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Paper short abstract

This paper interrogates #Ozoemena (May It Not Happen Again) on X as a digital practice of memory linking the Nigeria–Biafra War to contemporary political challenges. It indicates how the hashtag circulates affect—grief, vigilance, hope, to sustain remembrance, activism, and even polarisation.

Paper long abstract

The Nigeria–Biafra Civil War (1967–1970) remains a traumatic event whose memory continues to shape political identities and claims to belonging in Nigeria. While state narratives have long suppressed public engagement with the war, digital platforms increasingly function as spaces for mnemonic expression and contestation. This paper examines #Ozoemena, an Igbo phrase meaning “may it not happen again”, as a digital practice of memory and affect on X (formerly Twitter). Drawing on affect theory and digital memory studies, I argue that #Ozoemena operates as an affective infrastructure that links historical trauma to contemporary experiences of insecurity, marginalization, and political exclusion. Rather than simply transmitting information, the hashtag organizes emotions, grief, anger, vigilance, and hope into what Ahmed conceptualizes as affective economies, binding dispersed users into networked publics oriented toward remembrance and resistance. Methodologically, the study employs qualitative thematic analysis of posts collected through repeated weekly searches on X between January and October 2025. Analysis focuses on multimodal expressions that connect memories of Biafra to present-day crises in Nigeria. Preliminary results suggest that #Ozoemena enables collective mourning while functioning as a moral injunction against the recurrence of mass violence. At the same time, the hashtag reveals the ambivalence of digital affect: it sustains solidarity and everyday activism, yet can also be mobilized to intensify ethnic polarization and misinformation. The paper contributes to digital anthropology by showing how African mnemonic practices are reconfigured through platformed communication, transforming an indigenous ethical expression into a networked archive of affect, polarisation and political imagination.