www.sciedu.ca/elr English Linguistics Research Vol. 3, No.

1; 2014

Narrative Stylistics: A Study of the Narrative and Discourse Strategies in

Omotoso’s Just Before Dawn
Bassey Ufot1
1
Department of English, University of Uyo, Uyo, Nigeria
Correspondence: Bassey Ufot, Department of English, University of Uyo, Uyo, Nigeria. E-mail:
Garveyufot@yahoo.com

Received: March 4, 2014 Accepted: March 24, 2014 Online Published: March 27, 2014
doi:10.5430/elr.v3n1p28 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/elr.v3n1p28

Abstract
This paper is a stylistic study of the elements of narrative discourse in Kole Omotoso’s Just Before Dawn (JBD)
including its narrative plot, narrative discourse and chapter titles. After its initial restrained favourable reception in
literary circles at its publication in 1988, Omotoso’s JBD has been largely neglected, receiving very little scholarly
attention of especially stylistic kind thereafter. This study therefore focuses on the stylistic and semantic implications
of the major features of the writer’s narrative strategy in the book such as flashback, time shift, foreshadowing
(prevision), elaboration and chapter titles. The study incorporates the theoretical postulations of Paul Simpson on
narrative stylistics and discourse, and exemplifies the degree to which Omotoso’s stylistic flourish in JBD gives the
story an imprint of individuality. The paper reveals the ways in which the author manipulates narrative sequence and
the various stylistic elements of narrative discourse and deploys them symbolically. It concludes that based on these
devices, the book assumes an archetypal, dialectical, paradoxical and symbolic character.
Keywords: Narrative, Discourse, Plot, Stylistics, Flashback, Time shift
1. Introduction
1.1 Stylistics and Literary Discourse
Stylistics as the linguistic study of literary and non literary style seeks to amalgamate linguistic and literary
approaches to criticism by extending the linguist’s ‘literary intuitions’ and the literary critic’s ‘linguistic observations’
in order to make their relationship explicit and produce an adequate and relevant criticism of literature. It is an area
of mediation between language and literature. Stylistics investigates all aspects of grammar and meaning especially
in formal contexts, and it is as much a linguistic analysis of literary texts as it is a literary evaluation of language.
Widdowson (1975) observes that the value of stylistic analysis is that it can ‘provide the means whereby the learner
can relate a piece of literary writing with his own experience of language and so extend that experience’(p.3).
Stylistics is not just grammar or syntax which is limited to the level of the individual sentence. Whereas syntax is
concerned with only the composition of several words into one sentence, stylistics incorporates this and regards
further the composition of many sentences into a piece of discourse.
Stylistics, even though applicable to all kinds of texts whether literary or non literary, appears to be more frequently
associated with literary texts. Matthews (2007) posits that it is ‘the study of style in language: traditionally, of
variations in usage among literary and other texts; now more generally, of any systematic variation, in either writing
or speech, which relates to the type of discourse or its context’ (p.386). Literature, it has been pointed out by
Chapman (1973), is the most difficult type of language to approach stylistically because of the diversity and
complexity which often appear in the course of investigation. Leech and Short (2007,p.11) assert that ‘literary
stylistics has implicitly or explicitly the goal of explaining the relation between language and artistic function.’ For
Mikov (2003), ‘literary style is the style of literary works implemented in all components of a literary work i.e. on
the level of language, ideas, plot, etc’ (p.16). It is also the case that literary stylistics appears much more amenable to
the criticism of literature, and this is the concern of this paper.
Literary stylisticians deploy the methods of stylistics to the language of literature and deal with the relationship
between language and character, between author and audience, and between linguistic features and content value
resulting in organized evaluation of literary discourse. According to Carter and Simpson, literary stylistics provides:

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the basis for fuller understanding, appreciation and interpretation of avowedly

