This original book combines the analysis of ethnicity with that of elite politics to explain democratic institutions and competition for power in Nigeria. The book contributes to a reconceptualization of the place of ethnicity in Nigerian politics; it offers a rich and nuanced account of the entanglements of ambitious men with power; it exposes a deeper engagement with the shifting meanings of heroism, political patriarchy and hierarchy in Nigerian politics; and it supplies us with a complex historicization of Yoruba identities since 1940.
Both ethnicity and elite politics may be studied separately, the latter within the framework of class analysis and the former around deep cleavages tied to primordial and/or invented traditions. The fluidity in Adebanwi's analysis – where the fascinating actions of ambitious men are reported in detailed and engaging stories – speaks to the plasticity of ethnicity itself and the unpredictable formation of alliances by the elite seeking political domination. The stress of the book on the intersectionality of ethnicity and elite politics is itself a major achievement. If other writers have characterized ethnicity and elite politics as negative, Adebanwi sees them as transformational, with enormous capacity to generate robust discussions, active political participation, and brilliant political calculations.
The elite vested in power – the ‘elite’ of politics – constitutes what Adebanwi calls a ‘corporate agency’. The strategies and tactics of this corporate agency are located in identity politics shaped by ethnicity. The members of this elite may be amorphous and ambiguous, but their activities and actions, as Adebanwi admirably points out in one compelling narrative after another, are understandable within the prism of group interest.
This group interest, as the centre of the narrative clearly exposes, revolves around the pre-eminent figure of Obafemi Awolowo, the principal architect in the formation of the Action Group in the 1940s and the pioneer of a modernist agenda in the 1950s and beyond. As the author restates his mission in the concluding chapter: ‘my main objective is to understand how Yorubaness was reconstituted through the political actions, rules and resources that attempt to conform to the ideal, ideas, representations and practices of Chief Obafemi Awolowo – or what I have called Awoness and the political philosophy articulated by Awo – which is called Awoism’ (p. 246). Awolowo's ideas and legacies, Adebanwi convincingly argues, became the root and route for the formation of this ‘corporate elite’. The internal struggles of the members of this ‘corporation’ and their visions for the Yoruba and for Nigeria were shaped by Awolowo in terms of his ideas and actions as well as by his legacy. To Adebanwi, Awolowo became ‘the central signifier of modern Yoruba culture’. This culture in turn influenced Yoruba politics.
As Adebanwi develops his narratives and arguments around personality, leadership, individual behaviour, and aggressive and ruthless competition, his cogent analysis reveals a great deal about political parties in Nigeria, cultural politics among the Yoruba, personal ambitions and democratic struggles in the last fifty years.
To those who see ethnicity and the actions of politicians as irrational, Adebanwi's book suggests otherwise. His path-breaking intervention, based on extensive oral interviews, sees political behaviour in its most rational form, even when the actors display raw emotions and erratic actions. What Adebanwi isolates in one chapter after another informs political behaviour, shapes partisan politics, and explains how competition for power within the region and at the federal level derives from elite calculations for power and prestige.
Adebanwi appears to be warning us not to see politics and the culture that underpins it as necessarily consistent and stable. The culture that sustains politics, as this fine book articulates, has to be created. Awolowo supplied a number of cultural symbols that he and his successors converted to political capital. However, in the process, they had to formulate rules and generate resources. Adebanwi analyses the consistency that culture and politics produced, notably around the creation of Yoruba ethnicity, but he also focuses on the inconsistencies that political competitions ultimately produce.
The achievements of this book are multiple. In the first place, it is the first to provide a detailed elaboration of Yoruba political elite formation over a long period of time. In doing so, Adebanwi identifies the clusters of individuals who were instrumental in mobilizing culture in the service of politics. He sees this elite as ‘homogeneous' in their aspirations and clearly territorially defined. The strategy of formation and the articulation of core principles are, he argues, linked to Awolowo.
Second, he provides data and strong analysis to show that, although the past is of interest to this elite, their goal is about the future of the Yoruba and the benefits to accrue to them from their membership in Nigeria.
Third, the book speaks to the larger theory and interface of ethnicity and elite politics. Its overall orientation is to see the positive elements in the connections while not being unaware of the crises and conflicts they are capable of generating. The most powerful statement is in the last but one page where the author closes his argument: ‘we trivialize the agency of the elite when we construct a “natural” lineal progression from the (ethno-nationalist) elites towards violence or separatism exclusively, rather than also towards social progress, democracy, modernity, enlightenment and pluralist democracy’ (p. 256).
If this positive view were to be taken seriously, one inference would be that a corporate elite would ultimately emerge to deliver political stability and economic development. It will not mean, to tap into Adebanwi's own political ‘philosophy’, that they won't struggle among themselves or be blinded by individual interests, but rather that ultimately a collective aspiration would move the country forward. As Pentecostalism is now beginning to create inroads into progressive politics in Nigeria, perhaps we all should begin to behave like Awolowo, the politician who ‘dreamed immortally of tomorrow’, but remember to call on the pastors to pray to make it work. Amen!
