Rhetorical Strategies and Appraisal Markers in Online Civic Engagement of the Yoruba Nation Secessionist Agitation on Nairaland

Abstract

This study examines rhetorical strategies and appraisal markers in the engagement of the Yoruba Nation (YN) secessionist agitation in Nairaland. Adopting the appraisal framework and Fairclough’s notions of intertextuality and interdiscursivity as a theoretical anchorage, analysis unveils historical and biblical allusion, proverbs and adages, rhetorical questions, code alternation and pidgin as prominent rhetorical practices and intertextual and interdiscursive resources that index cognitive positioning and ideological evaluations of the agitation and related social actors. While the anti-YN participants express negativity and ideological dissociation from the secessionist course, the pro-YN participants express positivity, solidarity and ideological alignment with the separatist agitation. As the secessionist movement generates concerns about ethnic synergy and national integration, participants take advantage of a heterogeneous virtual space to influence other online participants’ ideological positions on whether to sustain patriotic spirit to strive continually towards Nigeria’s nationhood or to join the vociferous call for the nation’s geo-ethnic dismemberment and ultimately secession.

Keywords

Appraisal framework ideological evaluation intertextuality and interdiscursivity online civic engagement rhetorical strategies Yoruba nation secessionist agitation

Introduction

Agitation for secession in Nigeria is a fallout of age-long ethnic politics and inter-tribal rivalries. During and shortly after colonial administration, political parties in Nigeria were founded alongside ethnic bias to facilitate political representation of ethnic groups at the centre (Ajala, 2009). There was the Action Group in the west, the Northern Peoples’ Congress in the north and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons in the east (Babatola, 2020). The Nigerian civil war of 1967, also known as the Biafran War, was the first and loudest cry for the secession of eastern Nigeria (Abada et al., 2020). The post-civil war epoch witnessed the emergence of some separatist groups who continued the quest for the actualisation of the Biafra mandate: Biafran Liberation Council, Biafra Foundation, the Biafra Actualisation Forum, the Coalition of Biafra Liberation Groups, Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and the recent Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) (Ajiboye, 2017; Onuoha, 2014).

The grievances that precipitated the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), as well as those that arose from the manner in which the conflict was waged and how post-conflict resettlement was executed, have not only engendered a sense of communal anguish and victimhood among the Igbo people but also contributed to the resuscitation and re-emergence of neo-Biafra separatist movements in Nigeria (Ibeanu et al., 2016). Following this, MASSOB, led by Ralph Uwazurike, was created in late 1999 as a response to the strong desire of minority Nigerians and Biafrans living abroad to reignite the secessionist desire for the Biafran nation (Nwanike, 2022). However, the combination of government repression and internal leadership problems significantly weakened MASSOB, leading to internal divisions within the organisation (Ezea, 2017). This opened up opportunities for the rise of other neo-Biafra movements, such as the Biafra Zionist Movement, Biafran Zionist Front, Biafra Independent Movement, Biafra Youth Congress, Biafra Revolutionary Force, Biafran Liberation Council and the currently proscribed IPOB (Nwangwu, 2021). As a renewed interest in the actualisation of the Biafran secessionist mandate, IPOB was formed in 2012 and led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu who operates a quasi-decentralised command and control structure (Chiluwa, 2018). In addition, the IPOB is predicated on the declared tenet of non-violence. When contrasted with conservative Igbo nationalists who advocate for dialogue and diplomacy in their quest for Igbo nationalism, the IPOB symbolises the militant faction of post-war Igbo nationalism (Nwangwu, 2023). The IPOB directly targeted the marginalised lower social class, primarily consisting of individuals of Igbo origin, using its digital communication platforms, with the Internet-based Radio Biafra being the most widely recognised (Aminu and Chiluwa, 2022). Amid the growing insecurity in Nigeria and the discourse of restructuring prevalent in Nigeria’s polity, the agitation for Oduduwa Republic as a separatist movement began to gain momentum in addition to the Biafran nation agitation in southeastern Nigeria.

The Yoruba nationalism and the quest for separatism

Significantly, the nationalistic movement among the Yoruba people started with the creation of Egbe Omo Oodua in 1949, a group established to sponsor a cultural renaissance among the Yoruba people (Babatola, 2020). However, amid the political tension of the first republic, Afenifere was founded in 1966 as a political group to serve the interest of the Yoruba ethnic group (Ajala, 2009). Following the annulment of the 1993 presidential election and the incarceration of M.K.O Abiola, the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) was founded in 1994 as a militant organisation saddled with safeguarding the socio-cultural, political and ethno-nationalistic interests of the Yoruba people (Nolte, 2007). At this period, speculations and assumptions were high that ethnic wars might ensue, and the Yoruba people would have to prepare for the worst. In 2000, Kayode Ogundamisi, the National Secretary of OPC, stated that the organisation’s activities aimed to achieve either an autonomous southwestern territory within a harmonious Nigeria or an independent Oduduwa Republic within a hostile Nigeria (Agboluaje, 2021; Aminu, 2022). At this period, the seed of the possibility of an independent Yoruba nation (YN), which was to be a federation of southwestern states, was sown.