literary and author-centred texts. The general impulse will be to draw eclectically on
linguistic insights and to use them in the service of what is generally claimed to be
fuller interpretation of language effects than is possible without the benefit of
linguistics (Carter and Simpson in Mills, 1995, p.4).
But a great deal of work in stylistics − including Olateju (2004), Ufot (2006), Coupland (2007) and Leech (2008) −
now treats literature as discourse; that is, as a group of sentences which carry meaning and which are contextual.
Simpson (2004, p.8) points out that:
contemporary stylistics ultimately looks towards language as discourse: that is,
towards a text’s status as discourse, a writer’s deployment of discourse strategies and
towards the way a text ‘means’ as a function of language in context….− the way a
text is constructed in language will, after all, have a crucial bearing on the way it
functions as discourse.
If the textuality of the work has a bearing on the way it functions as discourse, the individuality of the writer as
manifested in his lexical, grammatical and narrative choices in the work has a bearing on the textuality of the work as
well as its overall function as discourse, for, as Matthews (2007) suggests, the literary study of stylistics focuses
essentially on the ‘relevant differences, other than in the dialect or language used, among individual writers, periods,
or genres’ (p.386). Discourse stylistics leads to ‘a concentration of attention on discoursal techniques, and on the
cultural, social or political resonances’ of a narrative (Leech, 2008,p.180). Ultimately, this creates a three-way
socio-linguistic code which thrives on the relationship of immediacy among language, literature and discourse such
that the parts of a text are treated as interconnected and symbolic pieces of discourse often referred to as the text’s
narrative but frequently neglected in many stylistic investigations.
2. Narrative Stylistics
Narrative stylistics derives from the concept of narratology and narrative grammar. It involves the formal analysis of
narrative texts from a tradition which is similar to European structural linguistics (Matthew, 2007). Narratology itself
is the theoretical study of narratives paying particular attention to its levels and structures. Narratology focuses on
the manifestations of narratives in language and the different media. It also focuses on the narrators – the person who
narrates the story whether factual or fictional – and classifies them into autodiegetic narrators and heterodiegetic
narrators. The former refers to the first person narrators, who are typically the heroes or heroines of the stories, while
the latter is characteristically the omniscient narrator, the implied author. The omniscient narrator is detached from
the events, and as Wales (2011) opines, ‘may not even establish a discourse “relationship” with the implied reader’
(p.286). Dramatic irony in the novel, as she argues, for instance, is often the result of the double perspective of the
reader and the narrator.
Narrative discourse is the process of formal recollection and description of a series of activities for the purposes of
ideology. For Simpson (2004), it ‘provides a way of recapitulating felt experience by matching up patterns of
language to a connected series of events’. According to him:
In its most minimal form, a narrative comprises two clauses which are temporally
ordered, such that a change in their order will result in a change in the way we
interpret the assumed chronology of the narrative events (p.18).
Simpson proceeds to illustrate this with the sentence:
John dropped the plates and Janet laughed suddenly.
and suggests that the temporal progression between the two actions described in the sentence would invite a
completely different meaning were there to be any attempt to reverse the clauses to:
Janet laughed suddenly and John dropped the plates.
More fundamentally, however, this indicates that narratives require development, elaboration and embellishment.
They also need sufficient degrees of stylistic flourish to bestow on them the imprint of individuality or personality,
for, as Simpson argues, stories narrated without that flourish will often ‘feel flat and dull’ (p.19).
Although the task of providing an acceptable and rigorous model of narrative discourse has proved somewhat
challenging for discourse stylisticians, there has been little disagreement on the procedure for isolating the various
components of, say, a novel or a short story as well as the interconnectivity between these components. Simpson, for

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instance, makes a primary distinction between two basic components of narrative – narrative plot and narrative
discourse as follows:
The term plot is generally understood to refer to the abstract storyline of a narrative;
that is, to the sequence of elemental, chronologically ordered events which create the
‘inner core’ of a narrative. Narrative discourse, by contrast, encompasses the manner
or means by which that plot is narrated. Narrative discourse, for example, is often
characterized by the use of stylistic devices such as flashback, prevision and
repetition – all of which serve to disrupt the basic chronology of the narrative’s plot.
Thus, narrative discourse represents the realised text, the palpable piece of language
which is produced by a story-teller in a given interactive context (Simpson, 2004,
p.20).
These elements of narrative discourse, as well as time shift and symbolic chapter titles, are deployed, as we shall see,
by Omotoso in JBD.
3. Elements of Narrative Discourse
There are six basic stylistic units of analysis in narrative description. As identified by Simpson, these include:
a) Textual medium: This refers to the physical channel of communication by which the story is narrated. Common
examples of textual media are the novel, film, drama, music or cartoon strip.
b) Sociolinguistic code: This expresses through language the historical, cultural and linguistic setting which
underlies a narrative, locating the narrative in time and place by drawing upon the linguistic forms which reflect
this socio-cultural context. Sociolinguistic code encompasses the varieties of accent and dialect used in a
narrative by the narrator or the characters within the narrative including also the social and institutional registers
of discourse deployed in the story.
c) Characterization 1: actions and events – This unit basically describes the way in which the development of
character precipitates and intersects with the actions and events of a story. It accounts for the ways in which the
narrative intermeshes with certain kinds of semantic processes such as those of ‘doing’, ‘thinking’ and ‘saying’,
and shows how these processes are attributed to characters and narrators.
d) Characterization 2: points of view – This kind of characterization explores the relationship between mode of
narration and a character’s or narrator’s ‘point of view’. Mode of narration specifies whether the narrative is
relayed in the first person, the third person or even the second person, while point of view stipulates whether the
events are viewed from the perspective of a particular character or from that of an omniscient narrator, or indeed
from some mixture of the two. The way speech and thought processes are represented in narrative is also an
important determinant of point of view, although stylistically, this technique has a double function referring to
both actions and events.
e) Textual structure – This refers to the arrangement and organisation of individual narrative units. Here, stylistics
is interested in either large-scale elements of plot or more localized features of the story’s organisation.
f) Intertextuality – The technique of allusion, intertextuality is the sixth narrative component. Narrative fiction or
faction as in the case of JBD does not exist in a social or historical vacuum. All narratives echo other texts and
images either as ‘implicit’ intertextuality or as ‘manifest’ intertextuality.
Having explored these theoretical considerations in detail, this study next undertakes to exemplify them in the
narrative structure of Omotoso’s text.
4. Narrative Structure of the Text
Omotoso’s Just Before Dawn (JBD) is a complex story about the evolution of the Nigerian state. It explores the
twists and turns which have, in the course of the decades, resulted in widespread doubts about the future of the
country and resulted in the ‘national question’. It traces the origin, trajectory and principal architects and contributors
to the country’s decay. The intention of the story seems to be to prove that the prevalent disenchantment is the result
of decades of inconsistency, inertia and insincerity by those at the helm of its affairs. The story, being a creative
blend of fact and fiction, spans the first hundred years of Nigeria’s history and includes its precolonial story.
The book opens with the military government of Murtala Mohammed (1975 – 1976) which it describes as dynamic
and needed at the time to arrest the drift, douse the flame of cynicism and secure the future of the country.
Accordingly, the opening statements are dramatic and capture the author’s perception of the mood of that regime:

