University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation Formatting

COLONIAL CONFIGURATIONS, MILITARY MANIFESTATIONS: MASCULINITY IN POST-INDEPENDENT NIGERIA

MOSÚNMỌ́ LÁ ỌMỌ́ WÙNMÍ ADÉÒJÓ

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2020

To my mother Fámúyìwá Kéhìndé, my granny, Fámúyìwá Juliana (nee Fábíyì) and to me, Mosúnmọ́lá Adéòjó

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank God almighty for the grace to complete this project. I thank the graduate coordinator, Dr. Jodi Schorb for her help and motivation. I thank my supervisory committee; Dr.

Apollo Amoko and Dr. Pamela Gilbert, for their support. I appreciate Dr. Amoko for his detailed comments which helped me concretize my ideas better. I also thank Dr. Gilbert for providing direction for this project. I first conceived this idea in her Victorian masculinities class and after several meetings with her, I was able to articulate my ideas properly. Thank you so much,

Pamela.

I also thank my sweet mother, Kéhìndé, for her moral support and encouragment. She always reminded me to take things easy even when I had lost all hope. Thank you, sweet mother for motivating me to complete my study. I appreciate my sisters; Tèmítọ́pé and Ọdúnayò for their constant reassurance.

I thank Ayobami for his moral support. He always checked in to find out about my progress. Similar thanks to Oluwatosin Oginni who ensured that I took my mental health seriously during this project. Also, I thank Kehinde Ojo, Ayobami Edun, Sister Christianah

Akande, Iyanu Farukanmi and the Akande family for being with me when I was sick. They nurtured me to good health, and I was able to continue with this project. Thank you to the

Deeperlife Bible Church, Gainesville for waiting and praying for the successful completion of this project.

Finally, I say thank you to Mosúnmọ́lá Ọmọ́wùnmí Adéòjó. Thank you for not giving up even when you consistently doubted your intelligence. Thank you for the sleepless nights. Thank you for crawling even when you were weak.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 6

INTRODUCTION ...... 7

THE PARTING GIFT: CRITIQUING HEROIC MASCULINITY IN WILLIAM GOLDING’S LORD OF THE FLIES AND ADEWALE ADEMOYEGA’S WHY WE STRUCK ...... 28

CONCLUSION ...... 60

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 68

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 70

Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts

COLONIAL CONFIGURATIONS, MILITARY MANIFESTATIONS: MASCULINITY IN POST-INDEPENDENT NIGERIA

Mosúnmọ́lá Ọmọ́wùnmí Adéòjó

December 2020

Chair: Apollo Amoko Major: English

This thesis examines evidence of Victorian masculinities in the ideological construct of

Nigeria's first military coup and the fallacy of masculine heroism. I discuss this idea through

William Golding's modernist novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), Adewale Ademoyega's memoir,

Why We Struck (1981) and Helon Habila's novel, Waiting for an Angel (2002). I also refer to schoolboy stories such as Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) and Rudyard

Kipling's Stalky&Co (1899) to provide an assessment of Victorian masculinities in post- independent Nigeria and attest to the "colonial heritage" (Gikandi 3) that manifests in postcolonial nations like Nigeria. I study the evidence of Victorian masculinities—heroic masculinity, in the motivation for Nigeria's first coup. I argue that this "heroism" exemplifies the muscular Christianity of the mid-Victorian period, which encouraged physical agility to reflect a disciplined and moral mind that—in Nigeria’s case—would save the nation from indiscipline and corruption. I end my research with an examination of Habila's Waiting for an Angel (2002) to illustrate the fallacy of heroism and how the military becomes the evil it once proscribed.

KEYWORDS: Camaraderie, Colonial Culture, Military Coup, Victorian Masculinity

INTRODUCTION

(T)he temporality of our postcolonial moment is defined by an inevitable conjuncture between the desire for decolonization and the reality of the colonial archive: in the former colonies, as the example of cricket and other forms of public discourse in India, Africa, and the Caribbean illustrates so well, the large issues that plague the decolonized polis are mediated through the institutional, ideological, and aesthetic "shreds and patches" of the British colonial heritage. —Simon Gikandi Maps of Englishness, (2)

This thesis examines evidence of Victorian masculinities in the ideological construct of

Nigeria's first military coup. I discuss this idea through William Golding's modernist novel, Lord of the Flies (1954) and Adewale Ademoyega's memoir, Why We Struck (1981). I refer to schoolboy stories such as Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) and Rudyard

Kipling's Stalky&Co (1899) and end with Helon Habila's novel, Waiting for an Angel (2002).

These texts provide an assessment of Victorian masculinities in post-independent Nigeria and attest to the "colonial heritage" (Gikandi 3) that manifests in postcolonial nations like Nigeria. I examine the evidence of Victorian masculinities as represented in heroic masculinity, the main element of Nigeria's first coup's motivation. I argue that this "heroism" exemplifies the muscular

Christianity of the mid-Victorian period, which encouraged physical agility to reflect a disciplined and moral mind. This adoption of Victorian masculine values conflates the coup plotters' aim to obliterate Nigeria of its colonial past evident in the nepotistic government. Furthermore, the paper examines how post-Victorian Britain criticized heroic masculinity. Before discussing Victorian masculinities, I shall address the overarching reality of the decolonized polis' identity as influenced by Englishness and colonial culture.

In Maps of Englishness, Simon Gikandi examines Englishness as a product of colonial culture. He analyzes how emblems of colonial encounters endure in institutions like schools, in sports, and even in the literary culture of postcolonial entities. Thus, despite nationalist efforts to

deliberately separate itself from its "mother state," the decolonized polis, remains influenced by the colonial culture from which it attempts to detach itself. The quoted passage above illustrates the axiomatic complexity that defines the identity of the decolonized polis. As Gikandi notes, the decolonized polis sustained Victorian traditions in sports like cricket. Cricket remained "…the perfect expression of the values of bourgeois civility, Anglo-Saxon ethics, and public-school morality…Cricket became a marker of the mastery of Englishness in and outside the colonies"

(9). It signifies shared values, identity, and represented the connections between Britain and its colonies.

Institutions and infrastructures such as schools and city names attest to the postcolonial nation's affiliation with the imperial other. In Nigeria, Port-Harcourt city is named after the infamous sexual predator, Lewis Harcourt. Harcourt was a British Liberal Politician who served as the Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1910-1915. He served under Edward VII and

George V and was fairly known as a paedophile who violated young boys and girls. Lord Lugard named the city of Port Harcourt after him in 1913. Alain Mabankcou questions this attachment to a colonial heritage in his novel Lights of Point-Noire. In this memoir set in the Republic of

Congo, Mabanckou wonders why his secondary school is named after Jean-Victor Auganeur, a

French colonel (likely unknown in his own country), also an ardent supporter of French colonization. Although set in a former French colony, Mabanckou's observation echoes a convoluted, albeit dynamic attachment that postcolonial nations share with the imperial nation.

This firm attachment to the colonial archive exposes the "shreds and patches" of the British colonial heritage in the decolonized polis' complex identity.

One of such fragments of British colonial heritage in postcolonial nations is Victorian masculinities, particularly mid-century muscular Christianity. Muscular Christianity represented

the idea that boys needed sports like Rugby and football (soccer), Christian morality, and discipline to build their physical and moral selves. This idea comes from Charles Kingsley's

"manly Christianity." Kingsley believed that the Christian man "belonged to the world of action"

(C.J.W.L. Wee 68) and could build a primitive vigor either "from non-European lands from someone else's culture - where manly energy was unconstrained by modern life, or from English historical precedents (an Anglo-Saxon spirit), where a united nation existed" (C.J.W.L. Wee 68).

Bradley Deane's work on the imperial play ethic also reiterates Kingsley's claim as Deane notes that the games ethic defined the 1850s muscular Christianity, which maintained that physical development and agility mirrored a moral character.

According to Donald E. Hall in Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age, muscular Christianity influenced gender, class, and national identity in the Victorian age. Gender became a means of identity and shaped the portraits of men and women during the Victorian age, an ideology they ultimately adopted in the colony. Scholars such as Deane, Evgenia Sifaki, and

Michael Brown have identified how mid-Victorian Britain's emphasis on a strong-willed, physically fit, and heroic Victorian male represented the ethos of a strong empire. Sifaki further highlights how Victorian masculine heroism was "intricately linked to the imperial and military dimensions of masculinity," and the "interdependence of the condition of masculinity and empire was commonly assumed" (142). Consequently, the concept of muscular Christianity endured in the colonies, especially in the school curriculum.

In fact, in Michael Gennaro's work on Boxing, Masculinity, and the Empire in Post-

WWII Nigeria, Gennaro observes that the colonial education system in Nigeria modeled

Nineteenth-century British public schools which embodied mid-century muscular Christianity.

Accordingly,

The schools built in Lagos and across the British Empire were modeled on those found in

England in the nineteenth century, and therefore held the same values and priorities as

their predecessors in England… The resulting design, known as the "House System," was

a product of a "Muscular Christianity" movement of the nineteenth century…Saheed

Aderinto argues that the colonial administration and missionaries that came to Lagos

gendered school and society, preparing boys and girls for different prospects and roles…

Boys were pushed into school competitions that focused on public display, like sports, to

prepare boys for a life in the public sphere, while girls were taught skills for a life of

domesticity… The effect, as Lisa Lindsay notes, was to create a male gendered public

space after WWII… The major schools in Lagos all subscribed to the "House System,"

which separated school students into houses for living and sports. This was done for

many reasons: it taught responsibility and accountability to one's peers, respect for one's

house, and pride in the school, all traits that could later be expanded to the city and

colony as a whole (68-69).

Similar to the performative masculinity found in mid-century Victorian public schools, colonial

Nigeria's educational curriculum prepared boys and girls for gendered roles in the society. More importantly, this training on muscular Christianity emphasized discipline and character in young men. As such, sports helped shape this ethos. In a conference presentation on ping-pong and masculinity, Gennaro notes that to attain what he terms 'muscular citizenship,' the colonial government encouraged sports in schools to emphasize the essence of "courage," "pluck," and

"character" in making gentlemen of the colonial subjects. Thus, "British colonial sporting regimes built on …transformed masculinity, masculine ideals, and gender relations in a dynamic urban context. The British sporting ethos of discipline and character was adapted and

transformed by young male Nigerians, who used boxing as both a sign of manliness and being modern in an urban environment" (20). Colonial schools, therefore, played a significant role in shaping "muscular citizens." Significantly, Nigeria's first coup plotters came from a generation that attended such colonial schools. For example, Majors Kaduna Nzeogwu and Christian

Anuforo both attended St. John's College, Kaduna.

Despite Britain's apparent influence on its colonies, the twentieth century saw the British

Empire's peak and gradual decline as nationalist movements spread throughout its colonies.

Amid the widespread anti-colonial nationalism of the middle 20th century, the elite officer core of the Nigerian military and other colonized nations attended prestigious British military academies. These men uniformly espoused and valorized the credentials and values inculcated by these ostensibly English institutions. These values consequently shaped their ideologies as a group of soldiers decided to oust the nepotistic government in power.

Following independence in 1960, Nigeria established a pluralist, multi-party and federalist democracy substantially inspired by Britain's venerated Westminster model. It is worth emphasizing that the adoption of a form of government arguably ill-suited for the country's bewilderingly diverse cultures and complex histories represented a singularly problematic instance of enduring Anglophilia in postcolonial Africa. This model all but guaranteed the ensuing political instability despite longstanding ethnic and religious rivalries exacerbated by the inequities of a colonial administration predicated on divide and rule. For example, British authorities relied on security officers overwhelmingly recruited from the Islamic North, much to the resentment of non-Muslim Southerners. Such policies continued into the postcolonial

Nigerian Army recruitment process, as the government created a quota system shared between the North, West, and East. Concurrently, limited access to formal education in the North—

particularly in contrast to the Christian Igbos in the South East—entrenched ethnic inequality, which inexorably led to ruinous civil war. In any event, the ill-fated experiment in democracy which faltered almost immediately, culminated in rapid, if tragic succession, in two military coups in 1966 and a bloody civil war between 1967-71 pitting the revanchist state against the secessionist Igbo-dominated Biafra.

The officers who effected the first coup toppled the democratically elected but increasingly beleaguered government of Prime Minister Abubaker Balewa and National People's

Convention (N.P.C.). Led by Majors Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Kaduna Nzeogwu, Adewale

Ademoyega, Timothy Onwuatuegwu, Christian Anuforo, Donatus Okafor, Humphrey

Chukwuka, Captain Ben Gbulie and Captain Ogbonna Oji, revolutionary members of the officer corps came to regard the country's civilian leaders as incorrigibly enfeebled, incompetent, corrupt and undisciplined. In sharp contrast, they believed that the elite officer core (if not the military generally), exemplified the highest national ideals, namely, rigor, duty, order, and integrity.