The 21st-century Nigeria has been characterised by resistance movements of which the Biafra agitation, Arewa republic, and Yoruba nation (or Oduduwa republic) agitation feature (Ajiboye, 2017; Nduba et al., 2020). The Yoruba nation agitation resurged in 2020 in reaction to the manslaughter perpetrated by some Fulani herders within the Yoruba people’s territory, particularly the killing incidents in Igangan, Oyo State, Nigeria (Bamgbola, 2021; Nwangwu, 2021). The perceived notion that President Muhammdu Buhari’s administration has been overtly ethnocentric, nepotistic and highly unfair to Yoruba people enflamed the quest for secession and, ultimately, the actualisation of the Oduduwa Republic (Sunday et al., 2021). Banji Akintoye, a Nigerian professor of History and Sunday Adeyemo, alias Sunday Igboho, are known to be the major actors, leaders and vanguards at the frontline of the agitation. There was the emergence of self-determination groups such as Ilana Omo Oodua, Yoruba World Congress and Yoruba One Voice (Aminu and Chiluwa, 2022). In 2021, self-determination rallies were organised in strategic cities of the southwest states (Osisanwo and Akano, 2023). The Oduduwa nation secessionist campaign kickstarted as a public demonstration with the rally held on 1 October 2020. Other rallies were also held in the diaspora, and notable among them was the ‘One Million March’ staged on 14 September 2021, at the United Nations headquarters in New York (Aladekomo, 2021). The secessionist movement gained a digital presence and harnessed traditional and social media, especially with the creation of Omo Oduduwa Radio, Oduduwa Grand Alliance Radio and Oduduwa Voice Radio Station (Aminu and Chiluwa, 2022).

Significantly, the attention of scholars in different humanistic fields and social sciences has been drawn to the discourse of secession in Nigeria (Buhari, 2018; Sunday et al., 2021; Unya and Omaka, 2021), although the YN secessionist agitation has not enjoyed adequate linguistic and discursive engagement. Given its consequences on ethnic unity, national sovereignty and nationhood, the YN agitation is considered worthy of exploration from the perspective of critical linguistics to examine how rhetorical structures express and project polarised ideology. Against this backdrop, the objectives of this study are to: examine the prominent rhetorical strategies deployed by online participants to evaluate the YN agitation, explain how rhetorical strategies serve as appraisal markers that project ideological position, unveil how intertextuality and interdiscursivity are constructed, and discuss the implications of online participants’ discursive evaluations of the YN agitation.

Civic engagement of socio-political issues in Nigerian digital platforms

Civic engagement of social and political issues in Nigerian digital forums has generally enjoyed scholarship within humanities and social sciences (Abubakar, 2019; Adegbola and Gearhart, 2019; Erubami, 2020; Ifukor, 2010; Mustapha and Mustapha, 2017; Okorie et al., 2018; Onuzulike, 2021; Uzochukwu and Ekwugha, 2014). However, linguistic and discourse studies on civic engagement in Nigerian online platforms have not enjoyed sufficient exploration. Chiluwa’s (2011) study on discursive pragmatics and social interaction as a form of political participation in Nolitics concludes that new media technologies not only promote political participation and governance but show that the people are hungry to be involved in political issues and questions (such as corruption and political power abuse) that affect their lives. Ajiboye’s (2013) research on adventure into ideological discourse analysis of the functions of feedback comments on online reports of socio-political crises in Nigeria establishes that newsreaders shape the values, attitudes and ideological judgement of other online participants in crisis-related issues through discourse patterns and lexical choices. From the linguistic standpoint, Idehen and Taiwo (2016) examine sentence typologies and civic engagement in Nairaland forum. The study discovers that participants in asynchronous online discussion forums are conscious of the need to communicate through sentence forms typical in written communication despite the brevity and speed that characterise online communication.

In addition, Oludele (2016) explores multimodal and discursive features of Nigerian online political cartoons and discovers flaming, metaphor, irony and satire as discursive features manifested in texts and images. These online cartoons are a symbolic representation of Nigerian politics and governance. Osisanwo (2017) investigates stance and engagement in electronic media readers’ comments on former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration’s war against Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria. Commenters’ appeal to engagement elements such as directives, readers’ pronouns, and shared knowledge which is ideologically laden with ethnicity, religiosity and partisanship, condemned the anti-terrorism war, while some participants suggested solutions. Ellah and Ekoro (2018) investigate stance-taking and pragmatic strategies in newspaper editorials on herders and farmers crises in Nigeria. Findings reveal that editors deploy pragmatic strategies – blunt condemnation, indirect condemnation, appeals to emotion, visual representation, revelation of facts, evocation of antecedents, quoting authority and strategic use of numbers – to project epistemic, evaluative, affective and evidential stances on the farmers–herdsmen crisis.