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With immediate effect! Promptly!! With dispatch!!! Without delay! In double quick
time!! When Murtala Mohammed became Head of State on 29 July 1975, he was just
what the country needed to sweep clean the cobwebs of the morally bankrupt Gowon
regime. The future became his area of operation. What we ought to do, not what we
did in the past or what we are doing now was his concern (p.1).
With the aid of the sets of exclamation marks, the author sets Mohammed off as ‘an impulsive man of action’ who
proceeds to try to clean up corruption and inefficiency. The exclamation marks also underscore, dialectically, the
abruptness and lack of depth of the regime, although the reader is unaware of this at this point. Mohammed sacks a
great many in the civil service, demobilizes a large number from the armed forces and asserts Nigeria’s leadership
role in the African continent. But in a short time, Murtala Mohammed is felled by ‘the long barrel of an aimless gun’.
The circumstances of his assassination provide for the text the first major instance of the paradox of leadership ethos
in Nigeria. In a bid to emphasize his Spartan and austere sensibilities by eschewing the extravagance allegedly
associated with his immediate predecessor in office, the Head of State had elected to continue living in the house he
had occupied as Director of Army Signal Corps and later Federal Commissioner for Communications, rather than
move into Dodan Barracks, the sprawling official residence and office of the country’s rulers. The implication of this
was that he had to drive to and from work from his house – a policy which proved to be his undoing as he was
assassinated in a failed but bloody coup d’etat on his way to work on 13 February, 1976. Beginning the story this
way, Omotoso sets the literary tone for the paradox and tragedy of Nigeria as the Murtala Mohammed story
illustrates Nigeria’s latent greatness and reality of failure.
In this work, Omotoso explores the discourse, weaknesses, the actions, inactions, interactions and contradictions as
well as the interpersonal quarrels of some of the principal beneficiaries of the post-Mohammed civilian dispensation
which Mohammed’s successor, Olusegun Obasanjo, had installed in 1979. In doing this, he shows how the seeds of
the eventual collapse of the system are sown. He also highlights the relationship of identity which exists between
those events and the events of contemporary as well as colonial times. Then the narrative examines the various
controversies including the 122/3 imbroglio of the 1979 presidential elections (a reference to the controversy
surrounding the interpretation of what constituted the electoral requirement of two thirds of Nigeria’s then nineteen
state structure which ought to be thirteen rather than 122/3) and their aftermath. It delves into Nigeria’s colonial
history, the struggle for independence, personality cults and clashes, the 1966 coup d’etat, the civil war and its
aftermath, the abandoned property question and finally ends with the announcement of the 1983 coup d’etat.
4.1 Narrative Plot
The narrative structure of the text is exceedingly complex. Although this complexity is in sharp contrast with the
placid tenor of the prose, it is deliberately deployed as a response to the complexity of the subject matter: the
boisterous character of the socio-political realities of Nigeria. In doing this, Omotoso dissolves the internal integrity
of the text resulting invariably in the breakdown of linearity in which particular incidents are delivered denotatively
as well as associatively through a variety of human images and symbols. As we have pointed out, the narrative
begins with the accession of Murtala Mohammed to the country’s leadership in 1976 with its brief match flare
description of his dynamism and optimism. It ends with the coup d’etat of Muhammadu Buhari in 1983 − a mere
seven years after.
Thus, the text begins with hope but ends with despair. It begins with a coup d’etat and ends with a coup d’etat. A
Mohammed begins the story and a Mohammed (Muhammadu) ends it. Nigeria is consequently portrayed as a
country going round in circles like a beheaded fowl. Between the hope at the beginning and the despair at the end of
the story, a period of seven years, lie the two major subdivisions of the plot; the present consists of long stretches of
military usurpation and brief civilian democratic interregnum while the past is marked by the rickety foundation laid
by the British colonial powers.
As a book of faction, JBD attempts to excavate the past in preparation for the future. It illustrates the fact that the
past is almost a tangible part of the present and that there can be no future until the past, no matter how ugly and
bloody, has been confronted squarely and placed securely in a suitable niche. According to Ofeimum in Ogunbiyi
(1988), with Omotoso:
we are no longer conversing with the patriarchal teacher… the philosopher-king…,
we are face to face with a fellow traveller on the streets of life, a fellow traveller who
plays the tortoise and demands unsettling answers to old questions.… Omotoso is an
unrepentant experimentalist who will not take the easy road to acceptability….
Omotoso’s output installs itself at the interstice between the old and the new, giving

