Death, national memory and the social construction of heroism

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Periodical article

Title:	Death, national memory and the social construction of heroism
Author:	Adebanwi, Wale
Year:	2008
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	49
Issue:	3
Pages:	419-444
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Nigeria
Subjects:	Yoruba heroes commemorations ethnic identity coups d'état 1966
About person:	Adekunle Fajuyi
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/40206672
Abstract:	Ancestors occupy a central place in African cosmologies and social practices. The death and the remembrance of Lt-Col. Adekunle Fajuyi, the Military Governor of Western Nigeria who was killed during a military coup in 1966, is used in this essay to critique the assumptions in the literature about ancestors, by linking the recent dead with the long dead in a lineage of ancestral practices. The author focuses on the ways in which Fajuyi's death was used in constructing ethno-national memory and history in the context of 21st-century challenges faced by the Yoruba in national politics, particularly in relation to unequal ethno-regional relations. Here, the author attempts to historicize commemoration as a ritual of ethno-national validation. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]