EGU Francis Attah, Ph.D.,
Department of Languages and Communication, School of General
Studies,
Federal Polytechnic of Oil and Gas, Bonny, Rivers State,
Nigeria
And
EGU Enyo-Ojo Praise
The Registry, Federal Polytechnic of Oil and Gas, Bonny,
River State, Nigeria
And
AWORTU Christianah Charles
Department of Languages and Communication, School of General
Studies,
Federal Polytechnic of Oil and Gas, Bonny, Rivers State,
Nigeria
Corresponding Author’s email & phone No: francis.egu@fedpolybonny.edu.ng/08064640406
Abstract
This
paper presents a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the third stanza of Nigeria's
recently reinstated national anthem, "Nigeria, We Hail Thee." Following
its controversial reintroduction in 2024 under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's administration,
the anthem has become a focal point in contemporary national discourse. The aim
of this study is to deconstruct the ideological underpinnings of the third stanza
through systematic CDA. The methodology employs Fairclough's three-dimensional framework
alongside Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics to examine transitivity, modality,
and lexical choice. The findings reveal that the stanza constructs a model of citizenship
centred on collective labour and religious piety while framing the Nigerian nation
as a project requiring divine intervention. The study concludes that the anthem
functions as an ideological text for shaping national identity, reflecting both
historical aspirations and current political manoeuvres. This research contributes
to understanding how linguistic choices in national symbols can serve specific political
agendas.
Keywords:
Critical Discourse Analysis, National Anthem, Nigeria, Ideology, Nation-Building
Introduction
National
anthems represent more than ceremonial musical compositions; they function as discursive
instruments for identity formation and ideological conditioning. As Billig (1995)
observes, these symbolic texts operate as mechanisms for reproducing national consciousness
through what he terms "banal nationalism." The reinstatement of "Nigeria,
We Hail Thee" as Nigeria's official anthem in 2024 under President Bola Ahmed
Tinubu has reignited scholarly interest in the ideological functions of national
symbols within post-colonial African states.
The decision to revert to
the colonial-era anthem, replacing "Arise, O Compatriots" which had been
in use since 1978, has generated public debate and academic discourse. This political
move occurs within a complex socio-economic context characterised by economic challenges,
security concerns, and ongoing national identity negotiations. The Tinubu administration's
justification for this change emphasised returning to Nigeria's "foundational
values" and reconnecting with pre-civil war national identity (Adebanwi, 2024).
However, critical perspectives have interpreted this decision as a strategic deployment
of political nostalgia, potentially diverting attention from contemporary governance
challenges (ThisDay, 2024).
This paper focuses specifically
on the third stanza of the reinstated anthem, which possesses distinct linguistic
and ideological characteristics that merit detailed examination. Unlike the first
two stanzas that emphasise geographical unity and national praise, the third stanza
operates as a collective supplication, framing nation-building as a collaborative
project between citizens and divine authority. This characteristic makes it particularly
relevant for critical discourse analysis within Nigeria's current political climate.
Aim
and Objectives
The
aim of this study is to deconstruct the ideological foundations of the third stanza
of the reinstated Nigerian national anthem through systematic Critical Discourse
Analysis. This aim is operationalised through the following objectives, which have
been reconstructed to align directly with the research questions:
1. To identify and analyse
the specific linguistic strategies employed in the third stanza, including transitivity,
modality, and lexical choice.
2. To interpret how these
linguistic strategies discursively produce and reinforce ideologies of nationhood
and civic virtue.
3. To examine how the stanza's
reintroduction and linguistic composition reflect the political and ideological
priorities of the current government.
4. To analyse the potential
consequences of these discursive constructions for public understanding of citizenship
and national development in contemporary Nigeria.
Research Questions
This investigation is guided
by the following research questions:
1. What specific linguistic
strategies are employed in the third stanza of "Nigeria, We Hail Thee,"
and how do they contribute to its overall discursive effect?
2. How do these linguistic
strategies discursively produce and reinforce specific ideologies of nationhood
and civic virtue within the Nigerian context?
