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COLONIAL CONFIGURATIONS, MILITARY MANIFESTATIONS: MASCULINITY IN POST-INDEPENDENT NIGERIA By 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 © 2020 Mosúnmọ́lá Ọmọ́wùnmí Adéòjó 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. 4 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 5 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 By 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 6 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 7 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 8 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