LITERATURE: BOOKS & REVIEWS

MASS EDUCATION IS A MAJOR SUPPLEMENT TO MEDICATION. READ THIS BOOK: SCALPEL: HIV/AIDS. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Articles [THISDAY NEWSPAPER] HOME > NEWS HIV/AID: 700,000 Infected In Benue 23 Nov 2013 HIV Patient Over 700,000 people have been confirmed to have been infected with the HIV/AID virus in Benue State even as the state government has complained that despite its continuous campaign several people in the state were still living with the virus Of the number, only 50,000 people living with the virus have already registered with the Benue Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS disease in the state. The Benue State coordinator for People Li -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE FOLLOWING BOOKS ARE COMING SOON: 1.AMIDES AND ESTERS IN DRUG DISCOVERY BY EMEKA AKAMIKE This manuscript explores the role of amides and esters in drug discovery 2. ANTIMALARIA DRUGS PATTERN IN DRUG DISCOVERY Part one BY EMEKA AKAMIKE A statistical review of anti-malaria drugs This manuscript is a review of the evolution of malaria and anti-malaria drugs, a statistical and chemical analysis of anti-malarial drugs to identify patterns and violations of Lipsinki rule of five (Ro5). It proposes the next generation of anti-malarial drugs. The calculations for statistical analysis were done for parameters such as cLog P, parachor, polarizability, molar refractivity, druglikeness, etc. It reviews the control of malaria that includes biochemical, chemical, structural and pattern analysis of insecticides. 3. BIO-ENERGY COMPOUNDS PATTERNS-Part 1 BY EMEKA AKAMIKE ATP AND ATP DERIVATIVES/VITAMINS This manuscript is a computer-aided analysis of a whole array of energy sources in the human body and their bioactivity/molecular properties patterns. The relationship of antioxidants to longevity, various diseases such as cardiovascular disease, arthritis, COPD, Parkinson’s disease, and cystic acne is explored including their effect on physical exercise. Fatty acids antioxidant properties are compared to the hypothetical substituted derivatives to expose a unique pattern. The effect of antioxidants on free radicals is illustrated with the drug edaravone, a free radical scavenger, on Parkinson’s disease. Free radical induced oxidative stress is involved in the mechanisms of cell death in Parkinson’s disease, and edaravone exerts a neuroprotective effects on Parkinson disease. The antioxidant properties of food additives are reviewed. Compounds such as anthocyanins, glutathione, uric acid, ubiquinones, melatonin, caffeine and the coenzymes A & Q series display characteristic pattern including blood thinners.  4. DRUG PATTERNS IN DRUG DISCOVERY –Part 1 BY EMEKA A. AKAMIKE October 24 2012 This manuscript explores the statistical relationships between the physicochemical parameters (clog P, parachor, molecular weight, molar volume, polarizability, molar refractivity, PSA, log BB, druglikeness, and calculated formula weight, CFW), and bioactivity data in the five therapeutic areas (anticholesterol drugs (STATINS), antiretroviral (ARV), central nervous system (CNS), steroids, and mustards. Finally, it predicts the next generation of nitrogen mustards. A statistical evaluation 5. DRUG DISCOVERY CHEMISTRY: THE NEXT GENERATION OF NITROGEN MUSTARDS AS ANTI-CANCER AGENTS BY EMEKA AKAMIKE This book is an applied medicinal chemistry approach to the design and prediction of the next generation of nitrogen mustards that involves the application and use of some of the computer chemistry softwares. It undertakes the statistical analysis of the molecular parameters such as clog P, molar refractivity, molar volume, parachor, TPSA, and polarizability. These parameters are correlated to the bioactivity properties such as GPCR, ion channel, kinase inhibition, nuclear receptor inhibition, protease and enzyme inhibition. The mathematical evaluation of the additivity of molecular components is compared to their bioactivities. These instruments of analysis are used to evaluate the druglikeness of the proposed novel nitrogen mustards. 6. MORPHINE. PAIN KILLER: PATTERNS IN DRUG DISCOVERY Part one. BY EMEKA AKAMIKE This manuscript is a computer-aided review of the molecular and bioactivity properties of commercially available morphine and morphine analogs using descriptors. Since the laboratory synthesis of morphine is challenging, alternative novel chromophore is proposed and analyzed. Morphine metabolism is reviewed. The ability of these compounds to cross the blood brain-barrier is calculated. A detailed statistical analysis is carried. The hybrids of morphine and novel chromophore are formed with compounds such as serotonin, histamine, sulfonamides, tapentadol, eticyclidine, Quaalude, ampakine, NMDA ligands, kainic acid , talampanel, pethidine, etc. 7. SELECT MORPHINE HYBRIDS AND NOVEL CHROMOPHORE BY EMEKA AKAMIKE An elaborate comparison of the physical and bioactivity properties of proposed morphine hybrids and derivatives with the corresponding novel chromophore hybrids. Using Corydalis extracts/analogs as reference compounds, major bioactivity differences are identified when compared to opiates, morphine, codeine, and heroin.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Literary Giant Or Nobel Laureate? By Chris Onyishi I recapped, recently, two tributes on Prof. Chinua Achebe by Tola Adeniyi (“Chinua Achebe: The Uncrowned Nobel Laureate”) and Shola Balogun (“THE NOBEL LAUREATE WE NEVER HAD”). These two tributes are just but a figment in the avalanche of tributes to the great writer upon the news of passage to the world beyond. The highlight of Tola’s expose, without disregards to other streaks in that tribute, is that “Chinua Achebe was not just a writer; he was a distinguished writer with the best and noblest of human virtues. A non hypocrite. A non bully. Achebe was both a great ambassador of Africa and a true and respectable specimen of the finest humanity" I accentuated Tola’s tribute thus: When the main issue is about character and men of no mean literary state from all works of life talk fluently about an individual, in most unguarded ecstasy as we have witnessed on Prof. Achebe, then even the corruption laden uncharitable rulers of Nigeria would have to have a break. On Shola Balogun’s tribute, the aspect of his highlight includes; "… even literature is no longer immune from the vagaries of global politics and other considerations. They have observed that perhaps, owing to political and other extraneous considerations, the Nobel Prize in Literature may well elude certain writers despite their exceptional brilliance and great talent that have been well acknowledged across the globe”. On my side, I had rapped that Shola’s tribute has once more brought to the fore the faulty scale upon which Europe and the West generally weighs intellectualism when an iridescent, but uncompromising, African - such as Prof. Chinua Achebe - is involved. I did interject that I was very glad that up until his death, Prof. Achebe never wavered - for once - in asserting that honor should only be given by honorable people, for if it is given by dishonorable people, the giver and taker become both of questionable character. It is in this vain that I have always viewed the “Nobel laureate” and its organizers - of recent - as another token of imperialism. My question here now is which insignia would have been best for Prof. Chinue Achebe? Would it have been more honorable to refer to him as a Nobel Laureate or a literary giant? From Tola and Shola’s accounts, a literary giant could easily become a Nobel laureate but a Nobel laureate may not be or become a literary giant. If I should answer myself, I would say that a literary giant tag for a man whom one of his books sold over 12 million copies and was translated into over 50 languages would be more honorable