By
David Ugwu
Why keeping quiet in Nigeria exacts a price — for victims, for democracy, for a nation’s soul.
Silence can be peace. It can be prudence. It can be a refuge. But in Nigeria — where the wounds of history are fresh, where power meets impunity with a shrug, where voices are sometimes met with prison or bullets — silence often comes at a terrible cost. This is not an abstract moral claim. It is a ledger of lives lost, rights eroded, corruption entrenched and opportunities wasted. It is also, paradoxically, a form of speech: silence as a political tactic, a mourning, a rebuke. To understand what we lose when we do not speak up, we must take stock of the places where silence has mattered most — and why people so often choose it.
When silence becomes complicity: historical scars
Nigeria’s modern history is punctuated by moments when silence — official, public or private — amplified injustice.
Take the Ogoni Nine, activists who campaigned against environmental destruction in the Niger Delta and the role of oil companies in local degradation. In 1995 eight Ogoni activists and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa were tried by a military government in proceedings widely condemned as politically motivated; they were executed. For decades their deaths were met with muted official acknowledgment and delayed accountability; only recently have discussions about their fate and posthumous pardons resurfaced, reopening debates about responsibility and corporate complicity. The Ogoni case shows how institutional silence — the refusal to investigate, to prosecute, to admit wrongdoing — can become a long shadow over national life.
Earlier, the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election — widely seen as a free and fair victory for Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (M.K.O.) Abiola — produced a silence of another order: the silencing of electoral will. The military’s decision to annul the vote, and the subsequent detention of Abiola, was followed by crackdowns on dissent and a freeze of public debate. That enforced quiet destroyed lives and delayed democratic development; the cost showed itself in years of repression and a deep mistrust in political institutions.
And in 2014, when Boko Haram abducted more than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok, the international hashtag #BringBackOurGirls broke the silence online and forced attention. Yet the episode also exposed the limits of attention: after an initial global outcry, sustained action faltered and many girls remained missing. The partial silence that followed — of institutions, of follow-through — translated into lives left in limbo.
These episodes are not isolated tragedies; they are symptoms of a broader pattern. Silence — whether imposed, chosen, or a mixture of both — can enable wrongdoing to calcify into the status quo.
The most visible recent price: silence in the face of violence
The year 2020’s EndSARS movement showed how silence can turn into a demand for truth — and how the refusal to tell that truth can cost lives. When unarmed young Nigerians took to the streets to protest police brutality, their gatherings were orderly, their chants audible and their camera phones relentless. Yet when soldiers opened fire at Lekki Toll Gate on October 20, 2020, the official responses that followed were evasive: denials, changing accounts, delayed investigations. That institutional silence — the refusal to accept responsibility and to investigate transparently — deepened the crisis of trust and inflicted moral injury on a generation. Amnesty International and other organisations compiled timelines and reports that disputed official narratives and insisted on accountability. The lesson was ugly but simple: when authority refuses to speak plainly and accept scrutiny, the human cost is immediate and long-term.
Why people keep silent: fear, culture, survival and calculation
If silence can be so costly, why do so many Nigerians — from ordinary citizens to leaders — choose it?
Fear is the plainest answer. Under military regimes and in pockets of current insecurity, speaking out can bring arrest, violence or worse. Families weigh the risk of losing a breadwinner against the moral imperative to protest. Journalists and activists operate in a precarious environment; threats and legal harassment are effective silencers.
But fear is not the whole story. Culture and social norms play a role. Respect for elders, deference to authority, and a long history of negotiating safety through discretion mean that silence can be a social lubricant. In many communities, saying nothing avoids shame, avoids escalation, preserves relationships and allows private remedies to be sought.
Economic calculation also factors in. Patronage networks make speaking up costly: jobs, contracts or access to services can hinge on staying on the right side of power. In a system where survival often depends on networks and favors, quiet becomes rational.
Finally, misinformation and fatigue breed silence. When issues become too complex or the news too bleak, people withdraw rather than engage. Hashtag activism can create the illusion of action — and the quiet that follows the hashtag’s trending period can be misread as resolution. The result is a cycle of transient outrage and persistent injustice.
The individual and communal costs of silence
What do we pay when we do not speak?
For victims and their families, silence is often the difference between recognition and oblivion. Uninvestigated killings, disappearances and environmental harms leave wounds without closure. Economically, silence permits corruption to flourish: if whistleblowers are ignored and auditors stifled, mismanagement becomes systemic, stealing revenues that could pay for hospitals, schools and roads.