3. In what ways does the
stanza's reintroduction and its linguistic composition reflect the political and
ideological priorities of the current government?
4. What are the potential
consequences of these discursive constructions for public understanding of citizenship
and national development in contemporary Nigeria?
Literature
Review
National
anthems function as ideological state apparatuses, following Althusser's (1971)
conceptualisation. These symbolic texts interpellate individuals into national subjects,
fostering particular forms of national consciousness and civic identity. As Fyfe
(2021) demonstrates, anthems typically embody what Anderson (1983) termed "imagined
communities," creating discursive spaces where national unity and shared purpose
are reaffirmed. Research within political linguistics has shown that national anthems
employ specific linguistic strategies to naturalise particular worldviews and social
relations. According to Van Dijk (2015), these texts often manifest an "ideological
square," emphasising positive self-presentation.
In post-colonial African
states, national symbols become sites of political contestation and ideological
renegotiation. Mbete (2022) observes that these symbols carry the burden of reconciling
colonial heritage with contemporary national aspirations. Nigeria's relationship
with its national symbols has been particularly complex, reflecting its diverse
ethnic composition and colonial history. Previous research by Ojo (2020) on "Arise,
O Compatriots" highlighted its emphasis on collective labour and patriotic
duty, representing a post-civil war nation-building ideology that positioned national
development as a secular project requiring citizen commitment.
The decision to reinstate
"Nigeria, We Hail Thee" represents a departure from previous symbolic
practice. Adebanwi (2024) characterises this move as an exercise in "political
nostalgia," attempting to reconnect with an idealised pre-civil war national
identity. Critical responses in Nigerian media (Premium Times, 2024; ThisDay, 2024)
have questioned the timing and motivation behind this change, suggesting it might
function as what Edelman (1985) termed "political spectacle", diverting
public attention from socio-economic challenges. A gap exists in the scholarly literature
regarding systematic linguistic analysis of the anthem's third stanza within this
new political context. This study addresses this gap by providing an analysis of
the ideology embedded in the anthem at the heart of Nigeria's current national re-imagining.
Theoretical
Framework
This
study is grounded in Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA), which provides a framework for connecting textual features to broader
social practices (Fairclough, 1992). This framework is chosen because it explicitly
links micro-level linguistic choices to macro-level social structures, making it
particularly suitable for analysing how a national anthem participates in ideological
production and political legitimation. The three dimensions are:
1. Textual Analysis (Description):
Close linguistic examination of vocabulary, grammar, and textual structure.
2. Discursive Practice (Interpretation):
Analysis of text production, distribution, and consumption, including how the political
act of reinstatement shapes interpretation.
3. Social Practice (Explanation):
Situating the text within the broader socio-political context of Nigeria in 2024,
including economic conditions, political dynamics, and social challenges.
The linguistic analysis draws
on Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014),
which provides a specific metalanguage for describing how language encodes meaning.
The specific analytical categories employed are:
a. Transitivity: Examining
how actions, participants, and circumstances are represented, revealing who acts
upon whom.
b. Modality: Analysing degrees
of obligation, necessity, and possibility expressed through modal verbs and appeals.
c. Lexical Choice: Interpreting
the ideological significance of specific word selections and their connotations.
These
principles are applied to the third stanza to reveal how its grammar and lexicon
construct particular subject positions for Nigerian citizens and particular relationships
between the nation, its people, and divine authority.
Methodology
This
study employs a qualitative research design centred on Critical Discourse Analysis
as its primary methodological framework. CDA provides the analytical tools for investigating
how social power relations, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and
resisted through text and talk in specific social and political contexts (Van Dijk,
2015). This approach is appropriate for analysing the reinstated anthem as a political
and ideological text within the Tinubu administration's governance strategy.
The
primary data consist of the third stanza of "Nigeria, We Hail Thee":
O
God of all creation,
Grant this our one request,
Help us to build a nation
Where no man is oppressed,
And so with peace and plenty
Nigeria may be blessed.