As previously indicated, these men trained at Sandhurst and other rarified military academies in Britain. Singled out, based on outstanding physical acumen and intellectual ability, as future leaders of Nigeria's emerging armed forces, the men trained alongside other elite counterparts from Britain and such other colonies as Australia and Kenya. Legendary for maintaining physical demands on trainees—including backbreaking exercise and extreme deprivation, the military academies also emphasize intellectual study, strict discipline, and the inculcation of a fierce sense of national loyalty and civic responsibility. As Stephen Deakin puts it, "Students' days are long and filled with activity, and they are physically and mentally tired"

(15). William Gutteridge also highlights Sandhurst's influence on the soldiers' ethical outlook

and patriotic responsibility. Commenting on Colonel Akwasi Afrifa's assertion that "Sandhurst gave us independent thinking, tolerance and a liberal outlook," Gutteridge concludes that

"Sandhurst epitomized British democracy and respect for constitutional behavior" (332). Thus, for the January 1966 Nigerian revolutionaries, the political ideals they espoused upon their return home had been cemented amid arduous training which, beyond the ethos of discipline, encouraged, perhaps unwittingly, the kind of savior complex that would subsequently justify toppling an elected government the leaders of which had disappointed the lofty expectation of the foreign-trained military men.

In contrast to their British counterparts who maintained political aloofness and indeed influenced some of Nigeria's military elite, Nigeria's 1966 revolutionaries took it upon themselves to restore their country's constitutional honor through a coup. Gutteridge examines the influence of British military training on Commonwealth soldiers and attempts to correct the notion that all military behavior comes from army education and training (333). Accordingly, military training and professional ethos intersected with local socio-political issues that required military intervention. Class differences and political concerns influenced the British Army's understanding of protecting constitutional honor, versus the Nigerian Army's perception of such duty. Thus, while the British military elite occupied the same social base as the civilian and ruling elite, the Nigerian Army consisted of ethnically and socially diverse officers, some of whom had little or no political connections and affiliations.

At the heart of this argument is the contention that military leaders in the 1960's postcolonial Nigeria enacted masculinist values harking back to elements of Victorian muscular

Christianity. Sandhurst's emphasis on physical discipline and ethical responsibility underscores muscular Christianity's tenets, which ultimately "shaped military law and military organizational

procedures" (Deakin 17). Such emphasis came from existing Victorian values that encouraged

Christianity as essential in character development. As Stephen Deakin suggests, events such as the Christian revivals of the mid-nineteenth century inspired the development of a Christianized military (18). Ultimately, Victorian England's ideal English gentleman (and officer) was one who embodied a "hybrid of Christianity, Plato's guardians, Aristotle's character development, and more" (Deakin 18). As students from Victorian public schools arrived, Sandhurst, they were expected to embody "the ideal of the Christian English gentleman" and "were known as 'G.C.s' or Gentlemen Cadets" who portrayed Christian values and ethics (18).

While Victorian gender norms were, to no small extent, driven by socio-economic factors specific to 19th century England, notions regarding appropriate forms of English manhood were, in critical part, forged during fraught colonial encounters. Men were expected to master enhanced, if not tortuous, physical training in anticipation of the challenges posed by trekking through the jungle and endurance debilitating, if not, deadly tropical illnesses like potential deadly malaria. Rudyard Kipling's Stalky&Co illustrates the visibility of the empire in the

Victorian boys' imagination and how such awareness translates into their daily activities. The novel narrates the boys' escapades in college and how this helps them prepare for a future in the colony. Thus, from the first chapter, the boarding school life embodies traits of the imperial playground. In one scene, the boys build a boys' cave where they can relax, smoke, and have fun away from the school's grounds. Playing outdoors, away from the school and by their own rules, echoes a life of adventure and conquest. This act is not peculiar to them as "all right-minded boys built huts…" (565). This statement speaks to the normalcy of an adventurous spirit and mindset in the boys. Similarly, boys participated in sports and drills, exercises designed to build their physical strength and esprit de corps. More evidence of colonialist undertones exists in the

narrator's language when describing the boys' explorations. For example, when they are allowed access to Colonel Dabney's estate, the narrator notes, "They had all Colonel Dabney's estate to play with, and they explored it with the stealth of Red Indians…" (571). Such a reference to 'Red

Indians' depicts how imperialism persists in the boys' consciousness. The first chapter, titled

"Ambush," narrates how the boys trap their housemasters. On a connotative level, it forecasts

Stalky's eventual adoption of similar tactics to ambush two 'tribes' in the colony. The novel ends with a story on Stalky's colonial escapades to emphasize the climax of his school training: a combination of Christian teachings, imperial ideals, and masculine shrewdness.

The foregoing exemplifies institutional influence on muscular Christianity. Tom Brown's

School Days depicts the protagonist's gradual transformation from a precocious but unruly child into a disciplined, devout, physically powerful, and confident Englishman. The novel chronicles

Tom's school life, a place where he learns the value of meaningful friendships, strengthens his belief in God, participates in challenging school sports and overcomes bullies. In one pivotal scene, Tom's father pointedly informs his son that he is being sent to the elite boarding school less for the acquisition of knowledge in academic subjects like mathematics and chemistry than for his masculinist formation. In another pivotal scene, the protagonist and his comrades compete valiantly and heroically in a rugby match despite being hopelessly outnumbered and overmatched, not to mention in the face of mounting severe injuries including broken noses and fractured hands. In terms of foundational masculinist formation, the battered and bruised team triumphs in dignified, if not heroic, defeat. This scene pre-figures the challenges to be expected and overcome during the civilizing mission of Britain's colonial expansion.

In short, the masculinist nature of Victorian public life and English imperialism influenced a school system designed to build an ideal Victorian man suited for the empire. Similar Victorian

masculinist ideals translated into the Nigerian space. This influence is particularly noticeable in

Nigeria's officers' corps and military traditions modeled after the British military. Thus, similarities like non-interference in politics existed in the Nigerian Army. Before independence, the Nigerian Army was termed the "Queen's Own Nigerian Regiment" and living true to its name; it maintained an apolitical stance even after becoming a 'Nigerianized' army. Adewale

Ademoyega (one of the January 1966 coup plotters) argues that the Nigerian Army was "foreign- inspired," "foreign-led," and "half commanded by British commissioned and Warrant Officers, whose only purpose was a strict adherence to British norms and practices" (27). He further berates some officers' reluctance to criticize the political fracas in the country. Their duty was to follow orders and execute tasks given by the federal government. Ademoyega's criticism affirms a reality of British control over the Nigerian Army. After independence, Nigeria's military leadership remained under British control until 1965 when Major General Christopher Earle

Welby-Everard, handed over to Brigadier Johnson Aguyi-Ironsi who became Nigeria's first indigenous General Officer Commanding (G.O.C.). The 'Nigerianization' of the Nigerian Army was primarily the purview of the British colonial officers. Although Welby-Everard's contract expired in 1965, three other English men: Major-General Norman Forster, Brigadier Frank

Goulson, and Major-General Robert Exham had served as G.O.C.s before him (Siollun 22-23).

Strong military ties between Britain and Nigeria endured beyond Welby-Everard's departure as

Nigerian soldiers were trained and commissioned in British military academies like Mons

Officer Cadet School, Eaton Hall National Service Officer Cadet School, and the Royal

Sandhurst Military Academy in Britain (most of the coup plotters attended this institution). "The first Nigerian to be commissioned was Louis Victor Ugboma, in 1948" (Siollun 21). Others such

as "Duke" Bassey, Aguyi-Ironsi, Samuel Ademulegun, and Ralph Sodehinde were all commissioned between 1949 and 1952 at Eaton Hall (Siollun 21).

Nigerian officers continued to attend these institutions even after independence. Some of the officers who trained in the late 50s and 60s like Majors Kaduna Nzeogwu and Adewale

Ademoyega returned to find a dysfunctional civilian government and identified a nepotistic and centralized ruling system which they claimed could be traced back to the caliphate system that had been entrenched in Northern Nigeria and favored by colonial authorities. Nigeria's 1960 independence had a fraught beginning. Despite becoming a geographically constructed nation in

1914, "Nigeria" is a term defining the many nations within it. These nations exist under the three major ethnic groups, the Hausa (the North), Yoruba (the West) and Igbo (the East).

Unsurprisingly, ethnic undertones characterized the first indigenous political parties N.P.C.

(Northern People's Congress) was a Hausa party, A.G. (Action Group) was a Yoruba party and

N.C.N.C. (National Council of Nigerian Citizens) was an Igbo party. r While the A.G. and

N.C.N.C. maintained a largely nationalistic purview, the N.P.C. did not hide its ethnic leanings and opposed southern "infiltration" when the A.G. and N.C.N.C. attempted to recruit members from the North. These ethnic parities formed the nexus of Nigeria's first independent government.

In 1953, Southern political parties—Action Group (A.G.) and National Council of

Nigerian Citizens (N.C.N.C.)— led by Anthony Enahoro, moved a motion for independence in

1956. The Northern elite suggested a later date for self-governance due to their educational and infrastructural disadvantage. "They felt the Northern Region did not yet have an administration and educated workforce capable of operating independently of British colonial rulers" (Siollun

13). As expected, many Southerners rebuked the North's complacency and their resistance to an

independent Nigeria. "A.G. and N.C.N.C. delegates walked out when the Northern majority in the House diluted the motion by removing the reference to "1956" and substituted it with a more modest goal of attaining independence when practicable…When they (Northern politicians) left the House, (they) …were jeered and harassed by southern mobs in Lagos for their reluctant approach to independence. This humiliation rankled long in the Northern memory" (Siollun 13).

Tense occurrences such as this intensified the existing contentions between both sides of the divide.

Despite their reluctance to earlier independence (during the 1953 meeting to decide the date for independence, the N.P.C. leader called the 1956 date, "an invitation to commit suicide"

(Siollun 13), a Northern-led government became Nigeria's first indigenous government. Scholars such as E.C. Ejiogu, Robin Luckham, and Max Siollun have suggested that Britain's departure from Nigeria saw the installation of a Northern-led government that would protect its economic and political interests marred by electoral malpractices. Ejiogu notes that the general census of

1951-52 and the general elections of 1959 (which ushered in the first indigenous government), were marred by inflation and malpractice. According to him "both exercises set the stage eventually for Britain's disengagement from direct political administration of Nigeria in 1960,

(and) are believed to have been manipulated to produce outcomes favourable to the Hausa-Fulani ruling classes and their party, the Northern People's Congress (N.P.C.)" (111). (My emphasis).

Britain merely continued its indirect rule of the country by installing a compliant ruling party.

Consequently, "Robin Luckham (a political sociologist who has written extensively on

Nigerian military history) argues that the transfer of power to the Hausa-Fulani on the platform of the N.P.C. was a calculated measure devised and implemented by 'colonial officials working in the North'" (Ejiogu 111). In his footnote, Ejiogu refers to a letter by Sir Peter Smithers, "a

member of the British Parliament and Parliamentary Secretary to the British Secretary of State

Alan Lennox-Boyd in 1952 (He) indicated that British colonial administrators rigged the 1959 election that ushered in Nigeria's political independence the next year on behalf of the Hausa-

Fulani ruling classes" (129). Also, Harold Smith, a colonial officer in Nigeria, has continuously pointed to the British Government's interference in Nigeria's first democratic elections.

These contentions regarding Britain's rogue participation in Nigeria's politics would influence public mistrust and encourage political antics in post-independent Nigeria. Consequently, after a

1963 census preceding the 1964 elections, the South had a "preposterously" higher population than the North. The prime minister then "ordered a verification exercise, after which an additional eight million people were "found" in the Northern Region" (14).

Similarly, earlier mistrust and fear of Southern domination (if the West and East decided to form a coalition) caused the North to propose secession unless it got half of Parliament seats.

Thus, Nigeria's independent parliament was mostly Northern, and political decisions required

Northern support. The N.P.C. also joined forces with the N.C.N.C. ("a junior partner in a shaky coalition") and took control of the federal government (Siollun 13). A.G. became the opposition party. Factional fracas, however, arose in the A.G. domiciled in Western Nigeria. The leader of

A.G., Chief Obafemi Awolowo, favored a strong opposition while his deputy S.L. Akintola believed in forging closer links with the federal government as opposed to Awolowo's Liberal socialism. Since Awolowo's political ideology was widely favored and he remained a significant figure in Western Nigerian politics, the party scheduled a debate to pass a vote of no confidence against Akintola (the premier of the West) on May 25, 1962. A brawl occurred on this day, leading to a "prompt" declaration of a state of emergency by the federal government (as Akintola had established political ties with the N.P.C.). Awolowo and his supporters were imprisoned and

charged with treason. His imprisonment rose from allegations to overthrow the government as there were plans to use "unconstitutional means" to remove the government, which some "were fed up with…" (Siollun 16). The federal government also created the Mid-western region from the Western region to weaken the opposition party's power.This aggravated animosities against the Northern-led federal government.