and weighs more than a Nobel laureate tag which is an award by one small Swedish academy whose judgment t has been infiltrated by an unfounded yardstick due to some political and other extraneous considerations. But the greatest looser in the whole “Nobel Laureate” saga, in my opinion, is Alfred Nobel who enunciated the award via his will of 1895 for rewarding greatness in the fields of Chemistry, Physics, Literature, Peace and Physiology or Medicine. For when you begin to view greatness from regional or political prism, the greatness becomes an aberration. The Swedish Academy that brings this distortion to the “award” may have to rethink and allow the soul of Alfred Nobel to rest in peace. If the Swedish academy decides now, to posthumously, award Prof. Achebe the Nobel Laureate, it will only play the role of gradually returning integrity to the organization and may not necessarily change anything in terms of Prof. Achebe’s literary and intellectual stature. But if they remain adamant to awarding the laureate to a real globally accepted and recognized literary giant such as Prof. Achebe, it will only worsen the image of that organization and may even bring question marks to those they have accorded this honor both in the past and in the future. Chris Onyishi (ctekchris@yahoo.com) writes from Lagos, Nigeria ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nigeria: Popular Columnist, Sam Omatseye, Under Fire Over Column On Achebe By Ini Ekott, 2 April 2013 Related Topics Nigeria The Nation newspaper's well-known columnist, Sam Omatseye, has drawn criticisms after he wrote an article considered by some as belittling the amazing literary works of foremost novelist, Chinua Achebe. Some have also faulted the columnist for delivering a verdict suggesting Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka is greater than Mr. Achebe. In his Monday column, Mr. Omatseye, who heads the paper's Editorial Board, did what seems a scathing review of Mr. Achebe's literary legacy, saying Things Fall Apart, the writer's most famous novel, is big in ideology but lacking in literary essence. He faulted arguments by Mr. Achebe's fans that he was more deserving of the Nobel Prize than Mr. Soyinka, saying the Nobel Laureate churned out a deeper and more elegant body of work. "Achebe was a good story teller, so was my grandmother," Mr. Omatseye said of the novelist who passed away barely a week ago in Boston, Massachusetts. "Turning from a raconteur to an art of sublimity and depth belongs to the masters. He was described as a great writer but not a great artist." "So he wrote good works, not great works, not textured by deeper insights that you would see in better accomplished works," he continued. "Those who read TFA (Things Fall Apart) like clockwork may be put off by some of Soyinka's opus. So they should not obsess out of ignorance. They should read first. If you knock Soyinka on obscurity, you have a right. But high art is not always easy to understand. Those who claim to enjoy TFA cannot write a literate essay on the book and why it is high art." Expectedly, Mr. Omatseye's remarks have sparked debates among writers and drawn immediate fury from Mr. Achebe's fans. Popular literary critic, IkhideIkheloa, who posted the controversial article on his Facebook page, was first to launch an attack on Mr. Omatseye. "You read semi-literate crap like this by this Sam Omatseye guy, you endure the grammatical challenges and the awful logic and your heart stops with shame and embarrassment - for the author," Mr. Ikheloa commented below the post. "I mean, this man wrote this stuff, read it to himself, patted himself on the back and hit "SEND." What is wrong with this man? Where do you begin to correct the glaring inaccuracies in this drivel? Why should you? I mean, where in the name of serious scholarship do you begin to compare Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe? Who does that? And to what purpose? They are two different spirits on many levels." Literature professor, and renowned columnist, Okey Ndibe, who also commented on Facebook, called Mr. Omatseye's remarks a "simplistic binary notion that Soyinka's greatness is conditional on the (attempted) miniaturizing of Achebe-or vice versa". "Yet, intelligent people-and especially aesthetes-ought to know that many extraordinary writers can (and do) coexist within the same nation-space. They also know how futile it is, in the end, to attempt a ranking of amazing literary talents whose primary genres are so different-to say nothing of their temper, reach, focus, and linguistic styles. Sam is not a new comer to this inelegant game of Achebe-bashing." Mr. Achebe's death, which came after what the family said was a brief illness, unlocked an outpouring of reverence and emotions from around the world- almost unprecedented for any Nigerian literary export. His book, Things Fall Apart, more than any other indigenous African work, is reputed for opening the eyes of the world to the real fabric of a continent that struggled with colonialism and remained haunted by it. But at home, Mr. Achebe's death again proved a fresh opportunity for his critics to take another haunting look at his work. Criticism of the late writer's work was initially sparked last year after the release of his last book, There Was Country, which captured his civil war experience. In the memoir published in 2012, Mr. Achebe claimed the Igbos were victims of genocide and blamed the late Yoruba leader, Obafemi Awolowo, for masterminding the civil war policy that starved several thousands to death. That comment, among others, stirred bitter altercations between many Yoruba and Hausa/Fulani intellectuals on one hand and their Igbo counterparts on the other. Since his death however, only a few critics have publicly criticized Mr. Achebe. While a Bayero University, Kano, English and French professor, Ibrahim Bello-Kano, lambasted Mr. Achebe for all his works including "There Was a Country" which he referred to as "Achebe's most inferior work", Mr. Omatseye limited his concern to his most popular book, Things Fall Apart. Mr. Omatseye said the book proved its little literary worth by repeatedly failing to win the Nobel. "How come the father of African literature did not win the preeminent prize? First, TFA was a great book not because of its literary properties but because of its ideological potency," he said. "The Nobel Prize does not go to a novelist whose work is signposted by sociological fixations supplanting narratives with long pages of how Igbo villages are organized." "Did he succeed by using the language as a tool of subversion? Hardly. He wrote about the assertion of local pride, which was hardly original. But it was a counter-narrative, and it was done with gusto and minimal dexterity, and that was enough for them. They (The West) were amazed at the manipulation of proverbs and other manifestations of local colour. But the proverbs were never original, just like many of the proverbs in Ola Rotimi's The Gods Are Not To Blame. Mr. Ikheloa dismissed the arguments with a scorching rebuke. "Does Omatseye really believe himself when he says that Achebe's works were good, not great?" he queried. "If we were to use that quote to judge Soyinka's works, that is to eliminate works that are great only because of their "ideological potency" would Soyinka have won the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. Every one of Soyinka's works is guilty of what this character Omatseye accuses Achebe's works of being. Does this character even understand what Soyinka's plays were about?" