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?
Hamilton created federal debt intentionally. The government owed money, so creditors (like Hamilton's friends) would have an interest in supporting the government. Debt = political control.
Nigeria was born into debt: colonial debts inherited from Britain, loans from IMF and World Bank, structural adjustment programs that impoverished ordinary people while enriching elites.
Both systems used debt as a tool of control. Different mechanisms, same result: ordinary people stayed poor while elites got richer through debt arrangements.
"Wait For It" could be about both nations waiting for debt relief, waiting for economic justice, waiting for the founding promise of prosperity to actually materialize. Spoiler: they're still waiting.
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The Debt Question - Both Nations Built on Debt