Messed up dpkg locks and stuck in forced package reconfiguration loop. Help!

[rabic]

While trying to get out of a dpkg lock issue,
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1543...nother-process
I manually removed these locks (unwisely)

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock 
sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
sudo fuser -cuk /var/lib/dpkg/lock; sudo rm -f /var/lib/dpkg/lock
sudo fuser -cuk /var/cache/apt/archives/lock; sudo rm -f /var/cache/apt/archives/lock

Now forced package reconfiguration hangs with the following :

sudo dpkg --configure -a 
Configuring postgresql-common ├─────────────────────┐
│ │ 
│ Obsolete major version 9.5 
│ 
│ The PostgreSQL version 9.5 is obsolete, but the server or client 
│ packages are still installed. Please install the latest packages 
│ (postgresql-12 and postgresql-client-12) and upgrade the existing 
│ clusters with pg_upgradecluster (see manpage). 
│ 
│ Please be aware that the installation of postgresql-12 will 
│ automatically create a default cluster 12/main. If you want to upgrade 
│ the 9.5/main cluster, you need to remove the already existing 12 cluster 
│ (pg_dropcluster --stop 12 main, see manpage for details). 
│ 
│ The old server and client packages are no longer supported. After the 
│ existing clusters are upgraded, the postgresql-9.5 and 
│ 
│ <Ok>

It hangs here, and the only way out seems to be reboot.
I could pg_upgrade to pg12
But trying to remove these pg9.5 packages, again throws this reconfiguration error:

sudo apt remove postgresql-9.5 postgresql-client-9.5
E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.

I am stuck in a loop. Help!

[Impavidus]

This may sound obvious, but some users seem to have problems with it. This is a regular, text-based menu. Can you select the OK button with tab, then hit enter to proceed? You may be able to scroll the text with the arrow keys, page up/down etc.

I don't know about postgresql.