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the author a place at the bridge head of the rising echelon of younger writers whose
strength has been in the urgency with which old questions are asked and fresh
answers are being teased or cajoled out of the bowels of time. The questions and the
answers which are implicated in Omotoso’s [works] emerge largely from the
author’s shifting of the literary camera to the wretched of the earth (p.185).
Thus, the textual structure of the book is dominated by a back and forth movement between the present and the past
and between the present and the future. The questions of the present find answers in the past whereas those of the
future are located in the present. This is why at the installation of the new civilian dispensation of Shehu Shagari in
1979, three years after Murtala Mohammed’s assassination, the outgoing Head of State, Olusegun Obasanjo,
responding to the question about what he is handing over to the new President, declares:
I am handing over Nigeria in its totality – its past, present and future, its assets and
liabilities… its hopes and aspirations, its fears and anxieties, its complexities and
distinct characteristics as an African society (p.49).
This declaration early in the story serves as a narrative cue for the first of the many instances of flashbacks and time
shifts in which the narrator takes the implied and real narratees by the hand 62 years back to highlight the sources of
those ‘fears’, ‘anxieties’ and ‘complexities’.
5. Narrative Discourse
The textual medium of Omotoso’s JBD, as the study has already observed, is faction in which real life events are
fictionalized in a way that blends with the country’s sociolinguistic code which consists of a composite of
colonialism, corruption and ethnicity. The non linear symbolism of the code, as observed, is dominated by the
recurrent flashbacks and time shift devices or what Leech and Short (2007) describe as ‘shifts in discourse
architecture’ (p.300).
5.1 Flashback
The series of flashbacks to the colonial era serves to shed light on current happenings in the country. For instance,
when we read about the petty geopolitical bickering among Lord Lugard, Walter Crocker (D.O., Okene),
Commander Carrow and Sir Donald Cameron (pp.66-67), we are better able to comprehend the political acrimony
between Chief Fashoranti and Mr. Fagbamigbe, which results later in bloodletting (pp.39/335). Similarly, for the
reader who seeks explanation for the incident (in the present) in which Major General Olufemi Olutoye is reported to
have been retired prematurely from the army for seeking audience with, and advising, Obasanjo against pandering to
what he (Olutoye) considers parochial Northern interests (pp.32-33), its parallel (in the past), in the incident between
Walter Crocker and Peter (p.68) is probably where to turn.
Again, in order to understand the Bakolori massacre of peasants by the Shagari administration (in the present)
(p.325), we must read (in the past) about the shooting of women demonstrating against the planned taxation (p.66).
Even the rivalry between Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe (p.171) (in the present) is paralleled (in the past)
by the rivalry between Commander Carrow and Donald Cameron (p.71). There is also a sense in which the rancorous
debates at the 1978 Constituent Assembly (pp.33-34) can be said to resemble the acrimonious Constitutional talks at
the Lancaster House Conference in London in 1947 (p.186). All these excursions into the past and
projections/previsions of the future are done in order to present the present in proper contexts and exteriorise and
detemporalise these realities.
In chapter eight and nine, the independence that was achieved on a precarious tripod of tribalism begins to groan
under the weight of the contradictions and distress. The army, which itself was susceptible to the same contradictions,
steps in to disperse the politicians. But because it (the army) consisted largely of colonial parallels, the task of
cleaning up rather creates more pandemonium and civil war. Consequently, (neo)colonial interests which had been
temporarily sidelined by political independence re-assert themselves in terms of the supply of arms, mercenaries and
the search for peace.
This portion of the narrative is particularly significant for the light it sheds on the past life of characters like Murtala
Mohammed, whom the narrator frequently addresses as ‘the man of the future’. Although Mohammed’s present is
seen in largely positive and dynamic senses, his past, albeit not quite so edifying, intensifies his dramatic Saul-to-St.
Paul conversion on the road to Damascus as well as his eventual tragedy. Here, he is seen, together with a number of
Northern army officers, embarking on the counter coup d’etat of 29 July, 1966. Asked by an exasperated Brigadier
Ogundipe what the Northern army officers wanted, the man of the future replies:

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We don’t want any more Nigeria, that’s all. The troops from the North wish to be
allowed to go back home. They have already sent their families home. Let’s arrange
the exchange of populations. That’s all (p. 258).
Indeed, throughout the informal talks amongst army officers and permanent secretaries after the bloody counter coup,
Murtala Mohammed is barely able to contain himself in his righteous indignation at what he perceives as Yakubu
Gowon’s (the Head of State at the time) conciliatory disposition towards the rest of the country. When Emeka
Ojukwu calls Gowon on the phone, Mohammed insists on knowing every word he says before Gowon replies
because according to Mohammed:
Gowon could be kind; he was not the kind of ruthless person who should deal with
these people;… The only way to ensure that he did not make any commitment which
they could not accept was to monitor every word that he had to say (p. 264).
Later, when Gowon continues to try to be reasonable and initiate a dialogue with Ojukwu, Mohammed, the man of
the future, objects with these words: ‘But let me tell you this: there is no way we are going to avoid a civil war and
the earlier we fight it and win it the better for everybody’ (p. 273).
In all these instances, Omotoso silently manipulates discourse to reveal character as well as the sequence of historical
facts, re-ordering them to create a coherent picture of the cause, dialectics and course of the nation’s decay and crises.
The importance of the flashback here is, as suggested earlier, to recall the conversion of St. Paul so that when ‘the
man of the future’ is later put to death in the putsch of 13 February, 1976, his ‘martyrdom’ again recalls St Paul’s
‘dying for the sake of the kingdom’.
The roles of other important dramatis personae of this period of the country’s history some of whom are still alive
today are likewise situated at the threshold of their past as well as the present and the future of the country. Links
between the past and present of characters like Dimka, Ojukwu, Gowon, Obasanjo, Awolowo, Azikwe and Shagari
are systematically created for the narratee in ‘intervening stand stills of the period of creation’.
5.2 Time Shift
The sophisticated complexity of the narrative compels the narratee to be attentive. The various instances of time shift
jolt him from complacency which is induced by reading about a familiar historical account into compulsive
attentiveness. The effects of these devices are discussed by Ofeimum in Ogunbiyi (1988, p.193) when he refers to
Omotoso’s stylistic techniques in the book’s narrative and speaks of this tendency:
to problematise through switches of point of view, flashbacks and movements
between fantasy and the real. It could frustrate the careless reader. All the same, the
switches from one narrator to the other and the shuttles between flashbacks and
anticipations which may at first appear like a hindrance become in the end an aid to
empathy… the switches from one point of view to another is therefore in the long run
a device that inclines the reader to look into a collective, rather than just an
individualistic vision.
We read about a 1920 incident involving a farmer named Abdul. Abdul had come to complain to Dr Walter Miller of
the CMS in Zaria that the Emir had appropriated his farm. We are told that the corrupt Emir was propped up by an
equally corrupt British Resident who condoned the Emir’s malfeasance. When Dr Miller writes the Resident, he
replies that the issue is being looked into by the Emir! Miller writes to Governor Hugh Clifford in Lagos, who, after
discreet investigations, imposes sanctions on the Emir, but Miller is warned to mind his business (p.108).
As the reader settles for a chronological follow-up to the story, the narrative shifts abruptly to 4th June, 1888, to an
incident involving Madam Adeola at Ebute Ero market in Lagos. She has been hurt in a violent altercation and is
rushed to the colonial hospital in Lagos. But the hospital’s assistant’s surgeon, Dr Cecil Digby, has no time for black
patients and so Madam Adeola does not receive treatment until 20th June, sixteen days later, when she is secretly
dumped in a nearby bush. Reverend James Johnson hears about it and gets her readmitted into the hospital where she
dies a few days later. The furore generated by her death results in the institution of an enquiry into the incident. The
coroner returns a verdict of death by natural causes, and Dr. Digby and his accomplices are acquitted (pp.108-109).
As the reader begins to wonder what connection exists between the two anecdote-like episodes above, the narrative
in the same breath shifts further to 19th September, 1873. The occasion is the founding of the Lagos based society
for the Promotion of Religion and Education during which its secretary indicts some of its white missionaries for
selfishness, inertia and apathy towards public interests and public good. The narrator observes that the indictment