With insights from computer-mediated discourse (CMD) analysis, Opeibi (2019) understudies the growing awareness of using Twitter for election campaigns and civic engagement between 2012 and 2015. The study unveils the socio-communicative features of Twitter as a campaign tool to mobilise support and woo voters. Oamen (2019) deploys orientations from critical discourse analysis and notions from sociolinguistics and CMD to investigate the discursive construction of identity in online Nigerian newspapers settler-indigene discourse. Findings reveal that commenters lean on polarisation and social group categorisation discursive strategies in constructing identities, which foregrounds the deteriorating condition of the farmers-herders crisis in Nigeria. While physical assaults, violent combats and manslaughter have always characterised the farmers–herdsmen conflict, on one hand, a further demonstration of hostility between the conflicting groups is, on the other hand, instantiated in online platforms. Ajiboye and Abioye (2019) demonstrate how citizens take stances in representing Biafra agitations in online forums. Findings show participants’ use of attitude, engagement and graduation strategies in achieving negative valence and positive self-representation of the agitations and its actors. Similarly, Ajiboye (2020) uncovers the tactful use of labelling, ethnocentricism, generalisation and historical allusions to achieve polarisation ideological effect and sustain the secessionist agenda.

Furthermore, Lamidi (2020) examines the cultural preservation of the Yoruba language within the realities of globalisation in a closed Facebook group, ‘Oodua Voice Social Group’. Adopting CMD analysis and the psychological components of the structure of cultural identity for analysis, the study discovers that Yoruba culture is preserved on Facebook through netiquettes, Yoruba traditional movies, folktales, proverbs, Yoruba history and poetry. Importantly, the study shares similarities with the present study in that both are concerned with the discourses around the Yoruba ethnic group. However, Lamidi (2020) is essentially about cultural progressiveness and preservation of the Yoruba cultural identity in a globalised world, unlike the secessionist and separatist mandate of the Yoruba nation agitation that this study prods. Aminu’s (2022) exploration of ideology in the Oduduwa secessionist Twitter narrative is more closely associated with this study. The study argues that Oduduwa secessionist agitators’ tweets efficiently communicate the players’ identities, demands and arguments, operations and objectives, and information updates to their supporters. In light of the above, the present study is informed by the inadequate linguistic, rhetorical and discourse studies on the YN agitation, and the need to see how netizens ideologically appraise the secessionist campaign through rhetorical strategies and principles of intertextuality and interdiscursivity.

Theoretical anchorage

The appraisal framework (AF) model was proposed by James Martin and Peter White in 2005, following earlier propositions where lexis, corpus, prosody, solidarity and multimodality are considered to mark evaluation and interpersonal meaning. It draws heavily on Halliday’s (1994) three metafunctions of language: ideational, interpersonal and textual. The AF is operationalised within the model of the interpersonal metafunction, given its inclination to dialogic communication. It is predicated on the evaluation and assessment of propositions and ideas in dialogic events in a bid to take a stance on phenomena. The appraisal theory is a mélange of grammar and discourse, and therefore, offers lexico-grammatical and discourse semantic perspectives to the critical study of stance, evaluation and positioning. White (2015) notes that the appraisal theory presents speakers and writers as expressing their feelings, preferences, and opinions with varying degrees of intensity and directness, as perceiving ideas as being more or less controversial or warranted, and as thus aligning or deviating from the value positions in an ongoing communicative context. The AF has three interacting domains: attitude, engagement, and graduation. The Attitude system is associated with positive or negative feelings, thoughts and emotional responses, character judgement of individuals, and evaluation of things or processes (Martin and White, 2005). When attitude is inscribed, it manifests in explicit lexical items but when it is invoked, it is only implied from the texts but not explicitly lexicalised (Martin and Rose, 2007). The Attitude semantic domain is realised in three subsystems: affect, judgement and appreciation. The second domain of the AF, Engagement, highlights that discourse does not exist in a vacuum by indicating intersubjective social actor positioning in texts either towards social practices beyond the text or the current discourse (Martin and White, 2005). Engagement is achieved through dialogic contraction or dialogic expansion. The last domain, graduation, relates to the gradability of phenomena. It is deployed to scale meanings on the basis of varying levels of speakers’ or writers’ intensity or commitment to a proposition, from low degree to high degree (Ajiboye, 2017). Graduation operates with parameters of focus (sharpen or soften) and force (intensify or mitigate).

The analytical tools of intertextuality and interdiscursivity derive from Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis. The notion of intertextuality holds that discursive structures do not have the monopoly of meaning. The social meaning of linguistic expressions cannot be divorced from specific social contexts, which translates to the argument that texts emerge from external texts. Intertextuality explains the linkage of texts to other texts. Intertextual analysis accounts for the explication of discursive constructs beyond textual forms and meaning (Ajibiye, 2019). Intertextuality was inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism which asserts that speakers frequently adapt and repeat what others have said in the past in various contexts of communication. It describes the relationship that results from the confluence of multiple textual ‘voices’ within the same discourse structure. Intertextuality can be created by directly referencing a subject, person, or event, via evocations or allusion, or by transferring essential ideas from one text to another (Reisigl and Wodak, 2008). However, interdiscursivity refers to the mixture of various discourses, styles, genres, voices, codes, and other language conventions within a text to express social or institutional meaning. Fairclough (1992) captures interdiscursivity as ‘how a discourse type is constituted through a combination of elements of orders of discourse’ (p. 118). Fairclough further contends that interdiscursivity transcends stylistic features, and is a reflection of social change orchestrated by social practice. Wang (2008) avers that intertextuality and interdiscursivity provide a perspective for both encoding and decoding texts as processes of engaging prior texts, writers, and conventions. Therefore, the principle of recontextualisation facilitates text producers’ attempts to engage in intertextual and interdiscursive practices. They operate within the frame of rhetoric and the wider context of discourse and are deployed to drive persuasive communicative intents.

