Burying “Zik of Africa”: The Politics of Death and Cultural Crisis

Abstract

This article uses the death and burial of one of the most important political leaders in twentieth-century Africa, and Nigeria's first and only ceremonial president, Rt. Hon. (Dr.) Nnamdi Azikiwe, to reflect on how and why the deaths and burials of significant persons in Africa represent occasions for the (re)production and management of cultural crises. It argues that the extant literature on the death of consequential persons in Africa either understates or overlooks the generalizability of the “essential contestability” of the material and immaterial relations of the past, present, and future provoked by such deaths. This is particularly visible when these relations are disturbed or challenged by the absence of the person and the process of their burial or reburial.

Frontiers of belonging and politics of identity: the materiality of funeral rituals and festivals in Nigeria’s urban space

“…Since the Eyo is also about death and dying, it draws attention to the instrumentality of death and funerals in establishing belonging and ownership in Lagos. There is a body of literature on the politics of funerals in Africa (Smith 2004; Geschiere 2005; Onwuzuruigbo 2014; Adebanwi 2021). This is because interring the dead is an important ritual on the continent.…”

“…Part of the ritual is to bury the dead in their homestead, which signifies and stands as a point of connection between the dead and the living, thereby ensuring the continued presence of the dead 32 . Existing research has shown that being buried ‘at home’ is one of the most common symbolic pointers to the continuation and – to a certain extent – strengthening of ties to the place of origin (Smith 2004; Geschiere 2005; Adebanwi 2021). Smith argues that established cases of elite funerals ‘have brought into view the profound ways in which the political and symbolic dramas that unfold around burials capture many of the dynamics of social change in contemporary Africa’ (2004: 569).…”

“…The ‘struggles to gain symbolically and materially from the death’ of prominent persons (and particularly, in this case, from burying the dead) are not restricted to immediate and extended family. These struggles present opportunities for communities not just to compete for space but also symbolically and materially to lay claim to such spaces, with ‘implications for local, national and sometimes international social, political, and economic relations’ (Adebanwi 2021: 49). In Jos, the process of burials and particularly royal burials often (re)produces tensions 40 .…”

“…The arts are meant to capture creative innovations and aesthetics, but they may also ‘conjure the artifice that may be entailed in innovative forms of governing’ (Diouf and Fredericks 2014: ix) and in group interactions. Yet, the literature on the politics of belonging in Africa has given minimal attention to the roles of festivals and other rituals in expressing and claiming ownership of the city (Smith 2004; Geschiere 2005; Adebanwi 2021). Although there is a bourgeoning literature engaging festivals as forms of performative and power politics, pursuing and preserving collective identity (Xiao and Ogunode 2021), as instruments for negotiating ‘ownership’ of local culture, performing ethnic identities and conflicts, and as tools for responding to the changing contexts of national cultural politics in Africa (Lentz and Wiggins 2017), there are few attempts showing how festivals and funerals are employed to express and negotiate ownership of urban spaces.…”