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‘could equally describe other white professionals’(p.109). What these somewhat disparate incidents have in common
becomes apparent only with further reading as we discover that this is the narrator’s method of demonstrating a
pattern to barefaced colonial oppression, treachery and injustice even as they (colonialists) claimed lofty ideals and
humane motives. In both instances, it is the citizen – the face from the crowd – who is victimized. As the narratee
ponders on the activities of the Emir, a corrupt protégé of colonialism, who connives to deny Abdul his rights, he is
provided ‘fresh answers’ to ‘old questions’ from ‘a fellow traveller on the streets of life’. For, as Ofeimum (1988,
p.187) suggests, these questions and answers:
emerge largely from the author’s shifting of the literary camera to the wretched of the
earth, the innocent, the helpless, those who suffer the pangs of wants, suffering and
deprivation; those who do not enjoy even the wretched opulence of our neo-colonial
age.
Another instance of the narrative’s complex time-shift technique occurs in the narration of the build-up to the
January 1966 Nigerian coup d’etat. The narrator informs the reader that following the unrest in Nigeria’s Western
region, the army is called in to restore order. But the military operation cannot begin because the Commonwealth
conference is holding in Lagos at the time and ends on the 13th of January, 1966. On that day, the British Prime
Minister, Harold Wilson, privately hints his Nigerian counterpart, Tafawa Balewa, about intelligence reports
concerning an impending coup, and offers to assist if Balewa needs help – offers which Balewa brusquely rejects. In
the narrator’s uniquely poignant style designed to presage as well as intensify Balewa’s tragedy, he, the narrator,
does not forget to add that Wilson offered Balewa ‘some rooms in the High Commission, so that you don’t have to
go back to your residence straight away’ (p.234).
Conforming to historical accounts of Balewa’s demeanour of fierce patriotism and naïve grandeur, the narrative
shifts abruptly from this point to a period antecedent to the commencement of the conference on 11th January, 1966.
Balewa has gone to Kaduna (Northern regional headquarters) from Lagos to confer with Ahmadu Bello (Premier of
Northern region and leader of his party) about his anxieties concerning the situation in the West in particular and the
country in general, and the need to take decisive action. The Sardauna (Bello), on his way to perform the lesser Hajj,
Umra, tells Balewa not to worry. From here the story returns abruptly to 13th January, 1966, the end of the
conference and the return of Ahmadu Bello from the Hajj. On his arrival, he is telephoned by the Prime Minister and
the following dialogue ensues:
‘When I arrived today, someone at the airport gave me an anonymous letter,’ replied
the Sardauna, ‘saying something about a coup d’etat. I wouldn’t bother myself with
such a thing.’
‘The federal parliament meets on Monday, the 17th, to do something about the
West.’
‘What exactly?’ the Sardauna asked sharply.
‘A state of emergency, to begin with,’ said the Prime Minister.
‘Akintola is our political ally,’ responded the Sardauna, ‘you must give him more
time.’
‘But he is not doing anything with what he has been given!’
‘How do you know?’ the Sardauna snapped back. The Prime Minister decided to
change the topic. ‘How was your Umra?’ (pp. 235-236).
Now, who is the leader of the country here − the Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, or the Sardauna, Ahmadu Bello,
the Premier of just one part of the country, the North? This piece of discourse is significant not just for what it
reveals about the character of each man and their interpersonal relationship but also the tragic contradictions of
Nigeria’s leadership architecture.
Between the first and second accounts of the 13th January, 1966 events, there is a piece of interior monologue which
seems to connect them both. In it, Balewa reveals to the reader his thoughts on the difficulties he is having with the
Sardauna, which have earned him the demeaning epithet of errand boy to the Sardauna. Balewa sees this as unfair
because he has always struck an appropriate balance between his deference to the Sardauna and the North on the one
hand, and a measure of independence in decision making on the other. He recalls the instance of his choice of Aguiyi
Ironsi as Army GOC to succeed Welby Everald rather than Babafemi Ogundipe (Welby Everald’s choice), Samuel

