Echoes of Trauma: When the Future is Interrupted – By Lillian Okenwa

By Lillian Okenwa

They left home chasing the promise of a bright future, only to be dragged into the dark nightmare of abduction. Now, instead of building new lives and lifelong memories, twenty young Nigerians are captive—leaving heartbroken families clinging to hope.
They were on their way to the next chapter of their lives.
University was behind them. Years of lectures, examinations, deadlines, projects and the long wait for graduation had finally come to an end. The NYSC call-up was another step forward, taking them beyond the familiar routines of student life and towards whatever came next.
There would have been plans, even if some were still uncertain. A first job. Further studies. A business idea. Professional training. Perhaps marriage. Perhaps simply the hope of earning enough to stand on their own feet.
Their parents had watched them come this far. They had paid school fees, worried over examinations, prayed through difficult seasons and celebrated graduation. Then came another farewell as their sons and daughters packed their bags and set out for their orientation camps.
There would be new faces, unfamiliar surroundings, perhaps a little nervousness and the excitement that comes with finding your way in a place you have never been before. There would be strangers who might become friends, stories to bring home, photographs to send to parents and the small adventures that often become part of remembering one’s youth.
Instead, the young Nigerians who set out from Ibadan found themselves surrounded by new faces in unfamiliar surroundings for a very different reason.
They were taken captive.
On October 1, 20 prospective corps members travelling to orientation camps in Abia and Akwa Ibom were abducted after two buses were attacked around Umunoha on the Owerri-Onitsha Road in Imo State.
They were supposed to arrive at camp.
There would have been registration, new friendships, the first days of the NYSC experience and, sooner or later, a phone call home. Parents would have asked whether they had arrived safely, whether they had eaten and how the journey had gone. The young people might have complained about the accommodation, laughed about something that happened on the way or begun adjusting to the unfamiliar routine.
Those are the ordinary details that make up a new beginning.
Instead, their families have been waiting for news of their safe return.
Reports have since emerged of ransom demands and alleged beatings of the captives. The ni reported ransom was initially put at N50 million per person before being reduced to N5 million each. Police have said they located the suspected kidnappers’ camp but have been unable to move in because of reports that the area may have been planted with explosives.
For those reading these reports from a distance, they are frightening details in another kidnapping story.
For a mother, it may be her child’s face she sees each time she reads another update.
For a father, it may be the last conversation before the journey.
For a sibling, it may be the unanswered call.
And somewhere in an unfamiliar place, 20 young people are waiting for this ordeal to end.
We often speak about trauma by looking backwards. We talk about the memory of what happened, the images that return without invitation, the nightmares, the fear, the difficulty sleeping and the sudden startle at a sound that would once have meant nothing.
But trauma can reach forward too.
It can interfere with the way a person imagines tomorrow.
Psychologists have written about a “foreshortened future”, a feeling that the road ahead has become uncertain or somehow less available. Research following traumatic experiences has found that some people struggle to imagine positive future events with the same clarity or confidence they once had.
Think about what that could mean for a young person who was taken captive on the very journey that was supposed to begin adult life.
These were not people whose lives had settled into a predictable routine. They were only beginning to discover what came next.
A degree does not tell a young graduate where life will take them. NYSC does not either. It simply opens another door.
They were going through that door when violence intervened.
If they return safely, as we fervently hope they will, the road ahead may not immediately feel the way it did before they left home. A journey may require more reassurance. A strange road may bring back memories. A bus may become more than a bus. A parent’s casual “When are you travelling?” may no longer sound like an ordinary question.
The world may look the same, while some things inside them have changed.
We should also be careful not to write the rest of their lives for them. They are not gone. They are not a memorial. They are young Nigerians who are still being held captive and whose families are still waiting for them to come home.
Their futures are still there.
For their families, however, the waiting has its own cruelty.
Psychologists use the term ambiguous loss to describe situations in which a loved one is physically absent but there is no certainty about what has happened to them. The International Committee of the Red Cross has used the concept in its work with families of missing people, who can find themselves caught between hope and fear because there has been no definite ending.
That kind of uncertainty can consume the ordinary rhythm of family life. People still have to eat and work, children still need attention, bills still arrive and conversations still have to be had, yet part of the family is somewhere else, inaccessible and uncertain.
A mother may keep checking her phone without even realising how often she is doing it. A father may find himself replaying the journey in his head, wondering what happened and whether anything could have been done differently. A sibling may listen more closely than usual whenever a vehicle stops outside the house.
Then the phone rings, and for a moment everything else can disappear.
These families are not grieving the death of their children. They are waiting for their children to return. That hope should remain at the centre of how we speak about them.
Yet uncertainty has a way of occupying the mind. It stretches an hour. It interrupts sleep. It makes silence feel heavier than it once did. It leaves people trying to carry on with ordinary responsibilities while their thoughts keep returning to someone they cannot reach.
And while the parents wait, the young people themselves are living through an experience that none of their years at university prepared them for.
They left home expecting an orientation camp. They had probably imagined new friends, new routines and the mild discomfort of adjusting to somewhere unfamiliar. Instead, the unfamiliarity became something frightening: people they did not know, a place they did not choose and circumstances they could not control.
The irony is difficult to ignore. They were travelling because life was opening up, and the very unfamiliarity that should have marked a new beginning has become part of a nightmare they never chose.
There is something particularly painful about that interruption because the years after university are already a time of uncertainty. Young adults are figuring out work, independence, relationships, money, identity and the kind of lives they want to build. Some know exactly where they are going; many do not. That uncertainty is normally part of growing up. It is the freedom to discover yourself, change your mind, make mistakes and try again.
It is not supposed to be the uncertainty of wondering whether you will survive the journey.
If these young people return home safely, there may be a period when ordinary decisions carry a weight they did not have before. Should I travel? Which route should I take? Is it safe to go alone? What time should I leave? Who should know where I am?
Their parents may have their own questions, perhaps even before their children have had the chance to ask themselves.
This is one of the less visible ways violence follows people home. A person can physically return from captivity while part of the mind remains caught in what happened. A road can remain a road and still feel dangerous. A familiar journey can carry an unfamiliar fear.
Recovery, when it comes, will therefore be more complicated than simply getting someone back to the place they call home. It may involve helping them feel safe in their own surroundings again, giving them room to process what happened and, over time, helping them recover the freedom to make plans without every plan being overshadowed by fear.
That cannot be rushed.
For now, however, there is something more immediate.
There are 20 young people whose families want them back. There are parents who need to hear their children’s voices and siblings waiting to see familiar faces again. There are lives that were moving forward before violence forced them to stop.
Let them come home.
Let these young people finish the journey they started. Let them complain about the heat at camp, call home for money, make new friends, take photographs, return with stories and eventually laugh about the ordinary frustrations of NYSC.
Let them have the ordinary future that was waiting for them before that road became a place of terror.
Because an ordinary future should never become a luxury simply because someone survived an extraordinary horror.
These young Nigerians were travelling towards their lives.
They are still entitled to those lives.
And tonight, while their families wait, perhaps the most important thing to say is also the simplest:
Let them come home.

■ A lawyer and equity advocate, Lillian is the publisher of Law & Society Magazine. She can be reached at [email protected], X: @OkenwaLillian.