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Renowned author, Chinua Achebe, dies at 82 . Friday, 22 March 2013 00:00 Editor News - National .RENOWNED Nigerian author Chinua Achebe known as the father of African literature, has died at the age of 82. His death followed an illness from a hospital in Boston. Achebe, 82, was most famous for his ground breaking 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, which dealt with the impact of colonialism on African society. Things Fall Apart has sold more than 10 million copies - and has been translated into more than 50 languages. He has been living in the US since 1990 following injuries from a car crash. A novelist, poet and essayist, Achebe was perhaps best known for his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, the story of the Igbo warrior Okonkwo and the colonial era, which has sold more than 10 million copies around the world and has been published in 50 languages. Things Fall Apart is considered the most widely read book in modern African Literature. The book sold over 12 million copies and has been translated to over 50 languages worldwide. Many of his other novels, including Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, Anthills of the Savannah, and A man of the People, were equally influential as well. Prof Achebe was born in Ogidi, Anambra State, on November 16, 1930 and attended St Philips’ Central School at the age of six. He moved away from his family to Nekede, four kilometres from Owerri, the capital of Imo State, at the age of 12 and registered at the Central School there. He attended Government College Umuahia for his secondary school education. He was a pioneer student of the University College, now University of Ibadan in 1948. He was first admitted to study medicine but changed to English, history and theology after his first year. Achebe won the Commonwealth poetry prize for his collection Christmas in Biafra, was a finalist for the 1987 Booker prize for his novel Anthills of the Savannah, and in 2007 won the Man Booker international prize. Chair of the judges on that occasion, Elaine Showalter, said he had "inaugurated the modern African novel", while her fellow judge, the South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, said his fiction was "an original synthesis of the psychological novel, the Joycean stream of consciousness, the postmodern breaking of sequence", and that Achebe was "a joy and an illumination to read". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The story of Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe Would you tell us something about the Achebe family and growing up in an Igbo village, your early education, and whether there was anything there that pointed you that early in the direction of writing? I think the thing that clearly pointed me there was my interest in stories. Not necessarily writing stories, because at that point, writing stories was not really viable. So you didn’t think of it. But I knew I loved stories, stories told in our home, first by my mother, then by my elder sister—such as the story of the tortoise—whatever scraps of stories I could gather from conversations, just from hanging around, sitting around when my father had visitors. When I began going to school, I loved the stories I read. They were different, but I loved them too. My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel. I was the fifth of their six children. By the time I was growing up, my father had retired, and had returned with his family to his ancestral village. When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands. In one of my essays, I remember the kind of things that fascinated me. Weird things, even, about a wizard who lived in Africa and went to China to find a lamp . . . Fascinating to me because they were about things remote, and almost ethereal. Then I grew older and began to read about adventures in which I didn’t know that I was supposed to be on the side of those savages who were encountered by the good white man. I instinctively took sides with the white people. They were fine! They were excellent. They were intelligent. The others were not . . . they were stupid and ugly. That was the way I was introduced to the danger of not having your own stories. There is that great proverb—that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realised that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It’s not one man’s job. It’s not one person’s job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail—the bravery, even, of the lions. You were among the first graduates of the great University of Ibadan. What was it like in the early years of that university, and what did you study there? Has it stuck with you in your writing? Ibadan was, in retrospect, a great institution. In a way, it revealed the paradox of the colonial situation, because this university college was founded towards the end of British colonial rule in Nigeria. If they did any good things, Ibadan was one of them. It began as a college of London University, because under the British, you don’t rush into doing any of those things like universities just like that. You start off as an appendage of somebody else. You go through a period of tutelage. We were the University College of Ibadan of London. So, I took a degree from London University. That was the way it was organised in those days. One of the signs of independence, when it came, was for Ibadan to become a full-fledged university. I began with science, then English, history, and religion. I found these subjects exciting and very useful. ..The English department was a very good example of what I mean. The people there would have laughed at the idea that any of us would become a writer. That didn’t really cross their minds. I remember on one occasion a departmental prize was offered. They put up a notice—write a short story over the long vacation for the departmental prize. I’d never written a short story before, but when I got home, I thought, ‘Well, why not’. So I wrote one and submitted it. Months passed; then finally one day there was a notice on the board announcing the result. It said that no prize was awarded because no entry was up to the standard. They named me, said that my story deserved mention. Ibadan in those days was not a dance you danced with snuff in one palm. It was a dance you danced with all your body. So when Ibadan said you deserved mention, that was very high praise. I went to the lecturer who had organised the prize and said, ‘You said my story wasn’t really good enough but it was interesting’. Now what was wrong with it? She said, ‘Well, it’s the form. It’s the wrong form’. So I said, ‘Ah, can you tell me about this?’ She said, ‘Yes, but not now. I’m going to play tennis; we’ll talk about it. Remind me later, and I’ll tell you’. This went on for a whole term. Every day when I saw her, I’d say, ‘Can we talk about form?’ She’d say, ‘No, not now. We’ll talk about it later’. Then at the very end she saw me and said, ‘You know, I looked at your story again and actually there’s nothing wrong with it’. So that was it! That was all I learned from the English department about writing short stories. You really have to go out on your own and do it. I once heard your English publisher, Alan Hill, talk about how you sent the manuscript of Things Fall Apart to him. That was a long story. The first part of it was how the manuscript was nearly lost. In 1957 I was given a scholarship to go to London and study for some months at the BBC. I had a draft of Things Fall Apart with me, so I took it along to finish it. When I got to the BBC, one of my friends—there were two of us from Nigeria—said, ‘Why don’t you show this to Mr. Phelps?’ Gilbert Phelps, one of the instructors of the BBC school, was a novelist. I said, ‘What? No!’ This went on for some time. Eventually, I was pushed to do it and I took the manuscript and handed it to Mr. Phelps. He said, ‘Well . . . all right, the way I would today if anyone brought me a manuscript’. He was not really enthusiastic. Why should he be? He took it anyway, very politely. He was the first person, outside of myself, to say, ‘I think this is interesting’. In fact, he felt so strongly that one Saturday he was compelled to look for me and tell me. I had traveled out of London; he found out where I was, phoned the hotel, and asked me to call him back. When I was given this message, I was completely floored. I said, ‘Maybe he doesn’t like it’. But then why would he call me if he doesn’t like it. So, it must be he likes it. Anyway, I was very excited. When I got back to London, he said, ‘This is wonderful. Do you want me to show it to my publishers? I said, ‘Yes, but not yet, because I had decided that the form wasn’t right’. Attempting to do a saga of three families, I was covering too much ground in this first draft. So, I realised that I needed to do something drastic, really give it more body. So I said to Mr. Phelps, ‘Ok, I am very grateful but I’d like to take this back to Nigeria and look at it again’. Which is what I did. When I was in England, I had seen advertisements about typing agencies; I had learned that if you really want to make a good impression, you should have your manuscript well-typed. So, foolishly, from Nigeria I parceled my manuscript—handwritten, by the way, and the only copy in the whole world—wrapped it up and posted it to this typing agency that advertised in the Spectator. They wrote back and said, ‘Thank you for your manuscript. We’ll charge thirty-two pounds’. That was what they wanted for two copies and which they had to receive before they started. So I sent thirty-two pounds in British postal order to these people and then I heard no more. Weeks passed, and months. I wrote and wrote and wrote. No answer. Not a word. I was getting thinner and thinner and thinner. Finally, I was very lucky. My boss at the broadcasting house was going home to London on leave. A very stubborn Englishwoman. I told her about this. She said, ‘Give me their name and address’. When she got to London she went there! She said, ‘What’s this nonsense?’ They must have been shocked, because I think their notion was that a manuscript sent from Africa—well, there’s really nobody to follow it up. The British don’t normally behave like that. It’s not done, you see. But something from Africa was treated differently. So when this woman, Mrs. Beattie, turned up in their office and said, ‘What’s going on?’ They were confused. They said, ‘The manuscript was sent but customs returned it’. Mrs. Beattie said, ‘Can I see your dispatch book?’ They had no dispatch book. So she said, ‘Well, send this thing, typed up, back to him in the next week, or otherwise you’ll hear about it’. So, soon after that, I received the typed manuscript of Things Fall Apart. One copy, not two. No letter at all to say what happened. My publisher, Alan Hill, rather believed that the thing was simply neglected, left in a corner gathering dust. That’s not what happened. These people did not want to return it to me and had no intention of doing so. Anyway, when I got it, I sent it back up to Heinemann. They had never seen an African novel. They didn’t know what to do with it. Someone told them, ‘Oh, there’s a professor of Economics at London School of Economics and Political Science who just came back from those places. He might be able to advise you’. Fortunately, Don Macrae was a very literate professor, a wonderful man. I got to know him later. He wrote what they said was the shortest report they ever had on any novel—seven words: “The best first novel since the war.” So that’s how I got launched. Heinemann was also perplexed as to how many copies should be printed . . . Oh yes. They printed very, very few. It was a risk. Not something they’d ever done before. They had no idea if anybody would want to read it. It went out of print very quickly. It would have stayed that way if Alan Hill hadn’t decided that he was going to gamble even more and launch a paperback edition of this book. Other publishers thought it was mad, that this was crazy. But that was how the African Writers Series came in to existence. In the end, Alan Hill was made a Commander of the British Empire for bringing into existence a body of literature they said was among the biggest developments in British literature of this century. So, it was a very small beginning, but it caught fire. Do you write with a pen, a typewriter, or have you been seduced by computers? No! No, no—I’m very primitive; I write with a pen. A pen on paper is the ideal way for me. I am not really very comfortable with machines; I never learned to type very well. Whenever I try to do anything on a typewriter, it’s like having this machine between me and the words. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chinua Achebe: What Nigeria Means To Me . Friday, 22 March 2013 00:00 Editor News - National .Chinua Achebe looks back on his troubled relationship with his country. NIGERIAN nationality was for me and my generation an acquired taste like cheese. Or better still, like ballroom dancing. Not dancing per se, for that came naturally; but this titillating version of slow-slow-quick-quick-slow performed in close body contact with a female against a strange, elusive beat. I found, however, that once I had overcome my initial awkwardness I could do it pretty well. Perhaps these irreverent analogies would only occur to someone like me, born into a strongly multiethnic, multi­lingual, multireligious, somewhat chaotic colonial situation. The first passport I ever carried described me as a “British Protected Person”, an unexciting identity embodied in a phrase that no one was likely to die for. I don’t mean it was entirely devoid of emotive meaning. After all, “British” meant you were located somewhere in the flaming red portion of the world map, a quarter of the entire globe in those days and called “the British Empire, where the sun never sets”. It had a good ring to it in my childhood ears – a magical fraternity, vague but vicariously glorious. My earliest awareness in the town of Ogidi did not include any of that British stuff, nor indeed the Nigerian stuff. That came with progress in school. Ogidi is one of a thousand or more “towns” that make up the Igbo nation, one of Nigeria’s (indeed Africa’s) largest ethnic groups. But the Igbo, numbering more than 10 million, are a curious “nation”. They have been called names such as “stateless” or “acephalous” by anthropologists; “argumentative” by those sent to administer them. But what the Igbo are is not the negative suggested by such descriptions but strongly, positively, in favour of small-scale political organisation so that (as they would say) every man’s eye would reach where things are happening. So every one of the thousand towns was a mini-state with complete jurisdiction over its affairs. A sense of civic attachment to their numerous towns was more real for precolonial Igbo people than any unitary pan-Igbo feeling. This made them notoriously difficult to govern centrally, as the British discovered but never appreciated nor quite forgave. Their dislike was demonstrated during the Biafran tragedy, when they accused the Igbo of threatening to break up a nation-state they had carefully and laboriously put together. The paradox of Biafra was that the Igbo themselves had originally championed the Nigerian nation more spiritedly than other Nigerians. One proof of this: the British had thrown more of them into jail for sedition than any others during the two decades or so of pre-independence agitation and troublemaking. So the Igbo were second to none on the nationalist front when Britain finally conceded independence to Nigeria in 1960, a move that, in retrospect, seems like a masterstroke of tactical withdrawal to achieve a ­supreme strategic advantage. At the time, we were proud of what we had just achieved. True, Ghana had beaten us to it by three years, but then Ghana was a tiny affair, easy to manage, compared to