologically, this archetype mirrors anxious attachment and authoritarian conditioning. Research shows that children raised in punitive environments, where questioning elders was dangerous, often grow into adults who replicate this logic in their own speech. Not because they love control, but because they fear the consequences of ambiguity.
He uses repetition for emphasis, scripture or idioms for legitimacy, and rhetorical questions to assert clarity and dominance. “Can’t you see what is happening? Are you blind? Is this not clear to you?”
II. The Jokester’s Wit: Na joke I dey joke
Where the Crusader avoids confrontation with authority through the illusion of clarity, the Jokester avoids it by pivoting to a mask of comic relief.
In a society where daily living feels like a sequence of small betrayals—no light, no fuel, no job security, no justice—the Jokester converts frustration into punchlines.
He doesn’t joke because things are funny. He jokes because things are too real. Too raw. Too painful to name, and thereby confront directly.
The Jokester is most visible in Warri, Onitsha, Mushin. But truthfully, he exists everywhere—laced with blistering social critique. His voice is playful but precise.
Behind every laugh is a blade. Behind every hyperbole is a truth we’re all too tired to weep over. “Na joke I dey joke o, but if e pain you, adjust your conscience.”
Psychologists call this humor as a defense mechanism, a way trauma survivors create emotional distance from their pain. But in Nigeria, it has cultural reinforcement. Proverbs, satire, and indirect speech are prized rhetorical forms. We were taught to “say it without saying it.” And the Jokester masters this art.
He’s often mistaken for unserious. But that’s a misreading. His mind is scanning constantly. He watches body language, tone shifts, power hierarchies, then flips tension into comedy before violence can erupt. In that way, the Jokester is not just a clown.
He’s a strategist. A mood regulator in a country that gives no one time to heal. His trauma isn’t loud. It’s buried under rhythm, laughter, and sharp delivery. But if you listen closely, you’ll hear a sadness tucked between the syllables.
III. The Over-Explainer’s Justification: Hear me out
The Over-Explainer builds a case—pre-emptively, defensively, exhaustively. He anticipates doubt before it’s spoken. Adds background before it’s requested.
Lists credentials, gives references, provides footnotes—even in casual conversation. Not because he loves clarity, but because he expects to be challenged. To be doubted. To be dismissed unless he leaves no loophole.
This persona often emerges from early experiences of not being believed—in the classroom, in the workplace, even at home. Especially at home. Where confidence was often confused with pride. Where children were interrupted mid-sentence and told, “Go and sit down—what do you even know?”
Over time, such environments produce a hyper-verbal instinct: speak more, explain deeper, over-clarify everything—just in case.
Research in trauma-informed communication suggests that survivors of chronic invalidation often develop anticipatory compliance. It’s a communication style aimed at staying ahead of judgment.
In Nigeria, where every successful person is tagged a fraud, this style is the equivalent of doing twice as much for the same reward or respect.
In professional spaces, this persona is common among young Nigerians in leadership, women in male-dominated industries, or anyone whose accent, tribe, or background marks them as “less than.” You hear it in their emails, their presentations, even casual speech: “Just to clarify, what I meant earlier was that if we consider the socio-political context as well as the economic frame…” Do not mistake this for clueless verbosity. It is the weapon of articulate self-defense.
IV. The Ghost’s Silence: What is not heard cannot be held
Not everyone fights to be heard. Some learn to survive by vanishing. The Ghost is the one who swallows thoughts before they form. The one who’s mastered the art of retreat—physically present, rhetorically absent. In meetings, they nod. In groups, they listen.
They’ve learned that saying things doesn’t guarantee safety. Or even dignity.
This archetype often forms in childhood homes where speech was policed harshly. Where “don’t talk back” was law.
Where mistakes were mocked or punished in public. Or in classrooms where accents were ridiculed. Where being wrong once meant being labeled forever.
And so, over time, silence becomes a strategy. Psychologists call this fawning or invisibility adaptation. It’s a trauma response where people minimize their presence to avoid harm. For many of us, respectability is often about knowing when not to speak. The Ghost blends in easily. They are praised for being “well-behaved,” even as their ideas die unspoken.
