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The cult of Awo: the political life of a dead leader1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2008

Wale Adebanwi
Wale Adebanwi
Affiliation:
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RF, UK
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Abstract

This essay examines the ‘posthumous career’ of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the late leader of the Yoruba of Nigeria. It focuses on why he has been unusually effective as a symbol in the politics of Yorubaland and Nigeria. Regarding Awolowo as a recent ancestor, the essay elaborates why death, burial and statue are useful in the analysis of the social history of, and elite politics in, Africa. The Awolowo case is used to contest secularist and modernist assumptions about ‘modernity’ and ‘rationality’ in a contemporary African society.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , September 2008 , pp. 335 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

1

This essay is part of a larger study of the Yoruba power elite from the early twentieth century to the present time. The research was made possible by fieldwork grants from the Gates Cambridge Trust, the African Studies Centre (University of Cambridge) UAC Travel Grant (2005), the Richards Fund (Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge) and the Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Fieldwork Grant (2005), for all of which the author is grateful. The author also thanks Prof. John D. Y. Peel. The paper was developed and first presented while the author was a Visiting Fellow at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands, in 2006.

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