Email this article 
Is Nigeria Really “Big for Nothing”? Matters Arising from Kevin Nwabugwu Echeruo’s 1969 Propaganda Poster
Abstract
The audacious declaration “Big for nothing” in Kevin Echeruo’s propaganda poster during the Nigerian civil war offers illumination to the forgotten undercurrents that drove the 30-month war which in the last fifty years has contributed to the setting of agenda for separatist polemics in the Nigeria nation-state. Using largely the iconographic approach to visual description and interpretation, this study examines the cultural codes and representational conventions that inform contemporary artistic representational style as a cultural practice. The illustration not only approximates to one of the early visual indicators on the divisive national challenge rendered in highly coded visual and linguistic rhetoric of hegemonic power struggle by the elite class, but also a significant metaphor of contemporary frustration on nationhood and nationality for most Nigerians. Accordingly, this article broaches on the parameters of patriotism, nationality and self-determination to posit that the illustration represents the extremes of citizen dissatisfaction couched in a radical artistic narrative of a caricature. It submits that the strength of national allegiance and cohesiveness is a function of the reciprocity to its citizens.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Achebe, C. (2012). There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra. New York: The Penguin Press.
Adebisi, B. (1989). Federal Character and Social Class. In P. Ekeh, & E. E. Osaghae, Federal Character and Federalism in Nigeria (pp. 325-344). Ibadan: HEB.
Afigbo, A. E. (2005). Nigerian History, Politics and Affairs: The Collected Essays of Adiele Afigbo. (T. Falola, Ed.) Lawrenceville, New Jersey: Africa World Press.
Baxandall, M. (1988). The Period Eye. In M. Baxandall, Painting and experience in fifteenth-century Italy: a primer in the social history of pictorial style (pp. 29-57). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(1969). Biafra Campaign Appraisal Committee, Report No. 9. Umuahia: Directorate of Propaganda.
Caswell, L. S. (2004). Drawing Swords: War in American Editorial Cartoons. American Journalism, 21(2), 13–45.
Doron, R. (2014). Marketing genocide: Biafran propaganda strategies during the Nigerian civil war, 1967–70. Journal of Genocide Research, 16(2-3).
Ekpu, R. (2017, August 15). Geographical expression: So what? The Guardian. Retrieved 7 20, 2018, from https://guardian.ng/opinion/geographical-expression-so-what/
Falola, T., & Heaton, M. M. (2008). A History of Nigeria. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Fern, A. (1990). Oliphant's Presidents: Twenty-Five Years of Caricature by Pat Oliphant. (W. W. Reaves, Ed.) Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel.
Gullace, N. F. (2009). Barbaric Anti-Modernism: Representations of the “Hun” in Britain, North America, Australia, and Beyond. In P. James, Picture this: World War I posters and visual culture. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Heerten, L. (2017). The Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism: Spectacles of Suffering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hegel, G. W. (1956). The Philosophy of History. New York: Dover.
Heyman, T. T. (1998). Posters American Style. New York: Harry N Abrams.
Husband, T. (2015). Dictators in Cartoons: Unmasking Monsters and Mocking Tyrants. London: Arcturus.
Ifidon, E. A. (1999). Social Rationality and Class Analysis of National Conflict in Nigeria: A Historiographical Critique. Africa Development, XXIV, 1&2, 145-164.
Inyang, E. E. (2013). A Task That Must Be Done: Issues on the Federalists’ Visual Propaganda in Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970). Working Paper, Programme of African Studies. Evanston, Illinois: Programme of African Studies, Northwestern University.
Inyang, E. E. (2017). Echoes of Secession: The Hero, the Rebel, and the Rhetoric of Might in Nigerian Civil War Pictorial Propaganda. African Studies Quarterly, 17(3), 1-20.
Inyang, E. E. (2018). The Elephant and the Tiger Ants: Rethinking the Channels and Themes of Biafra’s Visual Propaganda. Journal of Genocide Research, 20(1), 20–43.
Kubler, G. (1962). The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lynn, M. (2006). The Nigerian Self-Government Crisis of 1953 and the Colonial Office. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 34(2), 245–261.
Mason, A. J. (2010). The Cannibal Ogre and the Rape of Justice: A Contrapuntal View. Critical African Studies, 2(4), 32-64.
Metz, H. C. (1991). Nigeria: A Country Study. Washington: Library of Congress. Retrieved March 12, 2019, from http://countrystudies.us/ nigeria/52.htm
Munslow, A. (2006). Deconstructing History. London: Routledge.
Oha, O. (1998). Inter/art/iculations of Violence in Nigerian Poetry and Graphic Art. Mosiac, 32(2), 165-182.
Ojo, O. J. (1981). The Impact of Personality and Ethnicity on the Nigerian Elections of 1979. Africa Today, 28(1), 47-58.
Okereke, E. (1979). Art and Conflict: The Visual Art in Biafran Propaganda. BA thesis. Nsukka, Nigeria: University of Nigeria.
Omaka, A. O. (2014). The forgotten victims: Ethnic minorities in the Nigeria. Journal of Retracing Africa, 1(1), 25-40.
Ottenberg, S., & Odufunade, B. (2014). Bomi Odufunade in conversation with Simon Ottenberg. Omenka, 1(3), 48-53.
Post, K., & Vickers, M. (1973). Structure and Conflict in Nigeria 1960–66. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Sableman, M. (2007). Artistic expression today: Can artists use the language of our culture? Saint Louis University Law Journal, 52, 187-218.
Schilperoord, J., & Maes, A. A. (2009). Visual metaphoric conceptualisation in editorial cartoons. Multimodal Metaphor, 11, 213 - 240.
Streicher, L. H. (1967). On a Theory of Political Caricature. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 9(4), 427-445.
Sullivan, M. A. (1998). Caricature / Cartoon. In H. E. Roberts, Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art, 1 & 2, 155-163. Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.
Tamuno, T. N. (1970). Separatist Agitations in Nigeria since 1914. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 8(4), 563 - 584.
U. N. Population Division. (2017). World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision, Key Findings and Advance Tables. New York: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Udechukwu, O. (1995). Patterns of order: Drawings and Paintings of Victor Ekpuk. Victor Ekpuk, Windsongs: An Exhibition Catalogue. Lagos: French Cultural Centre.
Wyss, B. (1999). Hegel’s Art History and the Critique of Modernity. Saltzwedel, C.D. (Trans.) Cambridge: University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v19i1.2075
Copyright (c) 2019 Celt: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching & Literature
| pISSN (print): 1412-3320 | eISSN (online): 2502-4914 |