Methodology

Data were sourced from Nairaland, one of Nigeria’s most popular digital communities with over two point nine (2.9) million members, excluding many unregistered users referred to as ‘guest’. Nairaland experiences a high level of discursive interactivity, as members engage over seven point one (7.1) million generated topics and threads, cutting across politics, religion, education, culture, economy, foreign affairs and other social issues.¹ Although, posts on Nairaland were crafted with multimodal resources, this study only picks interests in lexically constructed texts for discursive engagement. Out of over five thousand (5000) posts on the YN agitation generated between January 2021 and December 2021, two hundred (200) posts were culled manually without any modification to serve as data for this study. Then, fifteen (15) contextually relevant posts that resonate with this study’s objectives were purposively selected as representative textual samples. The timeframe was strategic in that it witnessed a spike in traditional and digital media engagement and reportage of the YN secessionist agitation. Also, in 2021, several rallies for the secessionist movement were held at home and in the diaspora. The representative textual samples were subjected to qualitative descriptive analysis based on the theoretical and analytical paradigms of the AF and Fairclough’s notions of intertextuality and interdiscursivity. For easy reference, the culled posts were tagged P1-P15, where P means Post.

Analysis and discussion

Functional linguists construe discourse as a social practice. In this study, rhetorical strategies are discovered to be prominent discourse structures that participants deploy in appraising the YN agitation. These rhetorical strategies are used as intertextual and interdiscursive resources in framing social actors and the YN agitation. This study identifies historical allusion, biblical allusion, proverbs and adages, rhetorical questions, and code alternation and pidgin in marking the appraisal resources of attitude, engagement and graduation and their subsystems. The appraisal resources project both positive and negative evaluations of the YN agitation.

Allusion as attitude and engagement marker

Allusion is a rhetorical resource that links the past with the present. Displacement is one of the characteristics of language that enables humans to talk about the past and the future. Through allusion, memorable incidents and occurrences achieve currency. Although sometimes brief in its deployment, allusion makes purposeful and symbolic references within a text to people, events, and places, to situate an argument within a specific context. Intertextuality is achieved through the tactical and significant use of allusion since meaning is driven in relation to previous texts. Interdiscursivity is also constructed by the interacting genres of religion, history and politics in P1–P4 below. The ideological evaluations of the YN agitation are actualised through historical and biblical allusion. This is not farfetched because this socio-political movement is shrouded by and embedded within history. Hence, allusion is categorised as marking engagement level of delicacy and can contract the dialogic space and shut down alternative stances; it can also expand the dialogic space and attribute to or entertain external voices and to strengthen the authorial stance. Hence, this is achieved through historic past and immediate references.

P1: No mind them, anyone who knows history very well will never want a sole Yoruba monogenous nation . . . it took the arrival of the British to end the so many wars among the Yorubas. The moment a Yoruba nation is declared, the egba already have plans over the Ijebus, and vice versa, the supremacy politics of Oyo will kick start naturally again . . . the ekitis, ondos Ijesha are naturally strong headed and will always view the rest of the Yorubas with suspicion . . . Lagos indigenes will lock up immediately (Nairaland, July 6, 2021)

In P1, the text producer argues that another intra-ethnic war among Yoruba is bound to ensue even if secession is accomplished. The poster alludes to the voice of history and digs into the Ekitiparapo War or Kiriji War of the pre-Nigeria epoch in the 19th century. This fierce war among the Yoruba kingdoms was prolonged due to unresolved differences and was eventually terminated by a peace treaty introduced by the British government. The inability of these Yoruba kingdoms to negotiate and forge reconciliatory relationships until the British intervention, informs the poster’s stance that the Yoruba nation actualisation will be the undoing of the Yoruba people. The poster believes age-long unresolved conflicts could still resurface and resurge. Hence, the poster foretells that Yorubas will plunge into another war even after the YN self-determination ambition comes to fruition. In relation to ideological evaluation, the poster who might not necessarily be of Yoruba descent or anti-Yoruba nation, criticises the Yoruba people through judgement of veracity for pretending to be peace-loving in the quest for a sovereign nation when historical records prove otherwise.

