Digital Call-Out Culture and the Weakening of Indigenous Conflict Mediation Practices in Nigeria

Across Nigeria, public accusations on social media have become a powerful means of naming wrongdoing and demanding accountability. Popularly described as “call-out culture,” this practice has reshaped how conflicts are initiated, narrated, and resolved. The growth of social media in Nigeria has transformed the ways conflicts are expressed, judged, and resolved. Public accusations now circulate rapidly across platforms such as Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok, creating new forms of moral arbitration that often bypass community-based mediation systems. This paper traces the rise of digital call-outs and considers their consequences for indigenous systems of mediation long embedded in Nigerian communities. Drawing on oral testimony from community elders, women leaders, youth activists, and local mediators in Southwestern and Southeastern Nigeria, the study situates contemporary digital confrontations within a longer history of communal adjudication. It argues that while online exposure has opened space for marginalised voices, it has also unsettled processes that once prioritised dialogue, restitution, and communal equilibrium. The paper does not romanticise pre-digital institutions; rather, it highlights how the relocation of conflict from village squares and family compounds to algorithm-driven platforms has altered authority, temporality, and the meaning of justice itself. At the same time, digital platforms have opened space for voices that have historically been marginalised within traditional forums. The paper concludes that Nigeria’s contemporary conflict landscape reflects an unresolved tension between restorative communal ethics and digitally driven public accountability.