Identity And Leadership Conceptualisations In Obasanjo’s My Watch

Abstract

This paper explores leadership identity construction in Olusegun Obasanjo’s memoirs. Identity defines an individual or societal construction of self and is considered as a product of such individuals’ socio-cultural and political realities. The study purposively examined leadership identity and conceptualisations in two volumes of Olusegun Obasanjo memoirs. The study adopts a theoretical triangulation of Tajfel and Turner’s (1979) social identity theory of intergroup behaviour, Fetzer (2004) model of context and Sbisa’s (2006) notion of speech act theory. Findings reveal that fence-mender, game-player, and self- sacrificing leadership identity types, evidently nuanced by the social, economic, and historical contexts play out as intervolving identity types and contexts and culminate in two pragmatic implications of political discourses in Nigeria: negative representation of others’ identities, and gamification of leadership acts. The study implicates that memoirs are tools for the construction of the subject realities of ideological polarised positive-self and negative-other conceptualisations.