the huge lumbering giant called Nigeria. We did not have to be vociferous like Ghana; just our presence was enough. Indeed, the elephant was our national emblem; our airline’s was the flying elephant! Nigerian troops soon distinguished themselves in a big way in the United Nations peacekeeping efforts in the Congo. Our elephant, defying aerodynamics, was flying. Travelling as a Nigerian was exciting. People listened to us. Our money was worth more than the dollar. In 1961 when the driver of a bus in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia asked me what I was doing sitting in the front of the bus, I told him nonchalantly that I was going to Victoria Falls. In amazement he stooped lower and asked where I came from. I replied, even more casually: “Nigeria, if you must know; and, by the way, in Nigeria we sit where we like in the bus.” Back home I took up the rather important position of director of external broadcasting, an entirely new radio service aimed primarily at our African neighbours. I could do it in those days, because our politicians had yet to learn the uses of information control and did not immediately attempt to regiment our output. They were learning fast, though. But before I could get enmeshed in that, something much nastier had seized hold of all of us. The six-year-old Nigerian federation was falling apart from the severe strain of regional animosity and ineffectual central authority. The transparent failure of the electoral process to translate the will of the electorate into recognisable results at the polls led to mass frustration and violence. While western Nigeria, one of the four regions, was going up literally in flames, the quiet and dignified Nigerian prime minister was hosting a Commonwealth conference to extricate Harold Wilson from a mess he had got himself into in faraway Rhodesia. But so tense was the local situation that the visiting heads of government had to be airlifted by helicopter from the Lagos airport into a secluded suburb to avoid the rampaging crowds. Nigeria’s first military coup took place even as those dignitaries were flying out of Lagos again at the end of their conference. One of them, Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus, was in fact still in the country. The prime minister and two regional premiers were killed by the coup-makers. In the bitter, suspicious atmosphere of the time, a naively idealistic coup proved a terrible disaster. It was interpreted with plausibility as a plot by the ambitious Igbo of the east to take control of Nigeria. Six months later, northern officers carried out a revenge coup in which they killed Igbo officers and men in large numbers. If it had ended there, the matter might have been seen as a tragic interlude in nation building, a horrendous tit for tat. But the northerners turned on Igbo civilians living in the north and unleashed waves of brutal massacres, which Colin Legum of the Observer, was the first to describe as a pogrom. It was estimated that 30,000 civilian men, women and children died in these massacres. Igbo’s were fleeing in hundreds of thousands from all parts of Nigeria to their homeland in the east. I was one of the last to flee from Lagos. I simply could not bring myself quickly enough to accept that I could no longer live in my nation’s capital, although the facts clearly said so. One Sunday morning I was telephoned from Broadcasting House and informed that armed soldiers who appeared drunk had come looking for me to test which was stronger, my pen or their gun. The offence of my pen was that it had written a novel called A Man of the People, a bitter satire on political corruption in an African country that resembled Nigeria. I wanted the novel to be a denunciation of the kind of independence that people were experiencing in postcolonial Nigeria and many other countries in the 1960s, and I intended it to scare my countrymen into good behaviour with a frightening cautionary tale. The best monster I could come up with was a military coup d’état, which every sane Nigerian at the time knew was rather far-fetched. But life and art had got so entangled that season that the publication of the novel and Nigeria’s first military coup happened within two days of each other. Critics abroad called me a prophet, but some of my countrymen saw it differently: my novel was proof of my complicity in the first coup. I was very lucky that Sunday morning. The drunken soldiers, after leaving Broadcasting House, went to a residence I had recently vacated. Meanwhile I was able to take my wife and two small children into hiding, from where I finally sent them to my ancestral home in eastern Nigeria. A week or two later, unknown callers asked for me on the telephone at my hideout. My host denied my presence. It was time then to leave Lagos. My feeling was one of profound disappointment. Not because mobs were hunting down and killing in the most savage manner innocent civilians in many parts of northern Nigeria, but because the federal government sat by and let it happen. The final consequence of this failure of the state to fulfil its primary obligation to its citizens was the secession of eastern Nigeria as the Republic of Biafra. The demise of Nigeria at that point was averted only by Britain’s spirited diplomatic and military support of its model colony. It was Britain and the Soviet Union that together crushed the upstart Biafran state. At the end of the 30-month war, Biafra was a vast smouldering rubble. The cost in human lives was a staggering two million souls, making it one of the bloodiest civil wars in human history. I found it difficult to forgive Nigeria and my countrymen and women for the political nonchalance and cruelty that unleashed upon us these terrible events, which set us back a whole generation and robbed us of the chance, clearly within our grasp, to become a medium-rank developed nation in the 20th century. My immediate response was to leave Nigeria at the end of the war, having honourably, I hoped, stayed around long enough to receive whatever retribution might be due to me for renouncing Nigeria for 30 months. Fortunately the federal government proclaimed a general amnesty, and the only punishment I received was the general financial and emotional indemnity that war losers pay, and some relatively minor personal harassment. I went abroad to New England, to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and stayed four years and then another year at the University of Connecticut. It was by far my longest exile from Nigeria and it gave me time to reflect and to heal somewhat. Without setting out consciously to do so, I was redefining my relationship to Nigeria. I realised that I could not reject her, but neither could it be business as usual. What was Nigeria to me? Our 1960 national anthem, given to us as a parting gift by a British housewife in England, had called Nigeria “our sovereign motherland”. The current anthem, put together by a committee of Nigerian intellectuals and actually worse than the first one, invokes the father image. But it has occurred to me that Nigeria is neither my mother nor my father. Nigeria is a child. Gifted, enormously talented, prodigiously endowed and incredibly wayward. Being a Nigerian is abysmally frustrating and unbelievably exciting. I have said somewhere that in my next reincarnation I want to be a Nigerian again; but I have also, in a rather angry book called The Trouble with Nigeria, dismissed Nigerian travel advertisements with the suggestion that only a tourist with a kinky addiction to self-flagellation would pick Nigeria for a holiday. And I mean both. Nigeria needs help. Nigerians have their work cut out for them – to coax this unruly child along the path of useful creative development. We are the parents of Nigeria, not vice versa. A generation will come, if we do our work patiently