The choice of the third stanza
over the first two stanzas requires justification. The first stanza celebrates Nigeria's
geographical features and national unity ("Nigeria, we hail thee"), while
the second stanza calls citizens to serve their fatherland. The third stanza, however,
operates as a supplication to divine authority, framing nation-building as contingent
on spiritual intervention. This stanza uniquely positions God as the primary addressee
and nation-building as a collaborative human-divine project. For a CDA concerned
with ideology, power, and legitimation, this stanza offers the richest material
because it reveals how religious discourse is mobilised within political text. Analysing
the third stanza therefore provides direct insight into how the anthem interpellates
citizens as pious subjects and constructs national destiny as dependent on supernatural
agency; features largely absent from the first two stanzas.
The analytical procedure
involved multiple close readings of the text, identifying linguistic features based
on the theoretical framework. These features were analysed for their ideological
potential, considering how they position citizens in relation to the state and divine
authority. The analysis then connected these textual features to the discursive
practice of reinstatement and the social practices of contemporary Nigerian politics,
including governance approaches and public discourse patterns.
Analysis
and Findings
This
section presents the study's findings through direct engagement with each research
question. The findings are organised into four sections, each corresponding to one
research question and one objective.
Finding
1: Linguistic Strategies in the Third Stanza (Addressing Research Question 1)
Analysis
of the third stanza reveals three strategic linguistic features that collectively
construct a discourse of supplication.
First,
the stanza employs a supplicatory framing through the vocative "O God of all
creation." This direct address positions the nation as a collective supplicant
rather than an autonomous political entity. The modal structure of "Grant this
our one request" utilises directive modality framed with deferential politeness.
The singular "one request" focuses this supplication, creating an impression
of urgent national priority.
Second, analysis of transitivity
reveals the core action through the material process "to build a nation."
This conceptualises state formation as an active, ongoing project rather than an
accomplished fact. The grammatical construction "Help us to build" creates
a collaborative model where human agency ("us") is explicitly paired with
divine assistance ("help"). This syntactic arrangement distributes agency
in a specific manner, making citizens the primary actors while God provides enabling
support.
Third, the stanza employs
ideologically loaded lexis. The goal of a nation "Where no man is oppressed"
uses a term that evokes historical and contemporary resonances in the Nigerian polity.
The desired outcomes of "peace and plenty" function as broad positive
appraisal categories, while the final relational process "may be blessed"
theologically frames prosperity as contingent on divine favour.
Finding
2: Ideologies of Nationhood and Civic Virtue (Addressing Research Question 2)
The
linguistic strategies produce and reinforce three ideologies of nationhood.
The first ideology is divine
dependency. By positioning God as the primary addressee, the stanza frames national
destiny as contingent upon spiritual intervention. This resonates with what Ellis
and Ter Haar (2004) identify as a characteristic feature of African political discourse,
where spiritual and political realms are frequently intertwined. The anthem thus
naturalises a worldview in which temporal power seeks divine sanction.
The second ideology is collaborative
nation-building with obscured accountability. The transitivity pattern "Help
us to build" assigns primary agentive responsibility for nation-building to
the citizenry, constructing a model of civic virtue centred on collective labour.
However, the systematic absence of governmental actors from the clause structure
obscures institutional accountability. This aligns with what Brown (2015) identifies
in neoliberal governance models: the discursive shift of responsibility for public
goods from the state to individuals and communities.
The third ideology is an
aspirational and moral state. The vision of a nation free from "oppression"
and endowed with "peace and plenty" establishes social justice and welfare
as fundamental aspirations. By linking these to the condition of being "blessed,"
the stanza frames the ideal state as a reflection of national virtue rather than
merely a political achievement. This creates what Van Dijk (2015) terms a positive
self-representation for the imagined community.
Finding
3: Reflection of Government Priorities (Addressing Research Question 3)
Viewed
through the dimension of discursive practice, the stanza's reintroduction reveals
strategic alignments with the Tinubu administration's agenda.
First, the anthem's ideology
of divine dependency provides a discursive framework that legitimises the administration's
observed use of religious rhetoric. It allows the government's political project
to be symbolically positioned within a divine-national mission, a strategy of legitimation
common where traditional political legitimacy is contested (Fyfe, 2021).