This North-South divide instigated ethnic rivalries and brewed mutual suspicions. For example, the South feared Northern domination because of numerical strength, while the North feared Southern domination because of academic superiority. Such animosities influenced political and infrastructural decisions. For example, the Northernization agenda encouraged

Northerners' proliferation in official positions in the North. Employing anti-Southern sentiments

(mainly against the Igbos and against southerners who were considered educationally superior), they employed mostly Northern candidates into the civil service in the North. In cases where no one was qualified, they employed foreigners in place of Southern Nigerians. The Northernization agenda infiltrated the Nigerian Army and was introduced as a quota system where fifty percent of recruits came from the North and Twenty-five percent from the East and the West. This further fueled animosities against the North in the South. Also, anti-immigrant sentiments existed in the North. For example, the Igbos were described unflatteringly as "The Jews of Africa." They were "satirized as arrogant, clannish and money-grabbing" (17). Besides, their industrious and commercial success caused a general fear that Igbos intended to dominate the rest of Nigeria.

Finally, corruption and electoral malpractices caused tremendous political anarchy and chaos. Several political officer holders were accused of corrupt practices. The minister of

Finance, Festus Okotie-Eboh "was frequently mentioned in the corruption allegations" (17).

Coalitions, dissolution of alliances between political parties, and character-maligning campaigns

defined the political scenery. During the 1964 elections after independence, the United

Progressive Grand Alliance (U.P.G.A.), a coalition of the N.C.N.C. and A.G., decided to boycott the elections on rigging claims against the Nigerian National Alliance (N.N.A.) a coalition between N.P.C. and Nigerian National Democratic Party (N.N.D.P.). Despite the boycotts in the

Western and Eastern regions, the N.N.A. won unopposed in many parts of the Western region.

Siollun then notes that "due to the widespread electoral malpractices, President Azikiwe refused to call Balewa to form a new government' (18). Azikiwe sought the allegiance of the military on the occasion of a crisis. Another electoral malpractice occurred in 1965 in the Western region, when N.N.D.P., a widely loathed party 'won' through electoral rigging. As Siollun posits,

Opposition candidates and voters were often intimidated or prevented from filing

nomination papers or voting. Even when opposition candidates managed to stand for

election and win in results declared at polling stations, radio announcements would

announce a different set of results with N.N.D.P. candidates being declared "unopposed"

winners. Many westerners could not understand how a party they loathed and voted

against could have possibly gained a legitimate victory. (19)

The Western Region, therefore, realized that the ballot system could not overthrow Akintola

(now leader of N.N.D.P. and premier of the West). People resorted to protests. Arson and anarchy loomed in Western Nigeria. Unfortunately, the federal government did not declare a state of emergency as they had done when Awolowo and his supporters were imprisoned.

Instead, the government refused to undermine Akintola's power for political party reasons and

"decided to authorize an even more severe and massive military crackdown, crudely codenamed

'Operation No Mercy,' to curb the lawlessness in the Western Region' (39). Such a corrupt,

brutal, and 'man-know-man' system increased the public's mistrust for the Balewa-led government.

Thus, ethnic rivalries, regional politics, nepotism, electoral malpractices and rigging, public mistrust for the federal government, and corruption encapsulated Nigeria's early independence days. Ensuing violence from this political instability required a strong intervention and force. Hence, the federal government and powerful godfathers like the Premier of the North,

Ahmadu Bello, invited the military to quell uprisings. These constant invitations inspired a political awareness and to some extent, a savior-complex in the military. As Siollun puts it,

Some of the plotters may have been politically radicalized after having front row seats in

the major political events of the time. Major Nzeogwu served as an intelligence officer

during Awolowo's treason trial and Majors Anuforo, Ademoyega and Onwuatuegwu all

served in the army units that were used to quell the Tiv uprising (and they sympathized

with the grievances of the Tiv rioters and disapproved of the manner in which they were

suppressed)…One of Captain Nwobosi's close friends (a corporal) was killed on duty

during the government's military crackdown in the Western Region. (33)

Adewale Ademoyega, a Mons-trained officer who previously studied History at the

University of London, wrote a memoir to narrate the coup and its aftermath. Why We Struck: The

Story of the First Nigerian Coup (1981) reveals an underlying savior complex in the military and praises the revolutionaries' efforts to liberate Nigeria. One of Ademoyega's motivations was to correct notions that ethnic colorations defined the coup. He narrates the coup's motivation as strictly ideological, comments on the socialist ideology of the revolutionary soldiers, and identifies the challenges that led to the coup's failure. Ademoyega participated in the Lagos arm of the coup and was in charge of occupying and controlling all strategic locations of the Federal

Capital, including the control room at Lion Building (the Police headquarters), the P.&T.

Telephone Exchange, Parliament Building, the Nigeria External Telecommunications Operations

Room, and the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (N.B.C.) (Ademoyega 72). After the coup, he was detained alongside hundred other soldiers believed to have participated in the coup. He was later transferred to a prison in Eastern Nigeria, where he was caught in the Nigerian civil war and fought on the Biafran side under the Liberation Army. Ademoyega died on February 1, 2007.

Although he claims to have been part of the three soldiers (Majors Ifeajuna, Nzeogwu and Ademoyega) who, "formed the nucleus of the revolutionary group" (55), Siollun cites a

Special Branch police report that points to, "Majors Ifeajuna and Okafor and Captain Oji" as the original conspirators (32). One cannot dismiss the emphasis on the ethnic composition of the

"original conspirators" in this report, as they all are Igbo, and it excludes Ademoyega, a Yoruba man. This report probably attempted to assert the period's sentiments that the coup was an Igbo coup. Since most of the original conspirators were all Igbo, Siollun's argument that "ethnic ties may have been unconsciously present in so far as was necessary to facilitate plot secrecy" (32) provides better reading of the coup's composition. Furthermore, one could question ethnic colorations looking at soldiers like Kaduna Nzeogwu, who were more familiar with ethnicities where they were locals than their parents' ancestry. Nzeogwu's alias, "Kaduna" refers to his

Northern birth city where he was born and bred. Siollun notes that Nzeogwu "frequently referred to himself as "a Northerner" (and)…spoke fluent Hausa (the lingua franca of the Northern

Region) like a native. In fact, Nzeogwu's command of Hausa was better than his Igbo" (37).

Both literally and figuratively, the revolutionaries saw themselves as saviors of the nation. Having experienced the dysfunctional civilian government, they set up a plan to correct the constitutional and ideological "anomalies" evident in the Nigerian system. First, they planned

to dissolve the four regions (North, West, Mid-West, and East) and create fourteen states (seven each in the North and South) governed by military governors. This change would dissolve the over-concentration of power in certain regions. They would release the political prisoners from the A.G. crisis, "Chief Awolowo, Jakande, Anthony Enahoro, Onitiri, Omisade and so on," (33) to abate the grievances and unrest that had plagued the country since these personalities were arrested. Next, they would create an interwoven system that accommodated "military and civilian personalities in the government" (33). Ademoyega calls this the revolutionary social system which would present the Army as an integral part of the people, "ideologically linked with them, economically employed with them, educationally trained with them and socially adjusted to them" (35). Thus, contrary to the political party system that used the Army as a tool of suppression and intimidation, it would operate under an inclusive revolutionary system. For the economy, they would eradicate Nigeria's capitalism for a system that would encourage equal wealth distribution. Likely modeled after socialist and communist systems with a hint of liberalism, Ademoyega suggests that infrastructural, educational, professional, and social development would be a communal duty. Thus, "all professionals would work collectively for the community, sharing a common ideology and objective" (39). Their foreign policy would project Nigeria as a sovereign country outside Westminster's influence. Finally, they would release Chief Awolowo from prison. His liberal socialism and development of the Western region aligned with their ideology. Awolowo's free education policy, social services, technological development, and agricultural policies in Western Nigeria made him the revolutionaries' choice for Nigeria's post-coup leader. Unfortunately, Captain Udeaja, the

Airforce captain tasked with releasing Awolowo from prison, never arrived for the final rehearsal of the coup plot. Overall, the revolutionaries had a detailed plan which Ademoyega dedicates a

whole chapter to discuss. These ideologies were developed over meetings at the Officers' Mess and while working. The Officers' Mess was a space for testing fellow officers' ideologies and fielding potential and like-minded revolutionaries who would participate in the coup.

One could argue that much of Ademoyega wrote the coup's ideology against a background of the dictatorial military rule that followed the coup. Ademoyega constantly refers to subsequent military governments' mistakes, which the revolutionary social system would have addressed. Unlike Army officers who used the military rule to enrich themselves (like the civilian politicians) and suppress the masses, "the revolutionary system would have certainly put an end to the ever-widening gap between the laborers and the master-landowners" by creating an equal system of communal ownership and wealth-development. While Ademoyega describes a socialist system founded on communal ownership and modesty, one wonders if the revolutionaries would have followed a similar path as subsequent Military Heads of State. For example, Siollun describes Ademoyega as "the flamboyant sports car driving Major "Wale"

Ademoyega" (32). One then questions his ideas on modesty.

The preceding background frames my examination of issues that shaped the values of elite military officers who toppled the Nigerian government on January 15, 1966. Scholars like

Ejiogu and Gutteridge have studied how the discriminatory and divisive recruitment policies implemented by the colonial state and various postcolonial governments have motivated coups that seek redress. In contrast, I focus on a deep-seated and enduring savior complex that informed numerous interventions by officers invariably convinced that the military was uniquely qualified to rescue a beleaguered nation. The messianic zeal persisted for almost four decades in the face of the colossal failures of successive regimes. Taking the first coup as my case study, I

contend that this savior complex derives from a masculinist ethos of discipline, heroism, and camaraderie, forged in various British military academies.

These three concepts echo elements of Victorian masculinities normalized in popular

Victorian school narratives such as Rudyard Kipling's Stalky&Co and Thomas Hughes' Tom

Brown's Schooldays. The school functioned as an institution for building Victorian masculinities and prepared English men for the imperial cause. The military academy built on existing notions of ideal masculinity and discipline to prepare English officers and later, commonwealth soldiers for service. However, as E.C. Moorcraft's analysis of Sandhurst military culture shows, discipline and officer comportment were debatable. For instance,

the local inhabitants of the Cambarley area (where Sandhurst is located) have often been

wary of the cadets, even up to present day (late 1970s)…in the nineteenth century,

frequent …battles took place…The rebelliousness was not restricted to the locals;

frequent mutinies occurred within the college. The first broke out in 1804…the Sandhurst

mutinies were caused by bad conditions, usually poor food, but there also

existed…dissatisfaction with the system of promotion (25).

Thus, soldiers trained in British military academies did not always have a "saintly" and aloof reaction to socio-political issues. For Commonwealth officers coming from a complex colonial and political history, there were reasons to rebel against the ideology of allegiance to the state's leaders, amidst political chaos. Therefore, I read William Golding's Lord of the Flies against this background as a text that illustrates the aftermath of British occupation, which left debris that commonwealth countries continue to tackle. The 1954 dystopian novel provides an instructive critique of the degeneration of English manhood ultimately exhibited in the colony.

In a similar, but also contrasting vein, Ademoyega's memoir depicts the dissolution, among privileged military, of venerated English masculinist ideals in the volatile and chaotic context of 1960s postcolonial Nigeria. My study highlights the centrality of the Victorian school system in socializing boys regarding appropriate manliness. That system invariably influenced modern British schools and military academies, twin institutions that continued to shape the kind of masculinities depicted in Lord of the Flies, and Why We Struck.

THE PARTING GIFT: CRITIQUING HEROIC MASCULINITY IN WILLIAM GOLDING’S LORD OF THE FLIES AND ADEWALE ADEMOYEGA’S WHY WE STRUCK

We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all, we’re not savages. We’re English, and the English are best at everything. So we’ve got to do the right things. —William Golding Lord of the Flies (52)

As outlined in Chapter 1, the chapter attempts a cross-cultural intertextual reading bringing together two unlikely texts, that is, Lord of the Flies and Why We Struck. The former is a canonical mid-20th century novel focused, in large part, on the pitfalls of a flawed but enduring culture of heroic and civilizing masculinity. Emerging after nearly three decades, the latter memoir features a critical remembrance of the messy and contested legacy of the bloody 1966 military coup that toppled Nigeria’s first postcolonial government. It reflects the partisan but nevertheless invaluable perspective of one a principal participant, that is, a decorated and charismatic major played a leading role in planning and executing the fateful putsch.

