We often mistake memory for certainty, forgetting that it, too, fractures like light through a prism; bending, splitting, and naturally, dispersing. A moment recorded is a moment altered, a thing no longer organic but refracted, its truth distorted by the act of preservation itself. This is the paradox of seeing, the paradox of poetry. In Deaf Republic, Ilya Kaminsky writes: “The deaf don’t believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing.” Perhaps history, too, is an invention, assembled from the scattered debris of lived experience, patched together like leaked footage, grainy with time. Abu Bakr Sadiq’s “Leaked Footages” is an experiment in recollection, a controlled detonation of language that leaves residues of war, grief, exile, and longing. Like a laboratory experiment conducted on tenuous terms, each poem is a pressured test tube of remembrance, sometimes bursting into clarity, other times, evaporating into thin air. The poet functions as an observer, aware that to document is to alter, that history itself is a kind of mirage.

It is this ruptured and unfaithful concept of memory that fundamentally informs the thematic core of Sadiq’s work, one which engages with the endemic violence and displacement of the Nigerian landscape. It is here, in this charged space where personal experience collides with communal trauma, that “Leaked Footages” takes place, its poems at once bearing witness to and examining the toll of human strife. The collection forcefully drives home the harsh realities of violence, not as a distant spectacle, but as a near and inescapable reality. Sadiq’s poetry is replete with the raw visuality of warfare, the odour of gunsmoke that sticks to your skin, and the ringing tones of gunfire that remain within your ears, rendering a sense of experience that brings the reader into the immediacy of pain.

The impact of armed conflict is not merely described, but embodied, as seen in the brutal honesty of lines like:

“to witness the night here is to open yourself to the nudity of bloodshed. when asked by a stranger about how many people i’ve lost, i began with my name & the dead still haven’t stopped leaking through my mouth.”

These lines are more than poetic decoration; they are stark, unvarnished descriptions of a world in which loss is an ever-present, suffocating presence. The poet’s voice is a conduit for the collective mourning of a nation, a voice that cannot be silenced by the power of trauma. The psychological and emotional toll of violence is charted in unflinching honesty, laying bare the deep wounds inflicted on individuals and communities. Sadiq strips away the inner worlds of those who have witnessed unspeakable horrors, portraying the weakness of the human mind in the face of endless brutality.

The disjunctive narratives and non-linear structures of the poems are employed to describe the fractured mental state achieved through trauma. The poems themselves do not provide a neat, sequential description of what has taken place; instead, they provide a series of isolated images, memories, and observations, which is representative of the manner in which trauma breaks up and deforms perception of reality. This is evident in the poem “Uncensored Footage of the Cyborg in an IDPS Camp,” where the disjointed imagery creates a sense of disorientation and unease, mirroring the experience of displacement communities:

“every city my tongue had taught itself to call home
remains lost
in the endless shaft of my memories
if i speak
about loss i know exactly which wound i would be waking”

The theme of displacement, physical and emotional, is inextricably linked to the experience of violence. Sadiq portrays the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) with compassion and empathy, encapsulating the sense of rootlessness and alienation that comes with being forced to leave one’s home. The poems explore the ambivalent emotions of displacement, from the desire for a lost home to the attempt to construct a new life in new circumstances. The concept of “home” is fluid and ethereal, a space that exists as much in recollection as reality. The poem “Displacement Theory” encapsulates this poignant feeling of loss:

“what matters now is not that even the rivers are gone
& what’s left are twined trails
of white sand i always knew it would come to this
it follows a natural course
when
too many lives cling to the same prayer in the fight to remain rooted in their home someone has to leave eventually”

Memory, as we conceive of it in “Leaked Footages,” is not a static repository of the past but an energetic, often tormentedforce that propels the present. Sadiq analyzes how memory healsand how it traumatizes, laying bare the complexities of remembering in the face of overwhelming loss. The poems are thick with lush memories of the past, personal and shared, whichare drawn upon to illuminate the present. The poet wrestles with the burden of memory, alluding to how hard it is to marry past and present. In “Road Map,” Sadiq explores the construction of memories, both real and imagined:

“i make memories up to remind myself of a life i never had. before uni, i lost my mother & so my softness was born. i know i’m not the only motherless boy in this city.”

The exploration of identity is yet another central theme in “Leaked Footages.” Sadiq examines the ways in which identity is shaped by nationality, religion, and personal history, revealing the convolutedness of constructing a sense of self in the midst of conflict and displacement. The poems reflect on the search for identity in a world where familiar landmarks and social structures have been eroded by violence. The speaker’s identity is often fluid and multifaceted, reflecting the hybridity of their cultural background and the complexities of lived experiences. The collection engages heavily with Islamic faith, intermingling prayers, Quranic verses, and religious imagery into the fabric of the poems. But this is not a blind affirmation of faith; it is,rather, an exploration of the conflict between faith and scepticism when faced with suffering. The speaker attempts to balance belief with the experience of violence and loss, and the religious efforts of those who were most affected by war aremade apparent. “Maqtoob” (that which is written) is a word thatis both comforting and interrogative, as seen in the poem of the same name:

“maqtoob. maqtoob. every word already written.
so i should consider why the missing boy’s face stays stretched above my memory.  maqtoob. maqtoob. all of my life, an uncovered erasure of what was written by Allah.”