P2: As expected I knew some lame brains would come here to be apostles of cynicism. They’re on the right track. This was how Israel pushed for statehood after the Second World War in 1945. By 1947, Britain that had been administering Palestine bowed to the seemingly impossible resolution that recognized the state of Israel, and partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Arab States. Golda Meir, a woman like a man, had rallied Jews in the US for financial assistance to get arms for the about 700,000 Jews in Palestine, threatened by Arab onslaughts. On 14th May,1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed. This was just three years after the UNO was formed. So, who are those casting doubts on the ability of the Yoruba nation to get its own nation through the UN? The whole world doesn’t want a repeat of the Rwanda Genocide in 1994, where about a million were killed in 100 days. The UN were not acting in concert, when Hutsis were killing Tutsis. They were arguing about the semantics of the mayhem: is it genocide or not? There should be no Rwanda 2,0. (Nairaland, July 21, 2021)

Contrary to P1, P2 maintains a positive appraisal and evaluation of the YN actualisation. In an attempt to reorient and convince putative readers to share the same bias, the poster alludes to the successful declaration of the state of Israel in 1948 by the United Nations, despite the impeding factor of the age-long Israel-Palestinian crisis that characterised that moment. Significantly, the poster maintains that if Israel could be declared a sovereign state at such a moment of distress, then the declaration of Yoruba nation by the United Nations is not an impossibility. To buttress this positive stance, the poster expands the dialogic space and further alludes to the horror of the Rwanda genocide of 1994, and contends that should Yoruba nation actualisation result in war, the United Nations would not stand aloof and watch a repeat of the Rwanda genocide. This pro-Yoruba nation discourse participant rides on iconic historical occurrences to make a positive evaluative judgement of the YN agitation. Intertextuality is marked in the above interactions as both refer back to historic texts to vehiculate positive and negative ideological evaluations of the secessionist ambition.

P3: Buhari is not up to Pharaoh’s finger yet god delivers Israelites from his bondage, after speaking to Pharaoh in the only language he understood. One day, god will hear the cry of all those yearning for freedom in this good for nothing country and grant us freedom. (Nairaland, July 2, 2021)

P4: He who hath ear should hear what the spirit is telling the church

You are warned before you start writing to UN, EU, US etc to come to your rescue. We won’t organize pity party over anyone or attend when such is organized on your behalf. (Nairaland, July 2, 2021)

Furthermore, participants deploy biblical allusion in evaluating the social actors and events connected to the secessionist struggle. To index dialogic expansion, P3 entertains historic and biblical external voices and alludes to the historical emperor of Egypt, Pharaoh, and a biblical character whom God dealt a heavy blow for his refusal to release God’s chosen people and covenant nation, the Israelites. Although, the poster projects Buhari as an archetype of Pharaoh, yet Buhari is considered not as stubborn as Pharaoh. On this ground, the poster implies divine intervention in Nigeria’s situation. In essence, God will someday spring to the rescue of Nigerians, and orchestrate their ‘freedom’ when he would have spoken to Buhari the only ‘language’ (language of force and military action) Buhari understands. Recall that Nigeria’s president has always spoken the same ‘language’ to the IPOB agitators whom he proscribed a terrorist group (Ogbonna, 2017). The poster exploits allusion in positively appraising the YN agitation, and this intertextual resource seeks to mobilise the online community and to keep hope in the secessionist movement. In a rather contravening view, P4 speaks with the anti-Yoruba voice while leaning on biblical allusion. In an attempt to warn YN agitators against the devastating consequences of the political struggle, the biblical scripture, ‘He who hath ear should hear what the spirit is telling the church’ (P4) is alluded to. According to the Book of Revelations (chapter 2 verses 7, 11, 17, 29; Chapter 3 verses 6, 13, 22), Jesus assessed some churches and left them with some counsel, terminating each counsel to each church with the same expression. In the same vein, the text producer of P4 counsels YN agitators against taking kamikaze steps that would force them into writing prominent international bodies for rescue, should distressing measures be meted out to them for attempting the destruction of nationhood. Hence, the participant negatively appraises the YN agitation. This intertextual resource performs the communicative function of warning and dissociation from the secessionist call. The contravening voices are markers of interdiscursivity. In addition, interdiscursivity is indexed by the interacting relations of genres of religion and politics. The online participants needed to appeal to their religious senses for strategic communicative construct and to influence individual ideological evaluation and positioning.

Proverbs and adages as attitude and engagement markers

Proverbs are short sentences, usually of ancient origin, that express perceived truth and useful thoughts and are known by many people. They are primarily metaphorical, allegorical, and of formulaic language. Adages are old familiar sayings that express wisdom and propositions believed to be true by some people. Owing to the blurry line of demarcation that exists between proverbs and adages, they can be used interchangeably. Proverbs and adages are linguistic and communicative strategies that explain situations indirectly, with the expectation that hearers would decontextualise and recontextualise such expressions and ultimately make significant inferences. In some cases, they communicate additional meaning. They also function as intertextual and interdiscursive structures. Again, proverbs and adages can serve as engagement resources. They have elements of references, contextual connotations, cultural implications and pragmatic presuppositions. They can serve as external voices in dialogic texts to reinforce authorial stance and also to suppress alternative stance. Therefore, proverbs and adages are parts of the discourse practices and rhetorical structure participants engage to ideologically appraise the YN agitation.