Notwithstanding important culture contextual and aesthetic differences (which I discuss below), the two texts embody an uncanny parallel: Much like the novel, the memoir embodies the pitfalls of a dubious but powerful cult of messianic masculinism. The coup was mounted at the behest of highly educated members of the military’s elite officer corps. These men came of age in the context of the heading nationalism that swept Africa during the late colonial period. As well, they served as the military adopted a “Nigerianization,” under which Black soldiers were promoted to replace white British officers who had commanded the oppressive and reviled colonial army. Despite these stark historical realities, the Black members of the postcolonial officer corps embraced—both consciously and unconsciously—toxic ideas regarding heroic masculinity. These ideas first took root as the man were educated at various prestigious and exclusive high schools, the curricula and cultures of which continued, even in independent

Nigeria, to uncritically mimic the values of traditional 19th century English schools. Moreover,

notions of heroic masculinity become further embedded as the men obtained specialized training at rarified and tradition-bound British military academies. As elaborated below, distorted, and destructive English masculinity was at the heart of the coup as well as its ruinous aftermath.

From “Refined” English Boys to Island-razing “Men”

Published in 1954, Lord of the Flies depicts a group of English teenagers who find themselves marooned in a remote, uninhabited and untamed island following a horrific plane crash that killed all adults who had been designated as guardians for a long planned adventure flight. After a brief interlude during which the frightened boys attempt to execute an orderly plan maximizing the prospects for survival and/or rescue, they quickly degenerate into divisive, disorderly, and destructive conduct. Thus, they reduce a once tranquil island into what the author provocatively terms a den of savagery as well as a burning wreckage. Disavowing the unity of purpose and gentlemanly civility that would ostensibly have been inculcated by a privileged

English education, they evince appalling selfishness, self-sabotaging inattentiveness, vicious cruelty and wanton destructiveness. In a pointed irony, Golding deploys inflamed racist rhetoric in a highly effective reversal of longstanding colonial discourses that invariably depicted various far-flung peoples (and locations) as culturally uncivilized and congenitally unruly. Amid the rapid unraveling of the British empire, the novel offered a withering critique not only of lingering jingoism, but also, the country’s continuing fetishization of masculinist narratives celebrating messianic heroism and the persistent grounding of those narratives in British adult

“boyishness”.

Beginning with the entwined liberation of India and Pakistan in 1947, diverse British colonies in Africa and Asia attained independence from Britain at various points throughout the second half of the 20th century. In short, the novel embodied a timely anti-colonial critique.

Golding’s critique stands in sharp contrast to colonial classics such as Robinson Crusoe. Daniel

Defoe’s paradigmatic 1709 novel features an initially desperate, but eventually, heroic

Englishman who purportedly brings order, civilization, productivity, and industry to an unnamed, remote, and ungoverned South American island. Crusoe is hopelessly trapped on the apparently uninhabited island after surviving a calamitous shipwreck that killed all his colleagues. At first glance, the lonely, beleaguered but ultimately triumphant protagonist represents an unlikely English hero not simply on account of the overwhelming odds staked against his very existence in incredibly hostile environment, but also, his initially unimpressive credentials. Paradoxically, however, the unlikeliness of the event comes to underline the success of his belated and self-fashioned heroic masculinity. In an apparently reckless impulse, he decisively turns away from the prospect of a comfortable middle-class life. Instead he opts for the exciting but dangerous life of a sailor over the strong objections of shocked family members, especially his disappointed father. Against this backdrop, the shipwreck constitutes a life- defining and potentially disastrous crossroad. After many false starts and repeated failures, he gradually but triumphantly comes to his own over the course of nearly 30 lonely years. Through dogged resolution, trial and error experimentation, relentless self-education, and meticulous record-keeping, he embarks of a remarkable journey encompassing such wide-ranging fields as medicine, botany, zoology, geography, plant and animal agriculture, paper manufacturing and building construction.

Bereft of the invaluable solidarity and irreplaceable support of human companions, the protagonist confronts and conquers unimagined challenges in an environment where sheer survival entailed daily struggle. Initially, his time is primarily consumed by the unending quest for essentials like safe drinking water and non-toxic food not to mention sufficiently sturdy

shelter while striving to avoid potential predators and endure frequently and violently inclement weather. In the context of an extremely harsh and wholly unfamiliar environment, any mistakes—including, for example, unwittingly ingesting an enticing plant or fruit—remain potentially fatal devoid, as he was for a long stretch, of even rudimentary medical knowledge or supplies. Slowly, painfully, and even fitfully, the industrious and indefatigable Crusoe triumphs in the face of these formidable odds. He first tames the wild landscape before turning his attention to Friday, the equally wild and uncivilized man whom he abruptly and mysteriously encounters and rescues. Thus, Crusoe upholds the savior complex which glories human and spatial conquest. In a pivotal scene, Defoe depicts the self-satisfied Crusoe showing an audience who arrive the island, the spectacular success of years of unrelentingly back-breaking, and occasionally frustrating products of his putatively single-hand labor. In an instructive turn,

Crusoe narrative becomes a powerful illustration of messianic masculinity premised, as it is, on an unlikely hero who rises to demonstrate typical English grit and ingrained capital ingenuity in a far-flung and untamed outpost. Read this way, the narrative of his heroism serves as a precise analogy of a self-serving British official who courageously undertook the divine mandate to tame and civilize the remotest interior of the dark African continent. The protagonist highlights various fortifications and emblems of civilization including a collection of caves used as living quarters, storage, and enclosures for livestock. These constructions define his ability to adapt to an alien environment and to maintain the necessities of life as an Englishman—he ensures he can produce butter and cheese from the livestock he grooms. Defoe’s novel builds on the tradition of narratives premised on white male protagonists conquering alien spaces1.

1 For a broadly similar examination of the scope and impact of heroic male narrative in English culture see Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (Routledge: London 2003). As a distinguished of 18th century English history, Wilson’s study provides an instructive complement for literary scholarship on British masculine hegemony. She focuses on the role of remote islands in the formation of gendered

The historical context addressed above underlines the importance of Golding’s mid-20th century oppositional narrative. Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of young schoolboys who are shipwrecked on an island. As they struggle between the need to seek an escape and hunt for food, the unity they once had begins to dissipate. Eventually, the once united group is disbanded into the savages and the outcasts, some boys are killed, and the island is set on fire.

Seeing the raging fire, a naval ship arrives to rescue the disillusioned boys. The novel questions the lionization of English survival and dominance in uncharted territories. In addition, it debunks the myth of an ideal male identity heroically forged in the extreme adversity of alien distant lands. Instead, the novel depicts young boys tussling between self-restraint and irrationality. Key characters such as Ralph, Piggy, Jack, and Roger represent this distinction between sense and irrationality. For example, Ralph questions Jack— the head of the hunters— on his inordinate desire for meat while the fire which would foster an escape from the island is left unattended.

They are torn between, on the one hand, the urgent need to formulate viable plans on the island until they can be rescued and, on the other hand the understandable desire to signal their loss on the island and embark on a journey back to civilization. In the end, irrationality prevails as chaos swiftly ensues.

Golding equally depicts the complexity of masculine ideals and questions a one-sided view of English masculinity. At the fore of his narrative is the critique of muscular masculinity

and racialized subjects of empire. “Anthropologists have drawn attention to islands as, variously, sites of geographic and cultural singularity, stages for cross-cultural encounter and conquest, and engines of the geopolitics of empire” (55)

Also, see Simon Gikandi’s Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism (Columbia: New York 1993) .According to Gikandi, “such subjunctive geographies (like Islands) are integral to the narrative of Englishness, its identity, structure and function” (46). Similarly, these geographies reconstruct definitive concepts of Englishness such as heroic masculinities as texts such as Lord of the Flies question such ideals. English writers also use them to renounce and question English values while simultaneously reaffirming British imperialism. In modernist texts like Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies, colonized spaces become the stage for examining the failure of Englishness.

illustrated through Jack’s character. Jack’s dominating personality, aggressive nature, and continual silencing of physically weaker boys destroy the initial camaraderie the boys had built.

In the novel, Jack embodies masculinity that thrives on violence, brutality, and braggadocio while Ralph’s masculinity thrives on masculine heroism and common sense. When

Jack and his gang disband from the rest of the group to establish a tribe that “hunt, feast and have fun” (196), it is at the expense of the other group of boys who remain with Ralph. Jack’s followers raid the other boys’ fire (to roast their game) while Ralph’s group struggle between the decision to maintain the fire or join their departed comrades in their feast. Although Jack succeeds in planting doubts in his rival’s group, his braggadocio merely conceals his own insecurity. The tribesmen or savages—as Jack’s group are called— paint their faces to instill fear in their rivals, and to mask their own emotions. As the narrator notes, “He (Jack) paused and looked round. He was safe from shame or self-consciousness behind the mask of his paint and could look at each of them in turn” (197). Here, Golding exposes muscular masculinity as performative—a mask worn to hide fear and insecurity. According to Berthold Schoene-

Harwood this mask helps the boys suppress any form of femininity which may threaten their masculinity. As he puts it, “The boys’ masculinity is a precarious construct, extremely paranoid and hypersensitive to the forever imminent threat of unmasking” (55). Ultimately, a constant shielding of feminine traits and a performance of toxic masculine traits contributes to the boys’ barbarism which leads to the island’s destruction.

Ironically, Jack (the chief of the boys who set the island on fire) initially states that the boys’ Englishness contrasts savagery and primitive descent. His later actions betray this statement as his individual desires destroy the camaraderie-influenced and rules-led community that Piggy and Ralph initially establish. Jack moves from a person informed by civility and

orderliness into someone who disregards rules, trumps on authority, and eventually, becomes the terror that destroys the island. After creating his tribe of hunters, Jack terrorizes the outcasts:

Ralph, Piggy and Samneric. Later, Roger (his treacherous comrade) murders Piggy, Samneric are forcefully conscripted into the savage group and Ralph, the deposed leader is hunted and smoked out. After this treacherous turn of events, Jack and his tribesmen set the island on fire. While the destructive fire signals their escape, as a naval ship arrives the island to rescue the boys, it equally symbolizes the British boys’ inordinate desires that overwhelm the once pristine island.

Golding’s portrayal of a wreckage ensuing from British occupation thus counters notions of refined English boys trained in British schools. In sharp contrast to Crusoe’s heroic triumph in a remote, ungoverned and uncivilized at the onset of English colonial dominance in the 18th century, the boys rapid turn to savagery called in questions, long-held ideals affirming the supremacy not justly of English culture, but also, English education. From the examples of Tom

Brown’s Schooldays and Stalky&Co., British schools function as the ideal institution that instils discipline and breeds young English gentlemen. The boys’ savagery on the island beclouds a quintessential Englishness initially suggested by Jack who is cited at the beginning of this chapter. It is no surprise then that the naval officer who rescues them states, “‘I should have thought,’ said the officer as he visualized the search before him, ‘I should have thought that a pack of British boys— you’re all British, aren’t you? — would have been able to put up a better show than that—I mean—’” (284). The officer’s disappointment echoes an expectation required of English boys taught in the traditions of discipline and grit exhibited in texts like Robinson

Crusoe. Secondly, the statement outlines how performance underlies British masculinity; as the officer literally puts it, the boys should have put on a better show that displays ideal masculinity.

Berthold Schoene-Harwood’s critique of Lord of the Flies, “Boys Armed with Sticks:

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies” examines how performative masculinity crumbles on the island. The boys understand heroic masculinity as something which opposes feminine acts like caring and showing emotions or empathy. Schoene-Harwood notes that boys like Ralph are susceptible to the fantasies of masculine freedom, heroic masculinity, and adventure which the uninhabited island provides (53). Hence, “immediately after their arrival on the island, the boys embark on a dramatic assertion of their masculinity in contradistinction to what they perceive as its ‘other’” (53). Ralph initially dismisses Piggy’s enthusiastic friendship until he finds something (Piggy’s name and body type) to assert his dominance over Piggy. When the other boys respond to Ralph’s conch call, Ralph is all but reluctant to share Piggy’s name with the group who in turn, laugh at Piggy. Also, Jack’s dramatic entrance with his group of choristers intimidates boys like Piggy. In fact, Piggy is constantly shut down, Jack bullies him with words like “fatty” while Ralph dismisses his ideas. Jack and Ralph also dissuade him from joining them on their expedition around the island. Rather, Piggy maintains a maternal position as he cares for the younger boys (littluns). This position is further heightened with his constant reference to his aunt. Piggy’s character becomes the moralizing agent, the one who advises the boys to curb their excesses and remain focused on their plan to escape the island. By the end of the novel, after

Roger has murdered Piggy and Ralph hides from Jack’s wrath, Ralph misses Piggy’s invaluable advice as, “there was no Piggy to talk sense” (276).