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Ademulegun (Sardauna’s choice) or Zakary Maimalari (North’s choice). Some of these time shifts give the episodes
they refer to the qualities of potentially great short stories.
Shortly after this, Samuel Akintola, Premier of the West, visits the Sardauna on the 14th of January, 1966, and hints
at an impending coup. As the Sardauna again brushes this aside, Akintola importunes him:
‘… I am telling you that they are going to kill us today!’
‘My defence is in the hands of Allah,’ intoned the Sardauna like a Sufi. Akintola
shook his head and went into the plane to return to Ibadan and his death (p.236).
The narrative here is remarkable for the way in which an even, almost sleepy tenor of the narration results in such a
tragically prophetic incident. The abrupt connection between the present and the future is underscored by the device
of zeugma which results in the neutral prevision of Akintola’s death.
With Akintola’s departure for Ibadan, the Sardauna returns from the airport and is informed of a young army officer
in civilian clothes going around his residence. It is when he accosts the young man, who claims to be checking the
security systems in the house, that an earlier incident ten years before involving someone who resembled this same
young man flashes through his mind. The narrative abruptly goes back to the occasion of the visit of the Queen of
England with her husband during which security had been tight. He, Ahmadu Bello, had not brought his pass because
he expected anyone in Kaduna to recognize him. But his car had been stopped and he had been asked to produce a
pass. He had got out of his car and announced who he was and asked the young man who he was, to which he replied:
‘I am an Ibo sir,’ and turned back the Sardauna who went away muttering to himself: ‘An Ibo, an Ibo.’ The
references to ‘Ibo’ here are significant because the coup d’etat which occurs on the 15th of January, the very next
day (future), is later widely seen as an Ibo coup resulting in reprisal bloodletting and a countercoup against the Ibos.
The next time-shift episode takes the reader back to December 1964 to the preparations for the federal elections of
that year. Here, we see Emeka Ojukwu, an army officer, and Nnamdi Azikiwe, the President, discussing plans for a
UPGA (United Progressive Grand Alliance) boycott of the elections and Azikiwe’s take-over of power (p.239). Part
of this story has already been told (pp.227-230) before the episodes of the Commonwealth conference and Akintola’s
visit to the Sardauna. In the earlier part of the narrative, Azikiwe has already attempted the take-over on the 1st of
January, 1965 after the elections have been boycotted wholly in the East and partially in the West. The Prime
Minister has sought and secured the advice and support of service chiefs, Welby Everald (army), Akinwale Wey
(navy) and Louis Edet (police) in anticipation of a possible conflict with President Azikiwe.
But now in the present, the reader is treated to a detailed narrative on Azikiwe’s preparations for the take-over
including his unsuccessful attempt to secure the support of the above named service chiefs. Chronologically,
Azikiwe’s effort is supposed to occur before, rather than after, that of the Prime Minister’s. Thus, the breakdown of
linearity of this factual, familiar story turns it into an imaginative work of art, fictionalizing it. This is a technique the
author deploys again and again. Again, before sending for the service chiefs, we are told, Azikiwe seeks advice from
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Attorney General of the country and the Chief Judge of the Eastern
region about his intention to take over. But they tell him that it would be unconstitutional (p.228). It is not until
eleven pages later that the reader is treated to the full details of their discussion (pp.239-240).
Yet another example of the narrative time-shift technique occurs when, as we are told, Aguiyi-Ironsi has assumed
leadership of Nigeria following the failure of the January, 1966 putsch and suspended the constitution. The narrative
yet again breaks off abruptly and begins to explore some of the aims of the putsch and the process of execution. Here,
the coup makers take over the narrative and inform the narratee that the aim of the coup was that: ‘…power must be
wrested from the hands of the NPC [Northern People Congress] if the country was ever to make any headway in the
modern world’(p.248). The failure of the coup as a result of the failure of Major Obienu, who was charged with the
responsibility of moving arms over to Lagos from the Abeokuta armoury, to appear with the arms on the day of the
coup is described with pathos and irony. Maimalari, who was instrumental to the establishment of that armoury at the
prompting of Emmanuel Ifeajuna and Emmanuel Nwobosi for the very purpose of the coup itself, later becomes a
principal victim of the coup.
The time shift here achieves two aims. First, it lets us see how Ironsi comes to assume leadership, and, second, it
attempts to juxtapose by innuendo the ethnic identity of the names of the coup makers (Nzeogu, Ifeajuna, Obienu,
Nwobosi) and the beneficiaries (Ironsi, Ojukwu) (p.249). All over the text, there are episodes arranged
non-chronologically to elucidate specific contemporary questions. Thus, in order to exemplify the imperial ambition
and peremptory disposition of the contemporary Ojukwu as he discusses with Azikiwe plans to discredit the
impending federal elections of 1964, the narrator undertakes to place him (Ojukwu) in sharper focus by abruptly

