LECTURE BY PROF. DR. PATRICK OLOKO
Patrick Oloko teaches Literary and Cultural Studies in the Department of English, University of Lagos, specialising in African Postcolonial Literature, Popular and Visual Cultures delivered a virtual lecture on Wednesday, May 20th, 2026.
TOPIC: CULTURAL STATECRAFT AND NATION BUILDING IN MILITARY-ERA NIGERIA
The narrative’s spatial details, like Surulere and Games Village, connect literary imagination with real urban development and cultural memory.
This approach challenges the idea that fiction is mere storytelling, showing it as a transmitter of social truths and political history.
The lecture highlighted how cultural statecraft, especially through literature and infrastructure, shapes and preserves Lagos’s complex historical and social identity.
Professor Patrick Oloko used excerpts from Cyprian Ekwensi’s novels to illustrate how fiction captures Lagos’s historical geography and middle-class life in the 1980s.
He argued that fiction acts as a durable record of history and nostalgia, preserving urban realities that official histories might erase.
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