Similarly, performative masculinity in the text reflects some of Bradley Deane’s arguments in “Imperial Boyhood: Piracy and the Play Ethic.” According to Deane, the play ethic defined the masculinity of late Victorian England imperialists who believed they had an eternal boyhood and saw the empire as a playground for exhibiting their perpetual youth. Deane

examines Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim to address the concept of the play ethic evident in boy-pirate relationships and how it relates to developing reconstructions of imperial masculinities during the late Victorian period. Lord of the Flies highlights the link between the play ethic and the imperial conquest by showing how quickly the stranded boys claim ownership of the island. Infact, they compare their situation to characters in

Treasure Island, The Coral Island, etc. Ralph echoes his comrades’ thoughts when he says,

“This is our island. It’s a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us (,) we’ll have fun”

(41). Ralph’s excitement alludes to the notion of adventure tied to imperial conquest. When he,

Simon and Jack survey the island at the top of a mountain, Ralph looks triumphantly at the land and declares, “All ours” (34). Although he is an excited young boy cherishing the thought of being left without adult supervision, his words sustain a rhetoric of imperial domination. The island becomes a space for exerting boyish fantasies of heroic masculinity as evident in the need to have a ‘nation’ governed by a leader—Ralph and sustained by rules such as holding the conch when one wishes to speak. The boys’ inclination to “play” and explore the island like characters in Treasure Island, goes back to late Victorian configurations of masculinity related to the empire. In such adventure stories, boys often find themselves in a position where they must overcome challenges and tests that will strengthen their masculinity and project them as heroes to their comrades.

Deane’s thesis on the imperial play ethic provides a contextual reading of the boys’ masculinities in Lord of the Flies. In particular, the play ethic differs from the games ethic of the

1850s muscular Christianity, which maintained that physical development and agility mirrored a moral character. Rather, “The play ethic prized the ostensibly natural impulses of boys and sought to preserve them rather than force them to submit to the external order of moral maturity”

(692). In this sense, the boys are liberated from rules, traditions and restrictive principles that govern ideal masculinity. According to Deane, three key elements define the play ethic expressed on the imperial space. First, British moral laws do not exist for the characters. Second, rules are established to guide the characters’ activities in the imperial frontier. Third, the fear of shame cautions the characters’ actions as they follow the rules. Lord of the Flies is set in a space that symbolizes the imperial frontier which exists as a playground for the boys to express their boyhood outside the moral laws of Britain. In the novel, these elements ironically contribute to the undoing of heroic masculinities in the text. First, the adults’ absence signifies the dismissal of moral laws and moralizing agents that will police or curb the boys’ freedom. While adults themselves may have become rebellious or irresponsible, for the boys, an adult symbolizes restraint, order and an enforcer of social norms. Their absence ultimately adds to the freedom the boys feel. As a result, when Piggy, the moralizing agent, attempts to suggest rules outside the island’s configuration to caution the boys’ erring ways, he is continuously shut down.

In line with Deane’s assertion, the boys would rather live by their own rules than the moral laws of Britain. Although they cherish their newfound freedom, they equally remember that they must escape the island. Therefore, Ralph beckons on the boys, using the conch (which symbolizes authority) to deliberate on rules to guide their stay and escape from the island. Two main rules guide their stay on the island. First, during their assemblies, only the person holding the conch can speak. Second, the boys build a fire which they resolve to keep aflame so that ships within close proximity can spot and save them. Jack is particularly excited about the rules and suggests that they punish anyone who breaks them. “We’ll have rules! He cried excitedly.

“Lot’s of rules! Then when anyone breaks ’em…Doink!” (39). His excitement betrays a future where he continually breaks the rules and ultimately leaves the group to set up his own tribe. On

several occasions, Jack speaks out of turn and interrupts whoever has the conch. On one occasion, the boys meet to discuss the presence of a beast on the island and how to ensure their safety. In blatant violation of the group’s cardinal rule, Jack interrupts Piggy when it is the latter’s turn to address the group. Ralph admonishes Jack to remain silent, reminding him that,

“‘Piggy’s got the conch.’ Far from backing down, Jack angrily accuses Ralph of playing favorites: ‘That’s right—favor Piggy as you always do—.’” (123). A heated argument escalates as Ralph repeatedly affirms the primacy of the rules even as an increasingly exasperated Jack angrily denounces them.

The fraught interactions among various characters in Lord of the Flies exemplify a persistent conflict between affirming selfless duty and embracing selfish pleasure at the heart of conventional masculine formation. The two dominant boys, Ralph, and Jack, evince either side of that divide. Ralph’s thoughts and actions seems primarily motivated by a deep-seated sense of responsibility and ethic of care, both for himself and those around him. Together with Piggy,

Ralph establishes an organized system, ensures that the boys are accounted for and builds a shelter to accommodate the boys. In sharp contrast, Jack’s conduct appears all but entirely defined by selfishness, hypocrisy, and shallow pleasure-seeking. He repeatedly challenges the group’s self-generated rules in a pointless and reckless way. Despite a penchant of destructive self-gratification, he challenges Ralph’s competent leadership. At a pivotal moment, he bullies less aggressive colleagues into joining him in the adventure of hunting instead of focusing on the boring but potentially life-saving duty they had been assigned, that is, attending to the group’s distress fire. That choice allows the fire to die out, thus ensuring the boys would have been invisible to any passing ship. It also triggers the division and in-fighting that would later undermine any sense of group solidarity. Ralph rebukes Jack, calling attention to his inordinate

desire to hunt at the group’s expense. Despite the initial shame he gets from this rebuke, Jack continues to explore, hunt, and exploit the island while Ralph, Simon, and Piggy build shelters and take care of the ‘littluns’. In short, Jack’s individualism neglects the group’s well-being. He disavows the sense of camaraderie and duty that would have been expected of English boys who find themselves isolated in trying circumstances.

Eventually, Jack’s ‘play’ and boyish explorations descend into something darker and more sinister. After Jack’s first successful hunt, the narrator says the following about Jack “His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it and taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.” (92). This statement foreshadows an imminent descent into a savagery beyond child play and fun. Piggy describes Jack’s bloodthirst and playfulness thus “You and your blood, Jack Merridew! You and your hunting! We might have gone home—” (93). Here, Piggy (who later becomes a fatal victim of Jack’s brutality), critiques Jack’s obsession with ‘fun’ and ‘play’ showing how Jack has become lost and entangled in the playground. Jack’s response to rebuke recalls Deane’s emphasis on shame as a significant element in the play ethic expressed on the imperial frontier.

After Ralph confronts Jack on his negligence, Jack’s initial impulse is “to hit someone” (94) out of the humiliation he feels. and later apologizes for his misbehavior.

Shame also defines the boys’ fear of emasculation. The boys suppress their fears to project inarticulacy of emotions which drives the narrative of tough masculinity. For example, when searching for the beast or animal that some of the littluns claim to dream about and have seen, Ralph and Jack are consumed with fear but mask it by testing each other’s masculinity.

Jack declares to the group that he will go up the mountain to search for the beast. He then taunts

Ralph with the word, “Coming?”. Ralph understands the bait and calmly replies that he does not

mind. This exchange between Jack and Ralph depicts performative masculinities that depends on the group’s approval for survival. A refusal to conform to this performative will result in public shame and indignation. As Deane posits, the “playground is also a space of recognition, of the ostentatious performance of one’s masculinity before other men…a theatre of character in which each boy is both actor and witness” (700). Among other boys, Jack embodies masculine theatrics. Initially, he is the choir leader who orders his group around and intimidates his colleagues with his mere presence. For example, when Jack first joins the group, the more submissive Piggy cowers in Jack’s domineering presence: “He was intimidated by this uniformed superiority and the offhand authority in (Jack) Merridew’s voice. He shrank to the other side of Ralph and busied himself with his glasses” (21).

Belonging to a group plays a significant role in determining each boy’s masculinist expression and performance. The group is defined by bonds and friendships that, as noted earlier, are essential for masculine development and success. Devoid of ostensibly feminine attributes like mutual recognition and emotional depth, these friendships are defined by convenience and superficiality. In fact, the relationships are often predatory with stronger boys taking advantage of weaker counterparts. In a telling instance early in the novel, the emotionally distant Ralph is dismissive when the more sensitive Piggy suggests that they should search for their missing colleagues. In this instance, the boys embrace the former’s indifference over the latter’s concern.

Even as Piggy seeks the names of the missing boys, Ralph silences him by continuing to hold on to the conch, that is, the symbol of control. Eventually, Ralph emerges the group’s undisputed leader, a position to which he is elected mostly because the others had come to respect the authority conferred by his possessing the conch.

From the beginning of Lord of the Flies, Golding emphasizes the boys’ indifference towards meaningful relationships. He suggests that the apparent camaraderie apparent is entirely situational, that is, a mere convenience in the wake of the unique circumstances in which the stranded boys find themselves. For example, one group of boys pledge their loyalty to Jack not because of any deep-seated feelings, but rather, the superficial bonds are forged because they belonged to a choir group as school boys and become hunters when they arrive the island.

Subsequently, they invariably support him, despite harboring reservations regarding the soundness of specific opinions. In contrast, Jack’s nemesis Ralph creates a countervailing group largely on the strength of Piggy’s persistence and encouragement. Because the boys lack a foundational sense of brotherhood around which all of them could productively unite, they are inexorably overwhelmed by division, in-fighting and sheer chaos. In a fatal blow to any possibility of reconciliation, Jack eventually breaks off to forge a splinter group. The remaining members are too few to maintain the distress fire further dimming the prospects for rescue.

Moreover, Jack’s conduct becomes even more reckless in the absence of the basic rules as well as the element of shame that had previously constrained him, however incompletely. In a dramatic illustration of the superficial nature of the group’s bond, he does not hesitate to recruit other boys for his destructive splinter group.

The idea that physically arduous male-bonding was necessary for successful masculine development endured well into the 20th century. Golding’s shocking depiction of the degeneration of apparently well-brought up English boys called that idea radically into question.

In a pivotal passage towards the end of Lord of the Flies, the naval officer who comes to rescue the boys laments the implications of their shocking capitulation and unmitigated disgrace. The boys had set the island on fire to smoke out one of their own who they intended to kill. Such

intent to murder one of the boys contrasts the initial camaraderie that defined their stay on the island. Ralph responds to the officer’s shock by saying, “‘It was like that at first,’ said Ralph,

‘before things--…We were together then—’” (284). Ultimately, the imperial playground exposes the complexity and hypocrisy of heroic masculinity by showing boys driven by individualism and masculine excess. Boys lose their sense of morality and discipline when left to express masculine energy on the island. In Lord of the Flies, the island symbolizes the colonial space, which the boys literally and figuratively exploit and plunder. Secondly, the island represents

“alterity,” chaos, and a “modernist dystopia” (163) that accompanied a period of wars and global unrest. The boys model the adults’ similarly chaotic world as they navigate their masculinity and their English identity.

To end my analysis, I cite Gikandi’s quote on how the actions of the imperial “other” endure in the colonial periphery. “The agent of civilization has died, yet the consequences of his actions and discredited ideals remain, both as insignias of his failure and as evidence of the inevitable corruption of the African landscape” (169). The boys’ eventual destruction of the island symbolizes the instability that accompanied British intervention in former colonies like

Nigeria. While the boys bemoan their fate, the burning island becomes wreckage and an environmental mess. As in most modernist texts, the island exists only as a background upon which the boys map their evolution and descent into savagery.

“No More Ashamed to say That You are Nigerians”: Language and the Savior’s Burden in Adewale Ademoyega’s Why We Struck

“Our intentions were honorable, our views were national, and our goals were idealistic”

(Why We Struck 60)

I take both the title and epigraph used to frame this section from Ademoyega’s Why

Struck (60). The first statement recalls an excerpt of a triumphant address to the nation delivered by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu in the heady aftermath of the 1966 coup. Implausibly optimistic and self-congratulatory, the statement exemplifies the heroic masculinity embodied by a handful of revolutionary military officers who became convinced that it was their solemn duty to save postcolonial Nigeria for the ruinous hands of corrupt, undisciplined and pathetic civilian men. Despite lacking any expertise or experience in government, the men considered themselves uniquely qualified to shoulder the awesome national responsibilities. Their misplaced confidence bore the unmistakable hallmarks of the messianism that had been produced by years of rarified

English education—both home and abroad. With stunning grandiloquence, Major Nzeogwu asserts that the coup had, seemingly within hours, restored to long-suffering Nigerians the dignity lost during five years of civilian rule. The bloody chaos unfolding in Lagos, the capital,

(and in Kaduna where the Premier of the Northern region was murdered) which among other atrocities, entailed a litany of summary executions, belied the Major’s self-assurance. In contrast to the first statement, the second citation features Ademoyega’s measured, if not defensive, reckoning with the coup’s troubled legacy. It is informed with the benefit of nearly fully fifteen years of hindsight. Although he never takes full responsibility for their acts, the retired major seems somewhat chastened by history. By emphasizing the purity of the coup leaders’ intentions for the country, he seems to acknowledge serious failures in execution. Crucially, however, a

sense of messianism persists through the years, even as it adopts a melancholic guise when reflecting on a well-intentioned but nevertheless tragic outcome.