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dramatising for the narratee Ojukwu’s days at Oxford University. The occasion is an evening of a small gathering of
soon-to-graduate students on a Friday night during which each person speaks of what he or she would like to do after
graduation. When it is Ojukwu’s turn, with supreme cynicism at his classmates’ real motives for asking such a
question, he replies: ‘I am going to be the King of Nigeria!’ With this past detail in Ojukwu’s life, Omotoso sheds
light on his present uncompromisingly imperious stance in the aftermath of the counter coup of 29th July, 1966. As
we have observed, the time shifts here episodicise and problematise the story of Nigeria. The breakdown of linearity
reinforces the notion that Nigeria’s true story is stranger than fiction.
6. Chapter Titles
As part of the text’s narrative strategy, there is a great deal that the chapter titles contribute to the narrative style of
the text. The chapter titles are all semantically cryptic but surely symbolic of the author’s private and poetic
interpretation of the events in each chapter. There are thirteen chapters in the text. The first chapter entitled ‘The
Long Barrel of an Aimless Gun’ introduces to the narratee Murtala Mohammed’s brief reign including how and why
he is assassinated in the Dimka abortive coup in February, 1976. The coup is long in rhetoric but aimless in purpose
and planning; it is not designed, the narrative tells us, to achieve any specific noble aim. Thus, Dimka’s gun is long
barrelled because it consumes (reaches) several victims, but it is aimless (not specifically targeted). Dialectically also,
the Murtala Mohammed’s regime is long in its claim to dynamism but short (aimless) in clear thoughtfulness and life
span.
In the second chapter, Obasanjo inherits the mantle of leadership on his boss’ assassination. But he also inherits the
hopes, fears and problems of the nation, which he in turn prepares to hand over to the incoming politicians. The
chapter is appropriately entitled ‘Handing Over’. The next chapter, ‘The Imitation Raj Disposes’, at first poses an
interesting challenge to interpretation. It forces the reader into a deeper reflection about the semantic implication of
the lexical items ‘Imitation Raj’ as well as what the expression is supposed to be disposing. Further reading reveals
that the clue to its meaning resides in the item ‘raj’. As a lexical item of the common noun category, it is derived
from Hindi language meaning ‘government’; ‘rule’, but as a proper noun, ‘the Raj’ refers to the British government
in India prior to independence in 1947.
The story of Indian struggle for independence reveals the characteristic divide and rule strategy of British
colonialism. In order to neutralize the influence of the charismatic M.K. Gandhi, who led the independence
movement through non-violent protests, the British exploited the sectarian sentiments and fears of Muslim Indians
(now Pakistan) led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who were apprehensive of being swallowed up in a haze of oppression
by the majority Hindus in an independent India. The result was crisis and bloodshed in which over a thousand people
lost their lives, and finally partition (Browne, 2007, pp.136-143).
Close reading of the events in ‘The Imitation Raj Disposes’, therefore, reveals not just Omotoso’s sense of history
but also interesting parallels between the British Raj in pre-independence India and Nigeria. We read of the various
antics of the British colonial officers exploiting the fears and apprehension of Northern Nigerians in the worst form
of divide and rule in order to blunt the independence struggle led by Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo.
Coming as this chapter does directly after ‘Handing Over’, which, as we have observed, raises hopes, the actions of
the British colonial authorities (‘Imitation Raj’ for replicating British treachery in India) could be said to have
‘disposed’ those hopes.
The next chapter, ‘Their Field of Play’ appropriately examines the various geographical settings of these acts of
disposing in Nigeria; that is, the various parts of Nigeria in which sundry political theories which were developed
elsewhere and often contradictory are tested. These settings (field of play) as revealed in the narrative include
Kontagora, Keffi, Oyo, Akassa, Nikki, Obowo, Lagos, Dumbulwa, Zaria, Rabah and Ebute Ero. Next comes chapter
five in which the life and careers of each of Azikiwe, Awolowo and Bello are faithfully portrayed including the ‘so
much promise but little fulfilment’ which their titanic personalities held for Nigeria. This chapter is dialectically
entitled ‘The Big Three’, and the theme of the chapter is summed up in the subtitle: ‘…but it was an age of promise
rather than of fulfilment’.
Chapter six is entitled ‘Trial of the Zikists’ (Note the absence of the definite article ‘the’ before the word ‘trial’), and
it examines the circus show which became of colonial administration of justice as exemplified in the trial of the
young men who claimed to be followers of Nnamdi Azikiwe such as Chukwuemeka Ugokwu, Abiodun Aloba, Kola
Balogun and Ikenna Nzimiro. In the course of the trial, which is a study in no trial at all – for, that is what the
absence of the definite article connotes – Ugokwu deftly turns his accusers to the accused, and the ‘trial’
metamorphoses into a trial of British colonial policies in Nigeria.

