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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the roles of the press in the invention of images of political elites in Nigeria and how these images affected interpretive sovereignty of the past and the way people imagine and shape the future of Nigerian politics.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the roles of the press in the invention of images of political elites in Nigeria and how these images affected interpretive sovereignty of the past and the way people imagine and shape the future of Nigerian politics. The paper addresses three important and related questions. How does the press (newspapers) construction of heroic and villainous images of political elites archive the past and invent the future of Nigerian politics? How did the archived images of the elites reflect the past? In what ways can the archived images help us imagine and shape the future of Nigerian polity? The paper draws data from four major newspapers, the West African Pilot, the New Nigeria, the Nigerian Tribune and the Daily Sketch to examine how larger than life images of four Nigerian political elites, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello and Samuel Ladoke Akintola, were constructed, how the molded images continue to circulate and affect the way contemporary politics is imagined and the future projected.