P5: Anyone who really determined to lick honey inside a rock should be ready for a full labour work to break the rock open. If anyone among them believe that the flyweight protect will break Nigeria and create Oduduwa nation, that person must be day dreaming. (Nairaland, July 3, 2021)

P6: Yoruba has a saying ‘a i so wipe ki omode ma dete. To ba ti le da nu Igbo gbe’. Just leave him. Only the most foolish of our people will follow him and push him to the grave. What was the use of the arms he’s stockpiling in his house. Freedom fighters in the days. Armed robbers in the night and hired tugs when elections come (Nairaland, July 2, 2021)

P7: So, because of Tunibu’s selfish VI, Lekki empire he has refused to work with the rest of Yoruba leaders to fly the New flag of the Yoruba Nation. Tinubu should remember ‘Enikan o kin je ki ile fe’ ati wipe ‘enibaje gbi aaku gbi’. Come home Ashiwaju come home, don’t lose it all come home let save the future of the next generation. (Nairaland, March 19, 2021)

Proverbs and adages are resourceful for dialogic purposes. In P5, the proverbial statement, ‘Anyone who really determined to lick honey inside a rock should be ready for a full labour work to break the rock open’, expresses judgement of capacity and tenacity. The poster evaluates the activities and efforts of the YN agitators and observes they are bereft of shrewdness, thoroughness, vigorousness, meticulousness and resoluteness. In this light, a negative evaluation position is taken towards the YN agitation, as the participant expresses agitators are ‘daydreaming’. The adages in P6 and P7 are glossed in the Yoruba language. The adage in P6 ‘a i so wipe ki omode ma dete. To ba ti le da nu Igbo gbe’ literally and contextually translates to: ‘A child can be leprous only if he can dwell in the forest alone’. Again, this proverb is deployed by the anti-YN discourse participant as a warning to Sunday Igboho, one of the vanguard activists leading the movement. A warning is given when danger is sensed; therefore, the poster expresses affect of insecurity. The participant maintains that Igboho is incriminating himself with weaponry, and if prosecuted for unlawful stockpiling of ammunition, he could be jailed for a very long time. In addition, ‘forest’ also signifies exile, since many leaders of anti-government movements in Nigeria, such as Ojukwu, ended in exile. This presupposes that if Igboho does not back out from championing the secession of the Yoruba people, he is set to end it all in ‘exile’. Similarly, two adages are contained in P7. The message in the first, ‘Enikan o kin je ki ile fe’, roughly translates to ‘one does not “eat” benefits alone and expects to expand’. This proverb serves to expand the dialogic space and entertains the proverbial voice. It is a call to avoid selfishness and individualism as a lifestyle. In essence, a person who provides platform to others, invests in the growth and expansion of the circle. Through this adage, the participant admonishes Tinubu, one of the iconic figures in Nigerian politics, a Yoruba politician, the national leader of the All Progressive Congress and current presidential candidate of party, not to dissociate from the YN secessionist struggle but to seize the opportunity created by the agitation to ‘come home . . . and save the future of the next generation’. The poster warns against selfishness, and this obviously indexes negative judgement of propriety, a resource that criticises the actor and Nigerian politicians by extension, for selfish and individualistic tendencies. The second proverb ‘enibaje gbi aaku gbi’ roughly translates to ‘whoever involves in crime will die a criminal’. Functioning as an entertained voice of adage to entrench authorial proposition and stance, the adage also warns that whoever gets involved in all forms of criminality and unacceptable social practices will not escape its gory consequences. Again, the same Tinubu is cautioned against suffering such an ill fate. This stance also portrays the participant is a pro-Yoruba nation. On account of these explications, proverbs proved to be a vital appraisal marker, and participants deployed them in expressing their evaluative positioning towards the YN agitation. They also serve as intertextual and interdiscursive indexes in that they appeal to oral tradition aesthetics, deep cultural and philosophical thoughts, and African idealism and quintessence, of which participants are expected to have a shared socio-cultural knowledge.

Rhetorical questions as attitude and engagement markers

Rhetorical questions do not necessarily elicit answers. They are designed to make assertions, and voice affirmation or denial. Rhetorical questions are recognised in the AF as engagement resources. They could function at the level of dialogic contracting and proclaiming to mark external voice as concurring to authorial stance. Also, they could operate at the level of dialogic expanding to entertain external voices which might align or not align with the authorial stance. In the interactions below, rhetorical questions are tactically deployed to reinforce participants’ stances.

P8: How did Sunday Igboho become rich?

He is just a noise making, retired political thug who is being ‘pushed’ to front for some people. (Nairaland, July 2, 2021)

P9: Oh please stop this, are you enjoying this entity called Nigeria? This marriage is not working. Should we wait till there is ethnic clashes before we break the country? Be wise now. Stand up and fight for your children unborn (Nairaland, July 3, 2021).

