12: TRAUMA, MEDIA REPRESSION, RESISTANCE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SURVIVAL UNDER MILITARY DICTATORSHIP IN CHRIS ANYANWU’S THE DAYS OF TERROR

Authoritarian power operates not only through physical violence and political repression but also through the control of information, memory, and public narratives. Chris Anyanwu’s The Days of Terror provides a significant literary account of political imprisonment and media repression during Nigeria’s military dictatorship. This study examines how the novel represents trauma, memory, psychological resistance, and journalism within the context of authoritarian rule. The study adopts a qualitative interpretive methodology, using close textual analysis and historical contextualization of the novel. It is anchored in trauma and memory theory, particularly approaches that understand trauma, testimony, and recollection as interconnected processes through which experiences of violence are represented and reconstructed. The study finds that Anyanwu presents political imprisonment as both physical and psychological violence, with solitary confinement, deprivation, surveillance, intimidation, and dehumanising conditions employed to undermine prisoners’ sense of agency. It further finds that the military regime’s repression of journalists reflects its attempt to control information, silence dissent, and preserve its political legitimacy. Journalism consequently emerges as a form of resistance through which suppressed realities are documented and authoritarian narratives challenged. The study also demonstrates that memory and autobiographical narration enable the formerly imprisoned journalist to transform traumatic experience into testimony and reclaim agency over an experience intended to silence her. The study concludes that The Days of Terror represents authoritarianism as a struggle over bodies, minds, information, and memory, while positioning journalism, testimony, and narrative as important instruments of resistance.