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?
Nigeria's founding didn't end in 1960 with independence or 1963 with the republic. It ended on January 15, 1966, when soldiers killed the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister, and others. The system had failed.
Major Aguiyi-Ironsi took over. He banned political parties, suspended the constitution, tried to centralize power. He lasted 6 months before being killed in a counter-coup.
This is what "the world turned upside down" really looks like, not celebration, but chaos. When the founding fathers' system can't contain the pressures they built into it.
Hamilton's duel with Burr in 1804 was the personal tragedy. Nigeria's coups from 1966 onward were the systemic tragedy. The structure itself was broken.
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The Coup & The Collapse - When the System Breaks