Having represented him as a political thug and violence monger in P8, the poster raises a question that prods into the wealth of Igboho. The cognition of putative readers and other discourse participants is worked upon to probe the source of Igboho’s wealth. The poster leans on negative attitudinal judgement of veracity and judgement of propriety to criticise the ill-gotten wealth of Igboho. Significantly, the rhetorical question is to affirm Igboho as one who builds wealth with violence. This is achieved through dialogic proclaiming, such that the external voice is expected to concur with the authorial voice. On account of this instance of concurring, the dialogic space is contracted and the authorial stance is upheld. This then suggests a negative ideological stance of the participant towards the YN agitation and agitators. In the same vein, P9 houses two rhetorical questions. The first, ‘are you enjoying this entity called Nigeria?’ expresses negative attitude of affect of dissatisfaction, while the second, ‘Should we wait till there is ethnic clashes before we break the country?’ also express negative attitude of affect of insecurity. The participant launches these questions to justify, in a quite rational way, the purpose of the agitation. These expository questions categorise the poster as pro-Yoruba. The poster’s use of ‘Oh please stop this’ (P9) indexes intersubjectivity and negative appreciation of reaction to earlier comments which must have demeaned the self-determination struggle. In essence, the propositions of some participants on secession trigger and shape the author’s evaluative stance. More so, these rhetorical questions are mainly to expand the dialogic space and entertain reactions from other interactants and implied addressees whose stance could have aligned with the poster’s evaluative positioning.

P10: Must you defy the state governor?

What is the rally about?

Is it all yorubas that want secession?

Do you want to force everyone to accept secession . . . no government or police will authorize a rally when the aim is secession, cos it’s divisive, and can lead to chaos. We must be calm, let us enjoy peace in Lagos, Lagos is not your problem, go to Abuja. (Nairaland, July 2, 2021)

The quadruple-barrelled question in P10 is an expression of negative appreciation of composition, which signifies condemnation of the YN movement’s execution modalities, strategies and conduction. The poster observes that not all Yoruba people stand by secession; there are some others who are keen on sustaining Nigeria’s nationhood, shunning violence and aggravating inter-ethnic tension. The poster shows disapproval and diametrical opposition to the self-determination movement. Therefore, the participant maintains a negative appraisal of the secessionist agitation and condemns its divisive and chaotic dimensions. These leading questions are strategically arranged in a suitable cognitive sequence to suppress any external voices that negate the authorial stance. In lieu of this, rhetorical questions are resourceful in projecting participants’ ideological evaluation of the YN agitation.

Code alternation and pidgin as attitude markers

Code alternation is a phenomenon in communication that is occasioned by bilingual and multilingual linguistic landscapes. It could take the form of codeswitching (inter-sentential code alternation) and codemixing (intra-sentential code alternation). Although frequent in verbal interactions, some interactants decide to mix or switch codes intentionally in text creation, to veil meaning from some participants who do not understand the poster’s language and also to communicate directly, for certain reasons, to those who have shared linguistic background of the language. In this light, participants resort to code alternation to hide their stance from certain linguistic out-groups, and project them to linguistic in-group. In most cases, codes are alternated due to the inability of the speaker/writer to express some culturally contextual meaning, say, in English. It is believed that some deeply-rooted cultural interpretations are lost in the process of translation, so the posters avoid such alteration and adulteration of culturally contextual meaning. The excerpts below exemplify this submission.

P11: So, because of Tunibu’s selfish VI, Lekki empire he has refused to work with the rest of Yoruba leaders to fly the New flag of the Yoruba Nation. Tinubu should remember ‘Enikan o kin je ki ilu fe’ ati wipe ‘enibaje gbi aaku gbi’. Come home Ashiwaju, come home, don’t lose it all come home let save the future of the next generation. (Nairaland March 19, 2021).

The text producer of P11 opts to codeswitch because of the perceived notion that Tinubu is a Yoruba elder who should respond positively to cautioning proverbs, and for the desire to communicate in deep cultural inclinations. Also, Yoruba proverbs are not easily translatable in English, thus, the poster decides to use them in their crass form. The adage warns against individualism, self-aggrandisement, and abandonment of his origin. The call for Tinubu’s homecoming signals the participant’s affiliation with the pro-Yoruba nation and the actor’s implied dissociation. Also, in P12, the poster accommodates a switch of codes. The Yoruba gloss, ‘ibi ma ba won tidile won’, is a curse rained on every antagonist of the YN agitation. The use of curse words and aggressive statements mark affect of displeasure. The poster expresses anger and rage towards the thwarters of the YN struggle. Acknowledging that the use of flaming is usually face-threatening and inconvenient, the poster restricts the participants that can fully understand the authorial stance. The curse words are probably rendered in Yoruba language primarily to convey the curse in its weighty cultural context.

P12: U get their time, any evil wishers on Yorubas, ibi ma ba won tidile won, they want Yoruba to fight their battles, over 5 yrs running, the online country is yet to b materialized (Nairaland, March 19, 2021)

P13: Ise o ka yin la ra, yoruba nation ko, yaruba nonsense ni (Nairaland, July 21, 2021)

Furthermore, P13 deploys code alternation to communicate indifferent disposition towards the YN agitation. Therefore, while the comment shows no appreciation for the agitation, the commenter could be considered an anti-Yoruba participant. The gloss ‘Ise o ka yin la ra’ (you are not engrossed in your work) means that other interactants debating and engaging the YN agitation until a long thread is formed, are either idle or not encumbered by their jobs. This evaluative attitude indexes negative appreciation of valuation which is an expression of worthlessness and insignificance of the YN agitation. While this might be insulting to participants who have channelled their energy into civic engagement and discussion of a pressing issue of national and global consequence, the poster chooses to alternate code to restrict participants who might want to align with the authorial stance or defer from it. Also, the poster could have switched codes to reduce the backlash and flaming that could be harshly directed towards the author. In lieu of this, code alternation is vital to the projection and veiling of the authorial stance.