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‘The Frantic Fifties’, chapter seven, is concerned with the development of pre-independence party politics, tribalism,
constitutional talks and the beginnings of regional and ethnic suspicion and tension. At this point, the speeches and
actions of the politicians are full of fear and anxiety. They are frantic. Chapter eight discusses the skewed nature of
the federation bequeathed by the independence constitution, which gave overwhelming advantages to the North, and
the spate of crises resulting from it. It also examines the attempts to wrest federal power from, and control, the North,
Azikiwe’s attempted take-over of power and hints about the impending 15th January coup d’etat. It is entitled ‘Who
Gets the North Rules’.
In chapter nine, ‘Unity in Diversity’, the coup d’etat has taken place, Ironsi is Head of State, and there are tensions
mostly ethnic. The military authorities embark on discussions and consultations, which are almost belated,
concerning the threatened unity of the country. The various units in the country at this point are united only in their
desire to quit the federation. They who initially desired to be one despite their diverse natures are now united in
wanting a break-up (diversity). The chapter is a study in paradox and dialectics. This is followed in chapter ten by an
examination of the hard-line positions adopted by the principal participants in the talks to avert the looming crisis
and war. The chapter explores the Aburi talks and the outbreak of the war. It is entitled ‘The Nation in a State of
War’.
Chapter eleven exploits the homophonic similarity (pun) between the war time federalist slogan, ‘To keep Nigeria
one is a task that must be done’, which expresses in a pithy manner the ostensible aim of the war, and what the
author, from post war hindsight, considers the real aim of the prosecution of the war: ‘To keep Nigeria Worn’. The
word play is on ‘one’ in the real slogan and ‘worn’ in the chapter title because the chapter consists in the various acts
of government officials and society which wore, and continue to wear, away the moral fibre of the nation. As the
chapter observes: ‘In retrospect it is difficult to say which had the more devastating effect on the unity of Nigeria: the
civil war with all its injustices and inhumanities or the post civil war oil boom with all its corruption and soul
destroying immoralities’ (p.299).
The last two chapters, twelve and thirteen, are entitled ‘Unlimited Liability’ and ‘Strange Bedfellows’ respectively.
The phrase, ‘unlimited liability’ is particularly apt as it portrays Nigeria at this point as a company whose directors
have mortgaged all her assets including paid or unpaid par value of shares turning her into a huge liability. Shehu
Shagari presides over this monumental brigandage and turns his administration into an unlimited national liability.
‘Strange Bedfellows’ explores the curious and unworkable political alliances between NPN (National Party of
Nigeria) and NPP (Nigerian People’s Party), and later among UPN (Unity Party of Nigeria), NPP and GNPP (Great
Nigerian People’s Party) especially as these alliances mock the failed and tragic alliances of the past. It deals with
the strange bedfellows who cohabit these parties and who precipitate the 1983 election malpractice and the violence
which accompanies it culminating in another coup d’etat. Buhari, who becomes the Head of State, was himself a
high ranking military cum political appointee of the government he has toppled. These chapter titles foreground in a
symbolic, poetic style the author’s impressions about the various strands of the discourse on Nigeria some of which
impressions are not explicitly stated. The titles therefore underscore the multi-layered interpretation of the events in
the text.
7. Graphological Device
Yet another aspect of the narrative style of the text occurs at the graphological level. Here again, Omotoso’s unusual
graphological style manifests itself in the dialectical symbolism of his preference for lower case letters rather than
capitals and vice versa to designate the proper titles or common names of the characters. Consider the following
examples: inspector-general (p.2); obi (p.87); emir (pp.78/107/131); sardauna (p.133), and Gods (p.309). At first,
the reader is slightly perplexed at this phenomenon. All the lexical items save for the last one usually and
traditionally have proper reference, being nouns that are normally one of their kinds in the context. And so why does
the author begin specific proper titles with lower case letters, and the common noun ‘gods’ with an upper case letter?
The answer lies in the narrator’s perception of the roles which the characters so designated perform in relation to the
socio-political problems of the country.
Traditional or conventional literary appraisal will most likely perceive only a laudatory attitude in the author’s
assessment of the characters. Stylistic criticism enables the reader to read between, not just the lines but also, the
letters and go beyond the ‘urbane, cultivated and relaxed’ personae (p.2) and appreciate the paradox of the distress,
‘grave economic predicament and uncertainty’ (p.344) which they help to create. In other words, the presentation of
these characters’ designations with small letters represents a dialectical assessment of their roles. On the other hand,
the capital ‘g’ which begins the small letter ‘god’ attests to the trouble-shooting role of the Sebastian Okoro family
‘gods’. Here, the ‘Gods’ are called upon to provide succour and replenish their stock, which has been hugely

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depleted by the just ended civil war, which the small letter characters helped to create. The paradox in the author’s
perception of the roles of these characters is reflected in this reverse use of graphology. By this device, the characters
are to be seen as ironic archetypes of the main actors in any dialectics of struggle and social change. For they
represent instances of inertia, overzealousness and solicitude rather than agents of law, order, good governance and
minor deity as the case may be the world over.
8. Conclusion
This study has employed a narrative stylistic theory to reveal the ways in which Omotoso exploits narrative discourse
elements in order to demonstrate a correlation between past and present action as well as the manipulation of
narrative sequence for didactic purposes in Just Before Dawn. The principal discourse strategies here are flashbacks,
timeshift, chapter titles and graphology. With these devices, the narrator frequently takes the reader (narratee) by the
hand back and forth a hundred years into Nigeria’s socio-political history, delivering denotatively and associatively
the historical parallels between contemporary events, their sources, courses and future.
The textual medium of the work is a creative blend of fact and fiction often referred to as faction in which familiar
real life events and characters commingle with their symbolic counterparts. The socio-linguistic code of the narrative
is a composite one in which images of betrayal, treachery, corruption, lust for power and brief life affirming
leadership values are expressed in plain and lucid English. The unique stylistic aspects of narrative characterization
are exemplified through the manipulation and juggling of graphology in terms of the ‘doing’, ‘thinking’ and ‘saying’
of the characters. The textual structure of the work consists of large-scale elements of plot whose physical linear
connectivity is disrupted frequently by flashbacks, prevision, time shift and the deeper social symbolism of its
chapter titles. It is this deeper symbolism which best illustrates the book’s intertextuality in the sense that the forward
and backward movements of the narrative reflect the country’s chequered history delivered creatively and
imaginatively.
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