and well – and given luck – a generation that will call Nigeria father or mother. But not yet. Meanwhile our present work is not entirely without its blessing and reward. This wayward child can show now and again great intimations of affection. I have seen this flow towards me at certain critical moments. When I was in America after the Biafran war, an army officer who sat on the council of my university in Nigeria as representative of the federal military government pressured the university to call me back home. This officer had fought in the field against my fellow Biafrans during the war and had been seriously wounded. He had every right to be bitter against people like me. I had never met him, but he knew my work and was himself a poet. More recently, after a motor accident in 2001 that left me with serious injuries, I have witnessed an outflow of affection from Nigerians at every level. I am still dumbfounded by it. The hard words Nigeria and I have said to each other begin to look like words of anxious love, not hate. Nigeria is a country where nobody can wake up in the morning and ask: what can I do now? There is work for all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Between Atiku, El-Rufai and accidental public servant Written by Leon Usigbe Wednesday, 13 February 2013 00:00 THE book, The Accidental Public Servant, recently publicly presented by its author and former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has understandably drawn accolades from his admirers and consternation from those who felt betrayed by its contents. For those who laud him, el-Rufai has opened a new vista in national discourse about how the public service has been treated for good or for ill by certain individuals during the time he was part of the system. Lagos State governor, Babatunde Fashola thought that the former minister was forthright in the book, whereas, his colleague in government and chairman of the book presentation organizing committee, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, who saw el-Rufai as a quintessential non-conformist and public servant, described him as someone who, “when you have an opinion or you disagree with him, one thing you cannot take away from him is his fearlessness to stand on the conviction that defines his personality.” Controversial Lagos pastor, Tunde Bakare, was so much in love with the contents of the book that he claimed to have wept, while reading it and was later to declare el-Rufai a hero for opening a can of warms. Looking at the composition of people on the high table, the logical conclusion will be that the dominance of fierce critics of the present administration at the el-Rufai book presentation makes it an opposition affair. Many of those, who spoke glibly celebrated what they reasoned was the lack of direction of those in charge. The former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, observed that the book had opened a door that “leads us into seeing up, close and personal what Nigeria is and how those that wield power behave.” He said: “Thanks to Nasir, we now know that most of our leaders are soon overcome and consumed by their unbridled lust to power and that the public or Nigerians are mere irritants.” Represented by the National Publicity Secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Alhaji Lai Mohammed, he said the book confirmed some of “what we knew happened and which we fought against” adding, “sadly, the Nigerian narrative has not changed from what it was during the time Nasir has written about. The narrative has unfortunately worsened whereby Nigerians are saddled with a government concerned more about its survival, elongation in power and fighting imagined enemies than applying itself to running the country properly.” The ACNigeria leader, he did not miss the opportunity presented by the book presentation to sell the fledgling opposition platform. “What we have now are wayfarers, scavengers in the corridor of power and apologists, professionals whose ethics evaporate the moment they come in contact with the paraphernalia of power. But there is help coming. Help is on the way as the opposition moves to form a broad based coalition that will send these characters out of power and put into gear the Nigerian project.” Ezekwesili correctly judged the potential reactions to the controversial book as she had warned her audience that the book was going to draw responses from persons who were not comfortable with the content even though the expose would further enhance the platform for more constructive discussion on the state of the nation. Hardly had she ended her introduction of the book at the occasion than Buhari, described by el-Rufai as his mentor, regretting talking too much, apparently in confidence, to the author. “How are I wish I knew he would write this book, I would not have spoken to him the way I did.” Niger governor, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, who was also present at the occasion, immediately debunked an inaccurate claim made in the book by the author which concerned his handover notes to el-Rufai when he was appointed the FCT minister. Aliyu had served as the Permanent Secretary at FCT. As it is now, there are so many other contentious claims in the book some of which have been seen as outrageous lies told by author on a seemingly revenge mission. Governor Al-Makura confirmed the view long held by many that el-Rufai “is indeed a controversial person,” as he observed that the general perception of the former minister “is that he is arrogant, disrespectful, but despite this, he is simply a man you cannot ignore, a man who is frank to a fault. However Adagbo Onoja, a former media aide to governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State,in his response to the book, believed that while nobody can deny el-Rufai the status and stature of the one who wants to be different even if the difference is in suicidal enthusiasm, he ends up writing what reads very much like the testament of a guinea pig that was well fed in readiness for the sacrifice for which he was earmarked. “That has left him in severe pain and bitterness as to resort to a revenge mission aimed at bringing down the entire temple. Hence, no concessions to statecraft, confidentiality and trust in his narrative targeted at godfathers of power syndicates in the country.” One of the more contentious claims in the book is the one also addressed by Adagbo, concerning former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the Turaki Adamawa’s response to it, which Adagbo believes has made the book to look simply like an exercise in childish brilliance because the difference between what el-Rufai told the Senate and what came out in his book. Atiku had dismissed the book as a collection of fiction, half-truths, exaggeration and reflection of selective memory because of the claim by el-Rufai that he almost resigned as the former Director General (DG) of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) because of alleged persistent pressure and interference by the former vice president, who was then the Chairman of the National Council on Privatization (NCP). This position clearly contradicts the one he had told the Senate at a Public Hearing on BPE August 8-13, 2011. The former FCT minister in his testimony had noted that except for one time that the former vice president called him on behalf of a prospective bidder, no one ever interfered in his job as BPE DG. Even with that call, Atiku did not try to influence his action. “Except for one time that the vice president called me and said; look I’ve got calls from A and B to help this guy win this, I said Mr. Vice president you know the rules, tell him to bid the highest price because the highest price wins and he said yes I know, I am just telling you in case they contact you. And I don’t want them to say I didn’t pass on their requests. That was the only time. But no one tried to interfere with my work,” he had told the Senate Hearing. This has left Atiku’s camp wondering where did the idea of Atiku wanting him to give contracts to his (Atiku’s friends) as contained in the book from. Beyond this, el-Rufai also wrote that former President Olusegun Obasanjo went on bended knees before Atiku to seek his cooperation for second term bid in 2003, a claim that Atiku had also dismissed as a figment of el-Rufai’s wild imagination. The former vice president media handlers said such claim lacked any credibility because Atiku and Obasanjo were alone together behind closed doors and that they alone knew what actually transpired between them. Atiku is one who should know e-Rufai very well, having worked closely with him. He said that he would not be angry as he believed the former BPE DG only needed prayers. