Hamilton, Nigeria's Founding Fathers & Who Gets to Tell the Story of Revolution

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https://open.spotify.com/album/1kCHru7uhxBUdzkm4gzRQc?si=pKlvqzPqRhOpIqA3VQhUXQ


The Setup - "Alexander Hamilton" & The Question of Narrative Power

Hamilton opens with a question that haunts all national origin stories: "How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence impoverished get up and climb?"

This is Lin-Manuel Miranda asking: WHO GETS TO BE REMEMBERED? Who gets their story told? Whose narrative survives?

Nigeria's founding story has the same problem. We celebrate Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, and Kwame Nkrumah (the "Big Four"), but how many know about Herbert Macaulay? Samuel Ajayi Crowther? Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti fighting for women's rights while the "official" founding fathers got the credit?

In "Alexander Hamilton," we meet a young immigrant with ambition. In Nigeria's founding, we meet men shaped by colonialism, educated abroad, returning to fight for independence. But like Hamilton, the question persists: who decided these men were the heroes?

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The Slavery Question - The Washington Monument & The Unspoken Contradiction

  • Here's what Hamilton the musical DOESN'T adequately address: slavery. Washington enslaved 300+ people. Jefferson enslaved 600+. Hamilton enslaved a few. They fought for freedom while owning human beings.
  • The Washington Monument, completed in 1884, stands as a tribute to a slaveholder. It's massive, it's impressive, it's a symbol of American power. Built partly by enslaved laborers and freed people. The contradiction is literally built into the stone.
  • Nigeria has a similar contradiction: we celebrate independence while many founding fathers benefited from the colonial system, or preserved its hierarchical nature, or built on its infrastructure without fundamentally transforming it.
  • We don't often ask: did independence actually free people? Or did it just change who was in charge?
  • The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) happened WHILE America's founders were writing about freedom. Haiti's enslaved people actually freed themselves. America's founders didn't free theirs. That's the difference between revolution and independence.
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