To read through “Leaked Footages” is to meet with the permeating character, cyborg, which introduces a fascinating layer to the collection, reflecting the increasing presence of technology in contemporary life. The cyborg is a figure thatespouses the hybridity of human experience so that it is hard to tell where the organic and the artificial leave off. It is a point of contrast and similarity for the speaker. The cyborg is also a way to explore the idea of how technology impacts the human experience of war. The use of drones and other technological advancements highlights the ways in which technology has transformed the nature of warfare, making it more remote and impersonal. Yet, even in this technologically mediated world, the human cost of conflict remains starkly evident, as seen in “Explaining Bot Fights to Bhabi”:

“in a battle against a swarm of microbots, you will have to assume that you’ve lost everything there is to lose. that the future of everyone you love is crammed in the belly of your remote controller; that a day will come when our bodies will lie beside each other, wondering where the world will whisk away to in the event where time softens into an inflatable dinosaur.”

Through this exploration of themes, Sadiq creates a powerful and moving portrait of a society scuffling with the devastating consequences of violence and displacement.

The fragmented narratives that characterize the collection are not entirely a stylistic choice; they are a deliberate attempt to mirror the fractured reality experienced by those living in conflict zones. Sadiq eschews traditional linear narratives in favour of a more associative and impressionistic approach, creating a sense of disorientation and immediacy. The poems often shift abruptly between different periods, locations, and perspectives, reflecting the way trauma disrupts and distorts one’s perception of reality. This non-linear structure is exemplified in “Wormhole,” where the poet dexterously synthesizes the past, present, and future, collapsing time itself:

“time dissolves & we are a billion light-years deep into the future.
i speak & my voice travels faster than light.
i speak & a drone floats on the spine of my words.
through time travel, we wrap memories around our fingertips.”

This approach not only simulates the experience of trauma but also challenges the reader to actively engage with the poems, forking the fragments of memory and experience to construct a coherent understanding of the world being depicted. The language in “Leaked Footages” is both instinctual and redolent, characterized by lucid imagery, sensory details, and a keen attention to the nuances of sound and rhythm. The imagery is often stark and unflinching, reflecting the harsh realities of life in a conflict zone. For example, the recurring motif of blood-stained rivers serves as a powerful symbol of the violence that permeates the landscape:

“if we’ve swam in the river since it got stained by blood
what we’d say to a boy asking where suicide bombers go after death”

The employment of sensory imagery within the poems serves particularly well in evoking the feeling of immediacy, drawing the reader into the world and its smells, sounds, and vision. The diction is similarly typical of itself, intermingling formal and informal registers of speech to evoke the hyphenated nature of the speaker’s cultural background. Sadiq skillfully interlaces Arabic and regular English in an idiosyncratic and spirited linguistic texture. Such multilingualism not only adds richness to the poems but also reflects the complex cultural identities of the personae portrayed. The speaker’s voice in “Leaked Footages” is intimate and authoritative, characterized by urgency and utmost commitment to bearing witness to others’ pain. Sadiq employs a range of personae, ranging from the first-person “I” to the more observational, to create an elaborate description of the human condition in a war zone. The speaker is normally introspective and tussles with matters concerning identity, religious beliefs, and the meaning of life when they are faced with massive loss. This is explained in the poem “Post-Massacre Psych Evaluation”:

“I don’t know what you’re looking for in me but in my sleep, I keep talking to dead bodies.
They speak back with a tongue the government hates; with their mouthfuls of hurt —black holes, dying to swallow the country that sashayed their souls to heaven.”

The speaker’s voice is also characterized by moral outrage, a refusal to be silent in the face of injustice. Sadiq’s poetry is a record and exposé, bearing witness to the suffering of those silenced and marginalized. He is not afraid to confront the ethical and political complexities of bearing witness, acknowledging the complexities of representing trauma and the necessity of speaking truth to power. The title “Leaked Footages” itself is suggestive, lending a sense of urgency and contemporaneity. “Leaked” is significant in this context, suggesting that the poems are not merely objects of beauty but raw, unedited accounts of lived life. The use of the word “footages” also calls attention to the visual nature of the poems, suggesting that the poems are akin to film or video footage. This title also brings up the idea of information that was not meant to be seen, or that one tried to hide. It makes the reader feel likethey are seeing something that they shouldn’t, and that they are being let in on a secret. This adds to the feeling of urgency, and importance.

Nigeria’s socio-political context is central to “Leaked Footages.” Sadiq’s poetry is squarely placed within the specific struggles and challenges that have assailed the country, including the Boko Haram insurrection, police brutality, and institutionalized corruption. He presents an unflinching and textured account of Nigerian society and demonstrates how these different challenges intersect and recycle one another. The poems constitute a sharp indictment of the disintegration of the state and the devastating impact of violence and oppression.

Sadiq’s Leaked Footages compels us to reckon with the volatile nature of history, an entity not fixed in time but perpetually reshaped by trauma and resilience. Rejecting the illusion of singular truth, his poetry expands as a mosaic of fractured perspectives, where personal grief transmutes into a collective elegy, and the spectres of erasure are exhumed through deliberate lines. This collection is neither mere documentation nor passive remembrance but an insurgent act of reclamation. And at the end, when the last page is turned, we’re not left to silence,  but in the resonances of a disembodied presence lingering on which cannot be quieted, insistently, vociferously calling to be listened to.

Author’s Biography

Ibraheem Uthman is a Nigerian poet, essayist, and literary mentor. He is the author of “Mind of a Bard,” Managing Editor of The Nigeria Review, and curator of the HIASFEST Literary Panel. A two-time winner of the National Library Prize and HCAF Excellence in Creative Writing Award 2025. He was also a BillWard Prize runner-up for Emerging Writers (Essay).