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Slavery, colonialism haunting Africa – Soyinka December 19, 2012 by Gbenga Adeniji Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka said on Tuesday that slavery and colonialism were two vital historical elements in Africa which the continent’s leaders still grapple with. He said the leaders had had to continually show resistance towards these two past events. Soyinka said, “Slavery and colonialism are two monumental events in the history of Africans. African leaders have failed to respond to these elements.” The celebrated playwright spoke in Lagos during a programme titled ‘A Conversation with Wole Soyinka’ to unveil his latest book, Harmattan Haze On An African Spring. According to Soyinka, there is a need for Africa to return to its culture, beliefs and believe in itself. The writer, who said he would not dwell on the challenges facing Nigeria, which he identified as bad leadership and corruption. He added that a path not taken had continued to disturb the country till date. On her part, former Managing Director for Africa, World Bank, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, wondered whether there was an original process which Africa missed in the quest for development. Also, a director of Pan African University, Prof. Pat Utomi, hinged the problem of Nigeria on a lack of adequate penalty for infraction which he said, accounted for why people engage in criminal acts with impunity. “Because you can do something and get away with it, there is a tendency that you will do it again and again,” he said. On his part, poet and social critic, Odia Ofeimun, said the distrust which the colonialists left still abide with Africa. He, however, called for efforts that would address the critical issues of development in Nigeria for the benefit of the citizenry. The event was moderated by Dr. Kayinsola Ajayi with interlocutors such as arts enthusiast,Toyin Akinosho; Ezekwesili and Utomi. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At Achebe confab, delegates canvass good governance . Sunday, 23 December 2012 21:09 Editor News - National .THE fourth edition of the Chinua Achebe Colloquium on Africa, which was convened by Nigerian novelist and humanist, Chinua Achebe, the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies, held at Brown University on December 7 and 8, 2012, at the Perry and Marty Granoff Centre for the Creative Arts. With the theme, “Governance, Security and Peace in Africa,” the event attracted leading experts from the academia, business, non-governmental organisations, and governments from Africa, Europe and the United States (U.S.), featured intense deliberations and exchange of ideas on the importance of strengthening democracy and peace on the African continent. Panel discussions highlighted the complex security issues that confront African nations, including the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, home-grown terrorism and the persistence of ethno-religious insurgency. The colloquium noted that these were serious concerns that challenge the establishment of institutions and principles of good governance on the continent. Highlights of the colloquium included keynote addresses by the founder of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation for the promotion of good governance in Africa, Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim, Governor of Lagos State, Nigeria, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, Commander of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) based in Stuttgart, Germany, Gen. Carter F. Ham, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Niger, Ambassador Bisa Williams, Prof. Emma Rothschild of Harvard University, and South African anti-Apartheid activist and former managing director of the World Bank, Dr. Mamphela Ramphele. At the end, delegates advanced several resolutions, among which were that that governments and private initiatives in Africa should work to grow additional, dedicated indigenous investments and entrepreneurial groups rather than depend on foreign aid. They also urged Africans at home and in the Diaspora to promote good governance by acknowledging the examples of remarkable leaders like Joachim Chissano and others. The delegates also reviewed the strategic role of AFRICOM in relation to Africa Union Mission in the continent’s flashpoints like Somalia, Mali and Sudan and warned the international community to be wary of giving military support to warmongers, who disrupt democratic regimes and rule of law in parts of the continent. The delegates recognised the teeming youth and children in Africa as the hope for a new cultural politics for the development of the continent and also highlighted the valuable roles of women and called on governments to institutionally empower more women in leadership and government. Acknowledging that there are still vestiges of racism in Angola, Zimbabwe and South Africa, the delegates resolved that that African leaders should move on to address current issues, deal with the residual trauma in the affected societies and that citizens should hold leaders accountable for good governance. The colloquium urged that adequate attention be paid to the task of preserving the continent’s memories of violence and wars in all of Africa, calling on institutions in Africa as well as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to address the issues. The delegates celebrated the exponential growth of the artistic expression of African youth in writing, music, film and theatrical performance in Africa and all over the world and called on African governments to demonstrate greater commitment to supporting the creative enterprise of African youth. The colloquium further called on African governments to develop a Diaspora Engagement Plan to promote more robust ways of harvesting and leveraging the rich and diverse experience of Africans in the Diaspora. It noted Prof. Achebe’s particular commitment to Nigeria, and in that regard raised specific concerns that the current terrorist attacks and other increasing acts of violence across Nigeria reflect deeper socio-political inequities and pathologies. The colloquium recognised in particular the significance of Prof. Achebe’s recent book on Biafra (There Was A Country) and the much-needed debate that it has sparked, not only about the war, but about the scars it left on South Eastern Nigerians (and the areas that constituted the Republic of Biafra), that remain unaddressed 45 years after the start of the war in 1967. It also noted that those scars have detrimental effects on the entire country. