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?
If we really learn from both Hamilton and Nigeria's founding, we should learn this:
Revolutionary rhetoric is easy. Transformation is hard.
America's founding promised "all men are created equal" while enslaving millions. It took a civil war to even partially address that contradiction. It took another 100 years for civil rights legislation. We're STILL fighting the contradiction.
Nigeria's founding promised independence and freedom while preserving patriarchy, corruption, and elite dominance. It took coups, civil war, and decades to even question those assumptions. We're STILL fighting the contradiction.
Both nations are still, fundamentally, trying to build the thing their founders promised but never actually created: a system that genuinely represents everyone, not just the powerful.
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The Path Forward - What We Should Learn
If we really learn from both Hamilton and Nigeria's founding, we should learn this:
Revolutionary rhetoric is easy. Transformation is hard.