As explained in the introduction, Nigeria inherited from departing British colonial authorities, a loosely bound and unwieldy state defined by fractious, if not intractable, regional, ethnic, and religious differences. These ruinous divisions pitted the interests of the overwhelming

Muslim North against the Christian South. The incompetence, manipulation and/or favoritism of ill-motivated colonial polices had long served to exacerbate, if not provoke, fraught communal relations. In the 1950s, with Nigeria’s independence looming, Britain was keen to safeguard the political, economic and military interests of the West, especially as aggressive interventions by the Soviet Union and United States transformed Africa into one of theaters for the Cold War. In this regard, the British were more amenable to the Northern Peoples Convention (NPC), a conservative political party led by Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa that, as denoted by its name, drew support overwhelmingly from the north. In contrast, they were rather more hostile towards the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon (NCNC), a more progressive part led by

Herbert Macaulay and Nnandi Azikwe, which primarily drew support from the East and the

Action Group (AG) led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo which drew support from the West. A variety of scholars of Nigerian history and politics believe that the British conspired to ensure

Tafawa Balewa’s installation as the first postcolonial prime minister. First, they manipulated the results of a national census that was conducted between 1952 and 53. Consequently, it is believed that the corrupt population data facilitated widespread electoral fraud by the colonial authorities on behalf of their preferred candidate. Chinua Achebe in There was a Country notes that the governor-general James Robertson supported Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the Northern

NPC candidate. Additionally, the Northern leaders who had taken little or no active part in the independence struggle became the face of Nigeria’s independence.

Nigeria’s political instability became imminent as regional politics influenced federal government decisions. Some of the federal government policies are explained in chapter one.

Evidently the Balewa administration implemented poorly explained and incompetently implemented attempts to remedy the problem of unequal socio-economic advancement using a program that promoted less educated Northerners into the officer corps. In turn, this created deep resentments among better educated but overlooked candidates from the South. In an ill-fated bid to consolidate legitimacy, the new government entrenched nepotism in prestigious appointments as well as the award of lucrative contracts. These actions provoked strong resentment among the

British-trained officer corps of the military (mostly from Southern Nigeria) who increasingly came to regard themselves as the last bastion of patriotism, idealism, and professionalism in the country.

Amid widespread popular discontent, a group of disgruntled elite majors, including

Majors Kaduna Nzeogwu, Adewale Ademoyega, Chris Anuforo, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Donatus

Okafor, Humphrey Chukwuka, Timothy Onwuategwu, Captain Ben Gbulie and Captain

Ogbonna Oji, staged a coup on January 15th, 1966. During the chaotic and bloody putsch, at least 22 prominent figures were summarily executed, most notably Prime Minister Balewa and several other senior cabinet ministers as well as military commanders and, most horrifyingly, their defenseless wives. In heroic masculinist terms, the treasonous mutiny was recast as a moral imperative to rescue the sinking ship of the state from the hands of wayward, corrupt, and enfeebled civilians and military officers. In a hastily prepared address to the nation, Nzeogwu sought to delegitimize the deposed Balewa administration by announcing that Nigeria’s real

enemy was the nepotistic class of politicians who had been illegitimately installed by the British.

In turn, these politicians had instituted a system designed to divide Nigeria permanently. Also, he criticized the indiscipline that had ruptured Nigeria’s socio-political sphere. The major elaborates on the charges in a crucial passage:

Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places

that seek bribes and demand 10 percent; those that seek to keep the country divided

permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or VIPs at least, the tribalists,

the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international

circles, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back

by their words and deeds (Nzeogwu qtd. In Ademoyega 89)

For the speaker, Nigeria’s fate lay in the hands of conscientious and empathetic military officers like him. However, despite ostensible honorable intentions, the messy reality of the coup unraveled a complex or morally ambiguous heroism. In the face of its “authenticity,”

Ademoyega’s memoir exposes some inconsistencies in the heroic representation of the soldiers.

Some of these inconsistencies are highlighted in Max Siollun’s Oil, Politics, and Violence:

Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture (1966-1976)2. Siollun’s historical account of the 1966 coup, supported by archival evidence and interviews, coupled with his analysis as a non-participant in

2 Max Siollun is a Nigerian Historian who specializes in Nigeria’s political history. He has written books like: Oil, Politics, and Violence: Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture (1966-1976) published in 2009, Soldiers of Fortune: Nigerian politics from Buhari to Babangida 1983-1993, published in 2014 and soon to be published, What Britain did to Nigeria (2021). His works provide critical and alternate readings to established narratives about Nigeria’s political history. In Oil, Politics and Violence, Siollun cites from newspapers and periodicals, official memoranda and publications, alternative memoirs and critical texts on the 1966 coup.

the coup provides a more objective narrative of the coup. I use Siollun’s text to critique

Ademoyega’s memoir in line with Leigh A. Payne’s argument (in Unsettling Accounts) on how perpetrators of war crimes resist or reject the ‘perpetrator label’ to project a humanized version of themselves. Reading Ademoyega’s memoir against Max Siollun’s analysis of the coup reveals Ademoyega’s attempts to sanitize horror and to emphasize the soldiers’ heroism.

In his memoir, Ademoyega attempts to correct propagandist notions that dismissed the coup as an ethnic war and not an ideological fight against corrupt politicians. This propaganda influenced to the second coup led by Northern soldiers who wanted to avenge Northern victims of the predominantly Igbo-soldiers-led coup. Ademoyega points out that the coup leaders had planned to arrest (not kill) key political and military officers such as, Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa,

Federal Minister for Finance, Okotie-Eboh, Colonel K. Mohammed, Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur

Unegbe, Major-General Ironsi, Brigardier Zakariya Maimalari, Lieutenant-Colonel James Pam,

Ahmadu Bello, Northern premier, Alhaji Aliyu Makama Bida, Northern region minister of finance, Sir. Kashim Ibrahim, Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun and, Colonel R.A. Shodeinde.

Countering previous notions that there was a plan to obliterate high-ranking Northern officers,

Ademoyega notes:

There was no plan whatsoever to arrest or kill all the officers above the rank of Major as

was later claimed by the extreme Northern propagandists. ...among those earmarked for

arrest, only four were Northerners, two were Westerners and two were Easterners. But

the North had always had more than 50% of the intake of officers into the Army since

1961, and more than 70% of the intake of the other ranks. Therefore, if casualties were to

happen, it was more likely to be in that proportion than anything else (61).

His reason for the arrests of mostly Northern soldiers and politicians comes from an existing criticism of a predominantly Northern-led political and military class. While Ademoyega’s intents may be sincere, the underlying distaste for a perceived exclusion of non-Northerners from key political and military positions comes to the fore.

Ademoyega also lays out a detailed plan of the coup to counter notions that it was a hasty exercise. The coup conspirators planned to divide the country into 14 states headed by military governors. The army would be an integral part of the people and not a distant institution; the government would be socialist with an indigenous political system that would encourage home- grown development. The soldiers also criticized excessive consumption of foreign goods and planned to encourage local production and consumption. I have explained these ideologies in detail in chapter one. Ademoyega also examines the character traits of some of the coup’s participants to identify those who would later betray the group and those who could not execute their tasks. He emphasizes this to explain the reasons for the coup’s partial failure. I equally examined how a breakdown of camaraderie contributed to the coup’s failure, in chapter one.

A significant aspect of Ademoyega’s work is how he uses language to sanitize the horror that accompanied the coup. In the first place, he insists on describing the leaders of the coup

(including himself) as revolutionaries thereby obscuring the dubious nature of their illegal, and indeed treasonous mutiny. When describing their ideology, Ademoyega states, “ideologically, the core of the revolutionary officers had agreed on a programme of action to be implemented if we had successfully taken the reins of power into our own hands” (33). The term

“revolutionaries” contrasts the dominant rhetoric in public and historical records that classified the coup leaders as mutineers, murderers, and rebels. Infact, Ademoyega’s brief descriptions of each coup leader and some respected military officers comes under the heading “Revolutionary

Personalities” (49) These were Kaduna Nzeogwu, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Lieutenant-Colonels

Victor Banjo and Adekunle Fajuyi (both were not part of the coup), Captain Christian Anuforo,

Captain Timothy Onwuategwu, and Major Humphrey Chukwuka3

It is important to examine Ademoyega’s reasons for describing these men as revolutionaries before I continue my discourse on language use in the text. First, Ademoyega had built a brotherly bond with the likes of Nzeogwu who had also trained in a British military academy. Ademoyega and Nzeogwu built a close friendship while living in the unmarried officers’ quarters at Nigerian Military Training College (NMTC), Kaduna. Similarly, Timothy

Onwuatuegwu had trained at Sandhurst, like Nzeogwu and went on to work directly under

Nzeogwu when he was posted to Kaduna NMTC. Ademoyega’s relationship with Nzeogwu equally helped the former to identify leadership qualities that would invariably influence the success of the coup at Nzeogwu’s end. Nzeogwu was known as a soldier who inspired political and revolutionary activism in the soldiers. This, according to Ademoyega, caused young soldiers to become interested in a revolution that would change Nigerian politics. When Ademoyega describes Nzeogwu as, “a good leader of men,” (50) it is clearly out of admiration and redemption for a man arguably demonized in Nigerian political history. Nonetheless,

Ademoyega’s praise comes from a close-knit relationship with Nzeogwu. Nzeogwu’s influence on Ademoyega and other soldiers like Timothy Onwuatuegwu was built through social and professional bonds. In fact, Onwuatuegwu’s case reveals the influence of male homosocial bonds in transforming members of a particular group. Max Siollun suggests that Onwuatuegwu as a

3 Ademoyega mentions Major Donatus Okafor with the clause that he was neither revolutionary nor idealist (54). Ademoyega probably makes this point to later explain why Okafor failed in his duties during the coup. Okafor lost command of his soldiers and could not arrest Major General Aguyi Ironsi (the General officer Commanding).

Sandhurst cadet was a good and obedient soldier— a “parade ground “goody two shoes” type”

…(who) fell under Nzeogwu’s spell and was convinced enough to break into the house of, and shoot, a brigade commander during the first coup” (33). Onwuatuegwu’s disregard for military authority that he had hitherto respected as an officer-in-training testifies to the strong influence

Nzeogwu had on the coup leaders.

Now this influence was not unfounded as Ademoyega’s testimony further reveals. The recruitment process of the core leaders largely depended on the soldiers’ affiliation with the

British military colleges they had attended. When describing the Officer Corps of the Army,

Ademoyega divides them into four categories: the “Sandhurst-trained officers who had undergone a total of three years’ training before they were commissioned…they were real soldier-like officers who knew the heart of the game”; “young Mons-trained officers, who were commissioned after just a year of military training in Nigeria and Britain” (emphasis mine);

“officers who were commissioned from the ranks” and “non-professional graduates in the fighting arms of the Army” (28). Ademoyega’s ranking, with Sandhurst coming first, is deliberate. Although he criticizes their political aloofness, he acknowledges what he calls their

“real soldier-like” qualities that made them stand out of the rest. Furthermore, Sandhurst soldiers had trained for three years in contrast to the Mons-trained and Nigeria-trained officers. The importance of this distinction in officers’ training is seen when Ademoyega notes that Mons officers trained for just one year. Although he was a Mons-trained officer himself, Ademoyega adds that he had entered the army as a university graduate. The foregoing examination,

Ademoyega’s distinctive classification, coupled with my previous discussion about Sandhurst military culture and the value placed on officers’ who had studied in British military academies

such as Sandhurst and Mons, reflect an elitist distinction that would later influence the coup formation.

Pere Ayling describes the theory of elite distinction in postcolonial societies through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s discourse on class and Frantz Fanon’s discourse on race (whiteness as distinction).To Ayling, distinction in elite spaces (in this case the class of the coup plotters) is dependent on the acquisition of particular behaviors and dispositions that signify one’s membership in that elite group. In postcolonial countries like Nigeria, behaviors that signify distinction in an elite group often defer whiteness and institutions of whiteness. For the class of the 1966 coup plotters, membership to the group was dependent on revolutionary ideals and arguably, affiliation with a British military academy. As evident in the coup formation, the core were officers trained in British military schools while the foot soldiers were mostly junior officers who at that period, had received military training in Nigeria. Ademoyega also refers to the schools these officers had graduated from, to reiterate their integrity and revolutionary minds.