P14: Yoruba’s no be today we know una

Una sabi rake when action come na una go silent like grave yard. Though i like una ideal but keep in mind Nigeria is one

The republic of Yoruba Nigeria or Nigeria republic of Yoruba can’t be possible inside Nigeria

I pity una chai (Nairaland, March 23, 2021)

P15: Assuming dem dey carry the work for head like this face BH, bandits and Fulani herdsmen problem for nor dey Nigeria. (Nairaland, July 2, 2021)

Pidgin is used colloquially and informally. Given the practical role of pidgin as a language of wider communication in Nigeria, participants in virtual communities do not hold back in expressing themselves in this hybridised code, especially because most of these virtual platforms accommodate netizens from all parts of Nigeria. Aside from this, pidgin can be associated with youthfulness, and youths are active members of these virtual communities. P14 exploits judgement of capacity to describe the perceived cowardice of the Yoruba people. As a result of this show of perceived cowardice, ‘the Yoruba republic can’t be possible in Nigeria’. Although this is considered a biased position, the negative attitudinal evaluation evinces the participant’s stance against the YN agitation. Finally, the pidgin expression in P15 casts aspersion on the Nigerian police for defying democratic rule and unlawfully harassing, arresting and detaining peaceful protesters. The poster claims the Nigerian Police channel their ‘show of force’ in the wrong direction, hence, the stagnation of the country. The participant contends that Boko Haram, bandits, Fulani herdsmen, and other threat-constituting agents or agencies should have been entertained with the parade – ‘show of force’, to expunge them from Nigerian soil. Therefore, the participant criticises the Nigerian Police through judgement of capacity. The above shows that pidgin stands out as a very prominent discourse practice in evaluating the YN agitation. The rhetorical practice of code alternation and pidgin is a manifestation of interdiscursivity. This strategy vehiculates both stylistic and ideological meanings. Alternating between codes allows for full expression of thoughts and ideas especially because the platform does not restrict the participants to formal communication.

Conclusion

This study examines rhetorical strategies and appraisal markers in online engagement of the Yoruba nation secessionist agitation in Nairaland. The study adopts the theoretical insights of Martin and White’s AF and Fairclough’s principles of intertextuality and interdiscursivity as ancillary theoretical model. Findings show the deployment of historical allusion, biblical allusion, proverbs and adages, rhetorical questions, and code alternation and pidgin as discursive and rhetorical strategies deployed by online interactants in positively and negatively evaluating the YN secessionist agitation. The study further reveals how appraisal resources of attitude, engagement, graduation and their subsystems are indexed in the identified rhetorical strategies, and how these appraisal resources mark ideological evaluation and positioning.

In acknowledgement of discourse as a social practice, the study illustrates how online participants exploit rhetorical strategies in constructing opinions and ideas within the intertextual and interdiscursive frames. Also, the various representations of social actors involved in the YN secessionist movement are showcased in light of appraisal markers and the principles of intertextuality and interdiscursivity, as these principles express the socio-communicative intents of netizens and their polarised ideological assessment of the YN agitation. On one hand, the anti-Yoruba nation discourse participants employ these rhetorical strategies to express dissociation, negativity and ideological disalignment from the YN agitation, and to discourage other participants from supporting the secession course. On the other hand, the pro-Yoruba nation participants deploy rhetorical strategies to express positivity, association, and ideological alignment with the YN agitation. They also lean on these discursive resources to solidarise with other pro-Yoruba nation participants, and to mobilise the online community on the need to sustain the agitation for an independent and sovereign Yoruba nation.

The discourse of secession is such that generates concerns about ethnic security, intercultural integration and national sovereignty. In response to this, this study ‘measures the impulse’ and assesses the dispositions of the online community – the ‘Nairalanders’ – on the rising secessionist movements in Nigeria from the standpoints of critical linguistics. As Ajiboye (2017) and Chiluwa (2018) argue, the discourse of secession and resistance is divisive and as such generates geo-ethnic and religious bias, political sentiments, varying ideological positions and identity constructions among netizens who consider their beliefs and evaluations of a social issue sacrosanct. As the YN secessionist movement generates concerns about ethnic synergy and national integration, participants take advantage of a heterogeneous virtual space to influence other online participants’ ideological positions on whether to sustain patriotic spirit to strive continually for Nigeria’s nationhood or to join the vociferous call for the nation’s geo-ethnic dismemberment and ultimately secession. This study has, therefore, demonstrated how linguistic and cognitive constructs function as rhetorical and discursive practices to index netizens’ ideological positioning and also construct intertextuality and interdiscursivity in the online interactive engagement of the Yoruba nation secessionist agitation in Nigeria.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Richard Damilare Akano

Notes

Author biography

Richard Damilare Akano is a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the Department of English and Literary Studies, Osun State University, Nigeria, and also a postgraduate student at the Department of English, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is interested in English corpus linguistics, digital and visual communication, resistance discourse, sociolinguistics and applied linguistics.

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