But here’s the truth: the Ghost often sees the most. They are the emotional barometers in the room. The ones who caught the shift in tone before the fight started. Who read between the words. Who knew the moment the atmosphere changed. They say nothing, because they’ve learnt that safety comes from being invisible.
V. The Commander’s Volume: Calm down first
The Commander declares. He asserts. He dominates the space—vocally, physically, rhetorically. In Nigeria, this style is often mistaken for confidence. But underneath the noise, the Commander’s communication is frequently a trauma script.
Volume becomes a proxy for power in a country where power is rarely evenly distributed.
Research into dominance communication shows that people from resource-scarce, competitive environments often rely on high-intensity speech—shouting, overlapping talk, assertive body language—to establish control.
This is especially true in informal economies where negotiation is performative, and survival depends on projection.
“Do you know who I am?” “You can’t talk to me like that!” “If I vex now…” These are not empty threats. They are preemptive performances, meant to intimidate, not to negotiate. To establish a pecking order before someone else does.
The Commander doesn’t trust calm. In his world, calm is weakness. Quiet people are either powerless or plotting. He needs his voice to be the loudest—because if it isn’t, he fears he’ll disappear beneath someone else’s noise.
VI. The Code-Switcher: Identity as Adaptation
The Code-Switcher is a chameleon. Fluent in multiple tongues—languages and personas. Their genius isn’t just in knowing what to say. It’s in knowing who to be, depending on the audience.
He knows which version of himself is safest in any given room—and which version is most likely to be heard, respected, or ignored.
This isn’t performance. It’s precision. A lifelong study in what each environment rewards.
In a single day, the Code-Switcher might speak Spree-Spree English during a boardroom presentation, shift to polished Yoruba when speaking to his mother on the phone, drop into streetwise Pidgin when arguing with a danfo driver, then wrap it all in scripture while closing a group prayer.
Code-switching in Nigeria is not a postcolonial luxury—it’s a working-class necessity. In a country where respect is often tied to how you sound (and who you sound like), many Nigerians learn early that their voice is not neutral.
Their tone can be mistaken for insolence. Their accent can trigger tribal bias. Their grammar can invite dismissal. And so they adapt—not to deceive, but to access.
Psychologists refer to this as situational identity modulation.
Sociolinguists refer to it as high-context language management, where what you say matters less than how, when, and to whom you say it. The Code-Switcher is a master of this terrain.
This kind of rhetorical movement isn’t flippant. It’s strategic choreography. In a boardroom, it signals competence. In traffic, it signals dominance. In church, it signals humility. In family settings, it signals respect.
Each switch is a story about what the speaker needs to protect—or project. But the cost is real. Code-switchers sometimes lose track of which voice is “theirs.” They may feel fraudulent even when they’re simply being adaptive.
They may fear that their truth sounds less “authentic” if it doesn’t arrive in the “right” register. Yet without this skill, many would not be heard at all.
Conclusion:
We often mistake how people speak for who they are. We hear the shouting and call it aggression. We hear the switching and call it forming.
But most of these styles aren’t just habits. They’re histories. We did not arrive at our tone by accident. We arrived there through repetition. Through watching what the world rewarded, what it ignored, what it punished.
Over time, we adapted. We adjusted. We became fluent in the kind of speech that kept us safe, or at least visible or invisible.
Many of us don’t even know we’re performing. We think our loudness is natural. Our restraint, our defensiveness, our need to explain everything from five angles. But these are more about survival than personality. Preference cohered by unpredictability, rather than trained by choice. And maybe—just maybe—a lot of Nigerians need therapy and don’t know it yet.
Not because they’re broken (but we are), but because they’ve spent so long performing strength that they forgot what softness sounds like.
Therapy won’t “fix” your speaking style. That’s not the point. What it offers is the space to ask why you speak the way you do. To notice which voice belongs to you, and which one you borrowed for survival.