Socially, prolonged silence erodes trust. Citizens who see crimes unpunished and wrongs unacknowledged lose faith in institutions, retreating into cynicism or vigilantism. Politically, silence allows anti-democratic impulses to consolidate: rigged elections, repressive laws and concentrated power are easier to sustain when dissent is muted.
Psychologically, the cost is also real. A society that normalises silence around injustice breeds a culture of learned helplessness; people start to believe they lack agency. That resignation, in turn, trains new generations to accept a lowered baseline of rights.
Silence as protest: making quiet speak
Silence is not always the same as submission. Across history, silence has been used deliberately, artfully, as protest.
The idea of the silent march or vigil — bodies present but mouths closed, candles lit in the dark — carries its own moral force. Silence in that context is a way to spotlight absence, to dramatize loss. A silent crowd can be more accusing than a thousand slogans; it hands the moral vantage to victims and forces observers to listen.
Scholars who study the law and protest note that silence can be transformative: legal constraints, surveillance and repression sometimes make words dangerous but make the strategic withdrawal of speech potent. By refusing to engage on the state’s terms, protesters can expose contradictions in authority and create new spaces for moral argument. In short, silence can be a weapon of moral clarity rather than a sign of surrender.
In Nigeria, silent remembrance — through vigils for victims of insecurity, moments of silence for those killed in protests, and quiet acts of resistance by communities suffering environmental degradation — has functioned as both grief and indictment.
When silence is policy: institutional avoidance and the politics of not-saying
There is a difference between private silence and institutional silence. When governments, corporations, or powerful institutions choose not to speak, the consequences are often structural. Non-disclosure, delayed inquiry, or the erasure of inconvenient records become techniques for preserving power.
Consider how official narratives are managed after episodes of violence or corruption: the first impulse is often to control the story — to deny, to delay, to obfuscate. That strategy may succeed in the short term, but it produces cumulative damage: international standing declines, investor confidence is dented, and a nation’s civic fabric frays.
The Ogoni saga exemplifies this. For years, official indifference and private corporate denials left communities to bear environmental and social costs while accountability stalled. The eventual reexaminations and apologies — years later — cannot fully repair the damage of decades of silence.
Breaking the silence: practical steps and the role of civil society
If silence is costly, what are the remedies? There are no magical fixes, but several practical steps can lower the barriers to speaking out and make silence less dangerous.
- Legal protection for whistleblowers and witnesses. Robust legal frameworks and effective enforcement can reduce fear of retaliation and encourage truth-telling.
- Independent investigations and transparency. Prompt, impartial inquiries into allegations (from police abuse to environmental harm) communicate that wrongdoing will not be tolerated. Transparency — not just statements, but released evidence and open files — breaks the power of official silences.
- Support networks for journalists and activists. Financial, legal and digital-security support can make dissent sustainable. International solidarity and press freedom protections play a role here.
- Civic education and community organizing. When citizens know their rights and have institutions to turn to, the social cost of speaking declines. Civic institutions that amplify local voices help convert private grievances into collective action.
- Cultural reframing. We must challenge the norms that equate silence with dignity in contexts where speaking up is morally necessary. Public narratives that celebrate courage and truth-telling can shift expectations.
Civil society, religious institutions, professional associations and the media all have roles. They can provide safe spaces, amplify marginalized voices, and hold powerful actors to account. Technology helps, too — but it is not a substitute for organized, sustained pressure.
A final reckoning: the moral arithmetic of silence
Silence is sometimes about survival, sometimes about strategy, sometimes about convenience. For a nation like Nigeria — with its mixture of riches and fragility, of grandeur and grievance — the moments when silence has been chosen or enforced have altered the course of public life.
The cost of silence is not only measurable in headlines or courtrooms; it is recorded in the slower losses: eroded institutions, polluted rivers, stalled justice, and a civic imagination narrowed by fear. Yet silence can also be a form of protest, and when deployed intentionally it can unmask power more effectively than noise.
The open question is political and moral: will Nigeria build the institutions and cultures that make truth-telling safe and effective? Or will the next generation inherit a ledger of harms accumulated in the quiet? If the past teaches us anything, it is that silence left unchallenged calcifies into custom. And when custom becomes law, the price becomes dearer — for democracy, for prosperity, and for the dignity of every citizen.
We must learn to listen — to the absent, the silenced, and the quiet protesters who choose to bear witness in silence. Only then can we begin to count the true cost of what we did not say — and to repair it.
NZE DAVID N. UGWU IS A MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT
