Memorial Arcades and Disaster Memory-making

Examines three memorial arcades built by the Nigerian state to memorialize victims of disasters: Oke Afa memorial arcade, Iju-Ishaga memorial arcade, and Flight 086 memorial arcade.Ololajulo presents memorial arcades as sites of encountering the state, arguing that disaster monuments transcend memory-making infrastructure and connect to the politics of modernity and its deployment by the Nigerian state for legitimacy. He argues that the Nigerian state created these sites as political statements and as a means of humanizing state authority in the aftermath of disasters that it had failed to prevent, while subsequently neglecting the upkeep of these memorials. He further looks at how the media has changed the narrative around disaster events and how two Nigerian artists have successfully memorialized victims of two disasters through music.