The consumption of military training in Britain, a former colonial power, provided distinction for the coup plotters. Ademoyega’s analysis of the different officers’ class (while starting with

Sandhurst) really shows the use of British emblems and institutions to emphasize validity, distinction and mostly, elite masculinity. Britain invariably becomes the referent for establishing such distinction.

Returning to my discourse on Ademoyega’s language use as it complicates masculine heroism, Ademoyega utilizes the morally ambiguously euphemism, “shot,” to minimize the horrific extra-judicial murders of not only prominent public officials, but also, their blameless wives. He describes one instance of the coup execution in the following passage:

I was at the Federal Guards Officers’ Mess, Ikoyi. Close on my heels came Major

Anuforo’s group. They had accomplished their own tasks, having arrested Colonel K.

Mohmmed. Lietenant-Colonel Unegbe had resisted arrest and in the scuffle, he had been

shot…After them came Ifeajuna’s group. They too accomplished their task having

arrested the Prime Minister and the Federal Finance Minister. In addition, as they were

returning to base, they saw Brigadier Maimalari escaping from the attempts of the

Okafor’s group to arrest him. They (Ifeajuna Group) wanted to arrest him, but in the

scuffle, he was shot (74).

One question that comes to mind after reading this passage is how soldiers with years of training in military intelligence and tact could have carelessly shot officers after a scuffle. In fact, one wonders why Ademoyega does not explicitly mention that officers like Brigadier Maimalari and

Lieutenant-Colonel Unegbe were shot dead and not because of a scuffle. In reality, the recently married Brigadier Maimalari (who had attended a party thrown in his honor) was murdered by

Major Ifeajuna (who also attended the same party) and Second-Lieutenant Ezedigbo, as he escaped the onslaught of Major Okafor’s arrest. In a rather moving explanation, Siollun notes that as Brigadier Maimalari escaped Major Okafor’s arrest, he ran into the passing vehicle of

Major Ifeajuna. Unfortunately, the victim recognized a familiar face that would shoot him:

“Recognizing Ifeajuna, Maimalari waved down the car, and was promptly shot dead by Ifeajuna and Second Lieutenant Ezedigbo” (Siollun 49). The second officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Unegbe was “shot dead in the presence of his pregnant wife. She later gave birth not without complications” (49). This horrific and dehumanizing killing of this officer is further complicated by the fact that he was killed because he “was known to be close to Brigadier Maimalari and was not interested in a coup” (50). Clearly, one sees how personal grievances trickled into the

messianic motivations of the soldiers. These examples validate the inconsistencies in

Ademoyega’s memoir. They also expose his attempt to moralize and legitimize their inhuman actions through a measured and ambiguous language.

More historical arguments refute Ademoyega’s testimony. In his memoir, he clearly states that the soldiers had no intent to kill. However, Kaduna Nzeogwu’s 1966 post-coup interview with the Daily Telegraph indicates otherwise. Major Nzeogwu stated that: “We wanted to get rid of rotten and corrupt ministers, political parties, trade unions and the whole clumsy apparatus of the federal system. We wanted to gun down all the bigwigs on our way. This was the only way. We could not afford to let them live if this was to work” (emphasis mine) (Siollun

68). Obviously, Nzeogwu’s words indicate an intent to remove senior officers who could potentially foil their plans. The bigwigs also included corrupt politicians they had earmarked to kill. Additionally, Captain Ben Gbulie, a co-conspirator in the coup, notes that the group left the decision to either kill or arrest their victims, at the discretion of the officers (Siollun 42).

Ademoyega’s divergent claims therefore indicate his attempt to shift moral responsibility from the coup leaders. Infact, he refuses to mention the circumstances behind the killing of officers like Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun who was killed in Kaduna, Nzeogwu’s state of assignment.

While Brigadier Ademulegun was simply shot in Ademoyega’s book, Siollun explains that

Major Tim Onwuategwu (Nzeogwu’s co-conspirator in the Kaduna) shot Brigadier Ademulegun and his wife in their bed. Brigadier Ademulegun’s children were in the house and listened to the gunshots that rendered them orphans (Siollun 45). Overall, Ademoyega’s obscurantist language and strategic rhetorical choices seek to restore the image of revolutionary patriotism and nationalist ideals to comrades he believes have been unfairly maligned. He suggests that these reactionary narratives reductively demonized honorable officers who merely sought, in good

faith, to return a debased Nigerian state to its highest national ideals. Although the coup leaders had noble reasons for executing the coup Ademoyega’s language politics almost erases the nobility of their intent.

Quite apart from revisiting the atrocities allegedly committed during the coup, Why We

Struck projects a messianic image of the military with the foreign-trained and heroic masculine elite officer core cast in the role of self-sacrificing rescuers of a beleaguered nation. An ironic but nevertheless illustrative scene in this regard entails the author’s sarcastic and dismissive description of death of a bitter military rival, that is, Lieutenant-Colonel Abogo Largema.

Lietenant-Colonel Largema was a Northern Officer in command of the Ibadan-based 4th battalion that consisted of mostly Northern soldiers. Ademoyega begins by recalling the fact that on

January 14th, 1966 Lieutenant-Colonel Largema had arrived Lagos with the Premier of the

Northern region’s dictum to bring peace to the restive Western region. His battalion was particularly infamous in the Western region (where Ibadan is located) for their previous activities during military operations in the Western region. The battalion’s ethnic composition and their commander’s ethnic affiliation made the mostly Yoruba people in Western Nigeria to perceive them as biased towards the federal government and its allies. On Largema’s death during the coup, Ademoyega sarcastically notes that Largema who had brought “down (the) Sardauna’s last message on ‘the walloping of the west’ was arrested and shot” (76) with other officers and ministers who had been arrested. Their bodies were then deposited into the bush. Interestingly,

Ademoyega’s account is once again flawed as Lieutenant-Colonel Largema was actually killed in his hotel by Major Ifeajuna. Siollun provides a more accurate description of the murder:

“Despite the fact that Largema was away from his post and that Largema was not allotted to him,

Major Ifeajuna made his way to the hotel and forced the desk clerk, at gunpoint, to inform

Largema that he had a “phone call.” When Largema emerged from his room to take the bogus

“phone call,” he walked straight into an ambush as Ifeajuna and Second-Lieutenant Ezedigbo emerged from their hiding place in the corridor and shot him dead” (48). This detailed description of Major Ifeajuna’s intent to kill Lieutenant-Colonel Largema makes one question

Ademoyega’s description of the self-sacrificing image that he projects in his narrative. One wonders if Major Ifeajuna harbored a personal vendetta against Lieutenant-Colonel Largema.

Ultimately, dissidents and opposing forces succumbed to the soldiers’ guns. Siollun affirms that some officers participated in the coup to settle scores with senior officers. While the core coup plotters were indeed ideological in their complaints against the corrupt political system

(Majors Nzeogwu, Anuforo, Ademoyega, and Ifeajuna were motivated by a desire to overthrow the fraudulent order of the politicians), others had less “noble” reasons. Thus,

…among the other participants, it was not solely about politics. The coup may have

served as an outlet for some of their professional frustrations and fears about the direction

the Army was being taken by Northern officials in the Ministry of Defense…There was

also a puritanical elements within the coup plotters and among some junior officers who

were not impressed by the enthusiastic drinking culture among their superior officers

such as Aguyi-Ironsi, Maimalari, Ademulegun, Ogundipe, Kur Mohammed and Largema

(32-33).

The second sentence speaks to a lack of military discipline which the soldiers sought to correct through the coup. Some of the soldiers were also deeply religious and held strong Christian values. Nzeogwu, for example, is described as a staunch disciplinarian who held strong Roman

Catholic values. He was “extremely straightforward, open-hearted and …Unlike most single officers, he did not go around with girl friends” (Ademoyega 50). Nzeogwu’s coup speech also

reflects his Christian and moral ideology, which influenced his disciplined stance. For example, a section of the address reads: “You are hereby warned that looting, arson, homosexuality, rape, embezzlement, bribery or corruption, obstruction of the revolution…are all punishable by death”

(88). For Nzeogwu, the coup becomes an outlet to “correct” immorality and restore discipline to the already undisciplined state.

Overall, Ademoyega’s language use reveals an attempt to moralize the situation and to depict himself and his colleagues as heroes who only shot civilians and military men when circumstances demanded it. His narrative reiterates the duplicity of military heroism, which

Siollun further illustrates in his work. For example, while Major Onwuategwu shot and killed

Ademulegun and his wife in their beds while their children watched, he went on to arrest Sir.

Kashim Ibrahim and according to Siollun, asked the military guards to treat Ibrahim with respect.

Another officer Nwobosi who killed S.L. Akintola, took “a detour from his assignment to help a pregnant woman who had gone into labor to get to a hospital” (47). Siollun notes that “Nwobosi exhibited a puzzling mix of brutality and compassion during the coup” (47). Other officers like

Major Chukwuka killed officer Unegbe in front of his pregnant wife and refuses to kill

Lieutenant-Colonel Pam (Major Anuforo eventually kills Lieutenant-Colonel Pam). Examples like these complicate one’s criticism of the soldiers as they annihilate the nation’s enemies and, at the same time, help some of the citizens.

Beyond the individual atrocities discussed in the foregoing, Why We Struck addresses various ways in which well-laid plans swiftly disintegrated as the coup unfolded. Despite their initial success in Kaduna and Lagos, the coup begins to disintegrate as some of the coup plotters disappear and others fail to execute their duty. Unaware of the ongoing disparities in the military corps, civilians welcomed the coup and looked forward to a military government. As

Ademoyega puts it, “University students throughout the federation hailed Nzeogwu and the revolutionaries” (90). People “rejoiced the overthrow of the Balewa government and toasted the revolutionaries” (90). Siollun confirms this notion in a recently retrieved letter from the

Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). This letter addresses the unjust imprisonment of

Nigeria’s saviors. In the letter, they ask that the officers be released and that “the wishes of this country (Nigeria)” must take precedence. Part of the letter reads: “the people of this nation have demonstrated an overwhelming support for the overthrow of the last regime and the Nigerian

Army stand high in public regard for this very act” (ASUU letter). Validation from the university community and signatories such as Wole Soyinka (ASUU UNILAG Secretary), Bisi Adu,

Obafemi Ayantuga, K. Opoku shows how non-Igbo ethnic groups, supported the coup which had received ethnic coloration. It also affirms Ademoyega’s view that the coup was popular.

Speaking on the public’s reception, Ademoyega notes,

The Ironsi regime…rode in upon the crest of popularity that greeted the coup. In the eyes

of the average Nigerian, the Army was a reputable institution…at home, it had remained

more or less sacrosanct, untouched by the notoriety that had plagued many public

institutions…it had appeared immaculate and extra disciplined…it had appeared

impartial and unsullied by the corruption of politicians. When it turned out to save the

country from disintegration on January 15, the whole country gave a sigh of salvation and

hope (emphasis mine) (113).

The Army was a figure of discipline, sanctity, and sanity. They had brought hope to the people and had intervened amidst political apathy. General public opinion on the coup echoed in national newspapers like the Daily Times. In a commentary, the glorified the Army as saviors who had come to bell the cat of a populace groaning under the government’s mismanagement

and corruption. Part of the review reads: “Something just had to be done to save the Federation.

It is like a surgical operation which must be performed, or the patient dies. The operation has been performed. It has proved successful. And it is welcome” (emphasis mine) (114). Oblivious to the contentions that defined the military salvation, Nigerians in 1966 welcomed a new era of political change.

For Ademoyega, this political change disrupted the “fundamental evil that the

British…committed in their administration of Nigeria” (191). Ademoyega connects the coup’s motivation to British colonialism, that created ethnoreligious and political divisions in Nigeria.

The coup allowed Nigerians to choose and change history themselves “without any pressure from an imperialist power” (193). Interestingly, the Nigerian Army foiled the coup to protect the nation from rebellion. Both sections of the military the revolutionaries and the reactionaries believed they were saving the country. One arm (the revolutionaries) saved the nation from some nepotistic leaders; the other (the reactionaries) saved Nigeria from rebellious soldiers. Either way, the Army maintained its status in ensuring order and discipline in the nation.

Overall, the elite officers exhibited a messianic sense of discipline, duty, and civic responsibility, which compelled them to topple a civilian leadership they regarded as incorrigibly undisciplined, corrupt, incompetent, and dysfunctional. Despite innumerable coups in much of postcolonial Africa (including multiple Nigerian instances), it bears emphasizing how aberrationally staging a coup remains from the standpoint of the most fundamental aspect of professional military training. The 1966 coup would have required the officers to betray oaths of office—which would have been underlined at the various academies—affirming not only the imperative to remain resolutely apolitical, but also, the duty to obey their civilian superior even or especially if they disagreed with particular policies. In the event of a disagreement in principle

that such obedience is not feasible, then the only legitimate recourse available to the conscientious soldier is to honorable resign, after which any form of oppositional activism and political would be permitted. The 1966 coup leaders may have felt that they had broken their pact with the state precisely in order to rescue a failed state before rapidly returning to the barrack to reaffirm the prime of political neutrality and civilian control amid a revitalized state.