Second, the ideology of collaborative
nation-building aligns with governmental appeals for national unity and patience
amidst economic reforms. The stanza's emphasis on citizen agency ("us")
supports a narrative that shifts focus from state-centric delivery to collective
citizen responsibility. As critical media commentary notes (Premium Times, 2024),
this shift potentially manages public expectations during periods of austerity by
emphasising shared sacrifice rather than state accountability.
Third, the reinstatement
itself, coupled with the stanza's aspirational language, serves as an act of "political
nostalgia" (Adebanwi, 2024). It allows the administration to symbolically distance
itself from recent decades of perceived failure and align with an idealised pre-civil
war national identity, thereby attempting to forge a new historical narrative for
its governance.
Finding
4: Consequences for Citizenship and National Development (Addressing Research Question
4)
The
ideologies embedded in the anthem carry implications for public consciousness and
social practice.
First, the framing of national
development as being "blessed" risks spiritualising socio-political issues.
This can foster a public discourse that, as Ojo (2020) warns, attributes national
challenges to a collective lack of piety rather than to specific policy failures
or governance deficits. Such a framing may encourage quiescence over critical engagement
with governance performance.
Second, the model of citizenship
emphasising collective civic labour while omitting the state's role may naturalise
a neoliberal subject position. Citizens may internalise a narrative that places
the onus for development on their own shoulders, a phenomenon Brown (2015) links
to the "undoing of the demos," which can deflect scrutiny from institutional
performance and accountability.
Third, the contrast between
the anthem's ideals and contemporary realities creates discursive dissonance. While
this contrast can sustain hope, it also transforms the anthem into a potential site
of ideological struggle. It establishes a benchmark that, as Billig (1995) argues,
can fuel public disillusionment if the gap between the banal nationalism of daily
recitation and material experience becomes pronounced, undermining the cohesion
it is meant to inspire.
Discussion
The
findings demonstrate that the third stanza is not a neutral prayer but a discursive
construct that naturalises specific power relations and subject positions. The analysis
has shown that the anthem interpellates citizens as pious supplicants, assigns primary
nation-building responsibility to the populace while obscuring state accountability,
and establishes aspirational ideals that may function either as motivational benchmarks
or as sources of disillusionment.
The theoretical framework
has proven productive for this analysis. Fairclough's three-dimensional model enabled
connections between specific grammatical features (such as the transitivity pattern
"Help us to build") and broader social practices (such as the neoliberal
reallocation of responsibility from state to citizen). Halliday's analytical categories
provided the linguistic precision necessary to identify how ideology operates at
the clause level. The choice of the third stanza over the first two stanzas is validated
by the findings: the religious framing and supplicatory modality that are central
to this stanza would not have been observable in the other stanzas.
These findings have implications
for understanding how national symbols function in contemporary Nigeria. The anthem
change represents more than a symbolic gesture; it activates a specific discursive
framework that shapes how citizenship and nationhood are conceptualised. Policymakers,
educators, and citizens should recognise that symbolic actions carry ideological
weight that interacts with material governance.
Conclusion
This
study has demonstrated through systematic Critical Discourse Analysis that the third
stanza of Nigeria's reinstated national anthem is an ideological text. The analysis
yielded four main findings. First, the stanza employs supplicatory framing, specific
transitivity patterns, and ideologically loaded lexis to construct a discourse of
divine dependency. Second, these linguistic features produce ideologies of collaborative
but state-obscuring nation-building and an aspirational moral state. Third, the
anthem's reintroduction (the third stanza most especially) reflects the Tinubu administration's
priorities of religious legitimation, expectation management through shared sacrifice,
and political nostalgia. Fourth, these constructions carry consequences for public
understanding of citizenship, potentially spiritualising governance outcomes and
naturalising neoliberal subject positions. The anthem functions as both prayer and
political statement, naturalising social relations that have consequences for how
citizens understand their role and evaluate governmental performance.
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This article is published in ALQALAM: A Journal of Language and Literary Studies, FUGUS, Volume 1, Issue 2 - June 2026
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