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" ends with "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?"
Nigeria's founding should end with: "Who gets left behind? Whose voices did we erase? What's the cost of our independence?"
Until we answer those questions honestly, both stories remain incomplete.
We celebrate founding fathers. But we should mourn the worlds we didn't build, the people we didn't center, the systems we didn't transform.
That would be the actual revolutionary act: not celebrating the founding, but interrogating it. Not defending our leaders, but questioning what they preserved and who they excluded.
That's the megathread. That's the story. Not the heroic narrative of ambition and independence, but the tragic narrative of revolution that didn't actually revolutionize.
The Washington Monument stands. Nigeria's symbols stand. But the work of actually creating the systems these monuments claim to represent? That work is still undone.
And maybe that's the real song: the song of unfinished work, of promises made and broken, of stories still waiting to be told.
ifiokambrose
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The Last Song We Need to Write
"Hamilton" ends with "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?"
Nigeria's founding should end with: "Who gets left behind? Whose voices did we erase? What's the cost of our independence?"
Until we answer those questions honestly, both stories remain incomplete.
We celebrate founding fathers. But we should mourn the worlds we didn't build, the people we didn't center, the systems we didn't transform.
That would be the actual revolutionary act: not celebrating the founding, but interrogating it. Not defending our leaders, but questioning what they preserved and who they excluded.
That's the megathread. That's the story. Not the heroic narrative of ambition and independence, but the tragic narrative of revolution that didn't actually revolutionize.
The Washington Monument stands. Nigeria's symbols stand. But the work of actually creating the systems these monuments claim to represent? That work is still undone.
And maybe that's the real song: the song of unfinished work, of promises made and broken, of stories still waiting to be told.
I hope you enjoyed your read.