Possibly, they believed themselves to be affirming the highest ideals of their military training precisely by momentarily appearing to breach them in pursuit of the highest ideals of integrity, discipline, and civic duty. Invariably, although these soldiers had been trained in British military academies that encouraged the highest level of discipline and allegiance to the state, the composition of the coup and the soldiers’ coup actions show the influence of homosocial bonds in challenging militaristic and ultimately, masculine ideals.

CONCLUSION

The Aftermath: Disillusionment and Military Chaos in Helon Habila’s Waiting for an

Angel

At the end of Adewale Ademoyega’s Why We Struck, the author lists some achievements of the 1966 coup that salvage the 1966 coup from its failure. First, the coup removed an inherited British political system in place of a people-supported military administration. Second, the coup brought peace and unity—quite ironic as later events indicate—into the nation and third, it inspired a political consciousness in the Nigerian populace. Fourth, the revolution helped

Nigerians write and rewrite their own history. Finally, Nigerians changed the course of their judiciary as their resistance to a government-controlled judiciary influenced the coup conspirators who emerged to save Nigeria’s fate. Unfortunately, despite these achievements and the soldiers’ heroic intentions, the coup created an antecedent for bloody coups, military dictatorship, and press suppression in Nigeria. These effects would go on into the Nigerian political fabric as citizens remain intimidated even under civilian governance. Infact, the choice of words to define democratically elected leaders’ administration as “regime”, “rule” and so on, echo the remnants of military rule in Nigerian politics. Before Nigeria returned to its longest civilian-led republic since 1999, the Nigerian Army had ruled for a total of 29 years out of its 39- year independence from British colonialism. These 29 years witnessed a flurry of governments quite unfamiliar with democratic political leadership; governments that introduced policies that trumped on citizens’ rights; governments who arrested journalists and spearheaded the 3-year long Nigerian civil war from 1967-1970. As expected, general apathy followed Nigeria’s nascent independence as coups after the January 1966 coup brought in inexperienced and mostly vindictive heads of states. Nigerians fell into the disillusionment that military governance

introduced. The once celebrated intervention of the army became a signifier for socio-political apathy.

In this final chapter, I discuss the apathy as reflective of a larger failure of masculine and militaristic heroism. In Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel, Habila provides a scathing review of military rule in Nigeria with particular focus on how the setting and non-human elements reflect the atrociousity of military governance and demystifies military heroism. In particular, the actions of the military during this period contrasts the image of the highly educated and disciplined men Ademoyega describes in his memoir. Instead, Waiting for an Angel narrates the story of Lomba and other characters who experience the terrors of military rule in Nigeria. The story begins with Lomba, a political prisoner detained for documenting the Morgan street

(named by its occupants as Poverty Street) demonstrations against unfair living conditions. As the narrative moves from Lomba’s time in prison to the circumstances that lead to his arrest,

Habila covers a plethora of stories that represent the survival of everyday Nigerians under successive military rules. Habila decenters the military leaders and focuses on everyday characters to explain how military dictatorship oppresses the masses. The novel is set in the

1990s when Sani Abacha, an anti-press head of state, ruled Nigeria.

Habila infuses natural and weather elements into his narrative to emphasize the gloom that precedes military intervention in politics. No longer the masculine heroes and saviors of

Nigeria, the officers depicted in the novel have become angels of death, consumed with the power of their guns. In the chapter titled “The Angel”, an unnamed character who has a premonition of his own death, patiently waits for the angel of death while sitting in a bar. His imminent death also follows an impending doom in the Nigerian society—a military take over— evident in the gloomy clouds and rainfall.

Outside, the clouds have descended lower in the sky, lightning flashes every once in a

while, like a tear in the dark fabric of the sky; people hurry to get off the street as huge

pellets of rain begin to fall. The bar is filling up fast: people with nowhere to sit line up

against the counter, staring at the flickering TV screen behind the barman. Then suddenly

the screen goes blank, the announcer’s image is replaced by spongy white particles… ‘It

is a coup!’ the barman shouts, raising his hand for silence. The words pass from mouth to

mouth round the room. Everyone falls silent, pressing closer to the radio counter. Martial

music wafts out of the box to hover on the air above the sweating faces. After the martial

music, a parade-ground-voiced general makes a lengthy announcement in which only the

words ‘dusk-to-dawn curfew’ make any visible impact on the room. Suddenly everyone

is scurrying out of the bar into the light rain outside.” (36-37).

The people’s reaction to the coup announcement comes from an established military intimidation and a knowledge of the evil that accompanies military dictatorship. At this point in Nigeria’s history, the people had become accustomed to the rigmarole of military rule. The dark clouds that precede the coup announcement foreshadow the terror that will accompany the most recent military government. Journalists will be arrested and killed. The Dial, Lomba’s office will be burnt to the ground for publishing an anti-government piece titled, “Abacha: The Stolen

Billions!” (152). Protesters will be killed for resisting unfair living conditions and ultimately, when a pregnant woman dies in the protests, the symbolic future in her womb will crumble.

Carmen McCain in “Writing the Angel: Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel,” posits that the people killed in the Morgan Street protests for example, represent the next generation that are lost to a brutal government.

Returning to the unnamed character who waits for the angel of death, the said character also foreshadows how the military will overtake the streets. He observes; “soon the streets will be taken over by military tanks and jeeps. People will lock their doors and turn off their lights and peer fearfully through chinks in their windows at the rain-washed, post-coup d’etat streets”

(37). Eventually, a soldier kills the character for refusing to leave the bar despite being within the curfew time. Before the murder, the character imagines the soldier as an accessory to his fated death. When the soldiers arrive the bar, he feels, “a strange tingling…as if an electric shock has passed through (him)…” (37). While one could interpret his reaction as fear, his response shows that the soldiers symbolize the angels of death he is expecting. Eventually, he is shot, and, in that moment, the soldier becomes the angel whose wings (the gun) whisk the unnamed character away. By implication, the soldiers represent a military that has become infamous for human rights abuse and a willing tool of destruction in the hands of fate. They have become fallen angels whose purported heroism thrives on desecrating the citizens they claim to save.

In the chapter titled “Kela”, the narrator describes the scorching heat on Poverty Street as synonymous to the militarized presence that gnaws on the lives and freedom of the people.

Poverty street defies every standard of a healthy and conducive environment.

And there were no trees on Poverty Street. The heat would comb the defenceless street

unchecked (like the policemen that came after the demonstration), tearing into doors and

windows, advancing from room to room, systematically seeking out and strangling to

death the last traces of cool air hiding beneath chairs and behind cabinets, wringing out

moisture from the anemic plants that drooped in old plastic containers on window ledges.

Dogs would bolt out of the doorways, their brains cooked senseless, their tongues lolling

out of their mouths like pink sausages, to be run over by cars. The chickens simply folded

their heads beneath their wings and died (91-92).

This environmental condition translates into the lives of the occupants on Poverty Street. Hagar, a brilliant and promising student becomes a prostitute after she is molested by her stepfather and evicted from her home by her mother. Brother loses his leg after a fight with soldiers who, according to another character Nancy, raided the street and raped the men’s wives. Auntie

Rachel becomes an alcoholic and “dreams backwards” after first losing her husband in the

Nigerian Civil war and losing a potential lover, years later, in the Abiola riots. Historically, the

Abiola riots happened after the Ibrahim Babangida Military government declared the June 12,

1993 presidential election (defined as the freest and fairest Nigerian election) that would usher in a civilian government, as inconclusive. Babangida had hitherto moved the transition date from military rule to civilian rule severally so much that the public became restless. In the chapter titled “Bola”, student activists protest the unfruitful transition programs of the Babangida administration. Sankara, a vibrant voice in these protests declares, “we are tired of phantom transition programmes that are nothing but grand designs to embezzle our money!” (41). At this point, the military government had become infamous for corruption and embezzlement. Infact,

Edward N. Luttwak in Coup D’état: A Practical Handbook suggests that the allure of corruption is one of the motivating factors for coup d’états around the world (9). In the Nigerian Army’s case, apart from the first set of extremely idealistic soldiers who spearheaded the first coup, subsequent heads of state were largely invested in financial advancement.

In the novel, the military rulers are not physically present yet, their agents (soldiers) and emblems of the military affect the people. Bola’s story shows how military objects can lead to death and ultimately distort the mental state of the citizens. Bola, a student activist, loses his

family in an accident. Bola goes on a maniacal spree, speaking against the military government and chanting words from a speech by one of the students’ protests leaders. He is whisked off by

State Security Service agents before Lomba, Peter and Paul can rescue him. Bola’s family had died on their way to Ibadan after a heavy rainfall. His father has not seen the military truck lying in the middle of the road. According to Bola’s uncle, “the after-rain road was treacherous and full of illusory reflections. The father, driving, had failed to see the truck lying on its side in the middle of the road. It was a military truck carrying the furniture of an officer on transfer from

Lagos to Ibadan. The father, mother, who were in front, died instantly; Peju, the elder sister died on the way to the hospital; the other sister, Lola sustained minor injuries and was presently in a hospital in Ibadan”(45). The military truck represents military rule. In this instance, military rule wipes out the whole family, their dreams, and aspirations. Bola, an aspiring engineer becomes mentally ill as he does not recover from the trauma of his family’s death. His only surviving sister is in a coma and the State Security Service agents torture him for his anti-government rhetoric. Bola undergoes physical and emotional torture, courtesy of the military. When Bola’s family eventually find him in the hospital, they arrive to see his battered body. “They had beaten him all night, shouting questions at his bewildered, whimpering face. Finally, they had realized that something was wrong with him. Disgusted, they had dumped him at the psychiatric hospital.” (62)

Overall, as the military government clamped on freedom of speech and intimidated the people, non-human objects that represent military rule, contribute to the society’s loss. McCain describes the accident as a loss to the country’s future: “Here, not only is one visionary young engineer, representative of the nation-builder, killed, but an entire family structure is wiped out: the father/doctor, the mother/secretary at the Ministry of Finance, the daughter/future newscaster.

In short, crucial elements of the existing and future infrastructure of the nation are lost in the crash with the military vehicle” (21). In conclusion, rain, dark clouds, heat, and non-human elements enhance the depth of apathy in the state and the society. Habila explores the physical manifestation of the military government’s policies and actions on the lives of the people. The novel depicts a society in a limbo, one whose leaders although not seen, seep into the lives of the citizens and destroy them. Despite entering the Nigerian political space with a rhetoric of discipline, restoration and saving the Nigerian people from corrupt politicians, the Nigerian army built on and in fact set the bar for a corrupt and dilapidated system that would continue long after military rule.

Through my analysis of Lord of the Flies, Why We Struck and Waiting for an Angel, I provide a chronological reading of the effects of colonialism on the Nigerian military which embodied discipline and camaraderie. From Lord of the Flies which criticizes the notion of ideal masculinity and Englishness to Waiting for an Angel which portrays the failures of heroism embodied in the Nigerian military, my analysis examines the fallacies of masculine heroism and the problematic effects that accompany heroic service often expected of men. From the colonialists who arrived the African continent for “Queen and country” (and as representatives of

English poise and character) to the military men who decided to save their nation from disillusionment, the fact remains that problems accompanied their interventions. For example,

Fredrick Lugard, Nigeria’s first Governor General is known to have hindered the education of

Nigerians, slowed down infrastructural development, and supported slavery in traditional elite families. The January 1966 revolutionaries on their part were consumed with the idea of saving the nation that they conveniently killed civilians and unarmed military men. Finally, subsequent events such as lopsided killings seen as a strategic tribal elimination resulted in subsequent coups

and introduced corrupt military governments who soon ruined the success of a once jubilated intervention. I end my thesis with this quote from Habila’s novel. “The military have turned the country into one huge barracks, into a prison. Every street out there is crawling with them; the people lock their doors, scared to come out...” (41)

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Mosúnmọ́lá Ọmọ́wùnmí Adéòjó is a PhD student in the English Department at the

University of Florida. She received her BA. (English) in 2014 from the University of Lagos,

Nigeria. She has worked as a Graduate Assistant at the same university and later worked as a

Fulbright scholar at Yale University, USA. She also received a Master of Arts in English from the University of Florida in 2020. At the University of Florida, she studies the intersection of politics, gender, and indigeneity in conceptualizing an Afro-Victorian identity. Her research examines Victorian masculinities in Nigerian literature and the representations of men in metropolitan and digital spaces.