The cult of Awo: the political life of a dead leader

Abstract

This essay examines the ‘posthumous career’ of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the late leader of the Yoruba of Nigeria. It focuses on why he has been unusually effective as a symbol in the politics of Yorubaland and Nigeria. Regarding Awolowo as a recent ancestor, the essay elaborates why death, burial and statue are useful in the analysis of the social history of, and elite politics in, Africa. The Awolowo case is used to contest secularist and modernist assumptions about ‘modernity’ and ‘rationality’ in a contemporary African society.

Corpses, dead body politics and agency in human geography: following the corpse of Dr Petru Groza

“…The dead body is ‘a node in a nexus of social relationships, objects and exchanges through which personhood and remembrance are distributed and constituted’ (Williams 2004, 267). Studying assemblages of death and burial can illuminate the analysis of elite politics and memory (Adebanwe 2008; Verdery 1999). In this way…”

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

“…Further, the (re)production and management of cultural crises present different kinds of opportunities for, or obstacles to, those who have an interest in gaining, in one way or another, from the person's death and burial. While recent literature considers diverse forms of crises (re)produced by death and burial (Stamp 1991; Cohen and Odhiambo 1992; 2004; Gordon 1995; Adebanwi 2008a; 2008b; Branch 2010), most scholars studying Africa focus on distinctive challenges presented by specific cases of deaths and burials (and related memorials) of significant persons (in terms of the burial site, inheritance, conjugal or kinship rights/rites, legal authority, succession, etc.). Consequently, they either understate or overlook the generalizability of the “essential contestability” 11 of the material and immaterial relations of the past, present, and future provoked by death—particularly as these relations are disturbed or challenged by the person's absence—and by the process of their burial or reburial 12…”

‘Are there Marlians in the Buhari government?’ Popular music and personality cult in Nigeria

“…Across various disciplines, scholars have explored and discussed the concept of personality cult from several hypothetical and research perspectives, including the historical (e.g. Dogan 2007, Adebanwi 2008, political religion (Pinto and Larsen 2006), spiritual ideology (Stout 2003, Partridge 2005, Lynch 2006), and mass media (Speier 1977, Lu andSoboleva 2014). Accordingly, definitions of personality cult vary subtly from scholar to scholar and from one discipline to another.…”