An Original Investigation of Communication and Collective Memory in Post-Conflict Societies in Nigeria

Collective memory construction and maintenance through communication is a critical process in post-conflict societies, shaping how communities make sense of violence, assign responsibility, and construct shared futures. Nigeria's multiple post-conflict contexts, including post-civil-war Igbo memory, post-1966 crisis northern Nigerian memory, and post-Plateau conflict community memory, provide rich comparative sites for original theoretical and empirical investigation. This study developed an original theory of communication and collective memory in Nigerian post-conflict societies. A comparative case study methodology drawing on memory studies, trauma communication theory, and narrative analysis was employed across three post-conflict sites. At each site, an average of 24 in-depth interviews with community historians, oral tradition keepers, religious leaders, and civic communicators were conducted, supplemented by collection and analysis of 60 memory communication artefacts including oral histories, community publications, festival narratives, and public monuments. Cross-case comparative analysis identified both site-specific patterns and generalizable theoretical constructs. The original Communicative Memory Negotiation Model identifies four processes through which post-conflict communities construct communicable collective memory: selective narrative encoding (the community-negotiated decisions about which aspects of violent history are narrativised), inter-generational memory transmission communication (how memories are conveyed across generational gaps with varying fidelity and emotional salience), counter-memory maintenance (how minority or suppressed memories survive dominant community narratives), and official-popular memory divergence (tensions between state and community memory narratives). Original contributions include the Silence-as-Communication Memory Strategy construct, theorising how deliberate communicative avoidance of traumatic memory serves as an active collective memory management strategy in Nigerian post-conflict communities.

Keywords: collective memory, post-conflict communication, Nigeria, memory studies, trauma communication