DISCURSIVE AWAKENING AND THE POLITICS OF CONSCIOUSNESS: A PRAGMA-DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF DELE FAROTIMI'S "DO NOT DIE IN THEIR WAR"

The Nigerian political landscape has long been characterized by citizen disengagement, elite capture of institutions, and the normalization of systemic corruption. In recent years, public intellectual texts have emerged as counter-discursive interventions aimed at mobilizing civic consciousness. This study examines the discursive effects of Dele Farotimi’s political treatise Do Not Die in Their War through a pragma-discursive lens. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and pragma-linguistic frameworks, the paper analyses how Farotimi constructs narratives of political awareness, citizen agency, and systemic critique. Anchored in the theoretical contributions of Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action, Teun van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to discourse, and Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of discourse, the study investigates selected textual passages to demonstrate how the book functions as a counter-hegemonic discourse that challenges dominant narratives within Nigeria’s political culture. The analysis reveals that Farotimi deploys metaphor, rhetorical questioning, intertextual references, and moral positioning to reframe citizenship as an ethical obligation and political engagement as a necessity. The findings suggest that the text serves not merely as political commentary but as a discursive instrument for awakening national consciousness and stimulating public deliberation. The study contributes to scholarship on African political discourse by illustrating how intellectual texts can operate as catalysts for democratic awareness and citizen mobilization within fragile political systems.