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Awolowo and the forgotten documents of the civil war, by Odia Ofeimun (4) On November 17, 2012 · In Awo vs Achebe 7:22 pm This is the concluding part of Odia Ofeimun’s treatise on the Awolowo?Achebe civil war controversy. He makes useful suggestions to his Igbo brothers and sisters as well as other Nigerians on how to dump the self-righteous mentality of ‘WE AGAINST THEM”. What is interesting in this regard is that well known acts perpetrated by other leaders during the war are actually now being credited to Awolowo by postwar propagandists and are being made to stick beyond lines of collective responsibility while actual performances that he made are smudged out of acknowledgement. For a man who could be said to have done more than any other single individual to have garnered the out-of-the-war-front intelligence to keep Nigeria as one country, it is actually a surprise to see how little Federal cover has been given to Awolowo by Federal agencies and establishments. Generals who were worried that Awolowo might convert his proficiency in the management of the country’s finances and general affairs into political power certainly preferred that the war story be told against him. For ex-Biafrans who believe that Awolowo disabled their war efforts through his many ploys, including the change of the currency, the refusal to devalue the Naira, and the ordering of a stop to food corridors, Awolowo deserves to be sent to the International court even post-humously. The concentration on Awolowo as it turns out is such a fixation that many are prepared to believe that even if Awolowo was still in prison when the pogrom took place, he should be arraigned for it. It is very much unlike the position taken by the Jews who not only went after exposing the perpetrators of the holocaust after the Second World War but took extremely inter-subjective care to ensure that no innocents were punished for crimes that others committed. The reverse, clearly, is the case with the Nigerian crisis and civil war. It is quite interesting in this regard, and perhaps, a mark of Achebe’s forgiving nature that in his The Trouble with Nigeria, he grants the status of arch-nationalist to Mallam Aminu Kano, of whose faction of the People’s Redemption Party, PRP, he became a member, even after knowing of the Mallam’s mobilization of the resistance to feared Igbo domination after the January 15 Coup. Or he did not know it? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Whoever is denying that starvation was used against the Igbo is living in denial –Ex-Biafran war commander Achuzia Posted by: LINUS OBOGO Posted date: December 01, 2012 Col. Joseph Achuzia was not only a participant in the Nigerian civil war (1967-1970) but one of the top Biafran war commanders and a very intimate associate of the late Biafran warlord, Dim Odimegwu Ojukwu. In this interview with Assistant Editor, LINUS OBOGO, the British-trained Aeronautic engineer and one-time Secretary-General of the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, took issue with those who accused Prof. Chinua Achebe of distorting history in his book, There Was a Country, where the celebrated story teller alleged genocide and the deployment of starvation as a weapon of war against the then Federal Government. Excerpts: THE ongoing Constitution review by the National Assembly has afforded the South East the opportunity to seek redress of perceived marginalisation including the demand for an additional state for the purpose of balancing and equity, but some Northern interests have vowed to frustrate the region from realising its wish. What do you make of this strong position coming from the North against the agitation? Most people do not seem to understand the meaning of marginalisation. For a people to continue to sing or cry about marginalisation, there must be a reason. And for a certain people to continue to carry on or do the same thing that creates a sense of inferiority towards others that makes them feel marginalis….ed, means there exists marginalisation. In this instance, year in, year out, the arrogance of the North makes us as a people feel that we do not belong to the rest of the country. And what they do not seem to appreciate is the fact that the states created for them was not through any constitutional means but through the barrel of the gun. The North, after the pogrom visited on the Igbo during the civil war, continued to carry their arrogance even into an era of peace. The military carved out states for the North which gives them advantage over other regions like the South East. This is part of what Prof. Chinua Achebe wrote in his book, There Was a Country, which is making some people angry. I cannot stop talking about the arrogance of the North because they are still perpetrating that same arrogance that makes them see the Igbo as a conquered people, over three decades after the pogrom against them. Recall the various crises that have taken place in the North where the Igbo were made targets. Their shops and property were targeted and destroyed in the North simply because they had to earn a living. Most of the attacks were unleashed on the Igbo for the simple reason that they are Igbo. That is why I am compelled sometimes to ask my people why they continue to reside in a place they are not wanted. Today, we are told the constitution is being reviewed. But may I ask, what constitution? Is it the same document crafted by the military to protect the Northern interest? As far I am concerned, the constitution the military handed over to the civilians at the end of their incursion into governance should have been suspended by the civilian regime and an entirely new but people’s constitution be fashioned by the people. My people have a saying that if you are in the midst of soldier ants and if one climbs up your feet, you do not remain there for more to climb your body. You just have to step out from there. So, I don’t feel comfortable to start talking about the state of the nation in the midst of terror. Nigeria is facing a security situation which I think there are thousands of ways it should be addressed. That is why somebody was complaining about former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s statement that President Goodluck Jonathan was not handling the security situation confronting the country as he should. Of course, Obasanjo was a military man and I understand his position. Militarism came to be by virtue of a mission to ward off all forms of attacks that would put the citizens in jeopardy, internally or externally. And in this instance, it is a combination of the two but we are trying to treat it with kid gloves. I don’t subscribe to this approach. This is the most I can say for now. In other words, you do not think that Jonathan has done enough to tackle the issues of insecurity in the country? For me, he has not done enough. He has not done enough because he is the Commander-in-Chief of the country’s Armed Forces. He should be seen to be exercising the power given to him as Commander-in-Chief, which he is not exercising. It would be a terrible thing if he makes the same mistake which the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe made in the First Republic, when he watched helplessly while the South West was going into operation Wild Wild West. Elections carried out were inconclusive and people were saying that Zik could not do anything because he was only a ceremonial president. There is nothing like somebody being a ceremonial president when you are closest to all the paraphernalia of office which is being the commander in chief of the armed forces. The armed forces have the instrument of authority of anybody in power. You use it to make sure that your people don’t suffer terror internally or externally. That is why I said that he has not done enough. He has not made good use of the power at his disposal. Do you subscribe to the Obasanjo’s Zaki Biam and Odi strategy in dealing with the Boko Haram menace? As a security expert, when you have a group of outsiders coming into the country to terrorise your people, my job, first and foremost, is to use everything at my disposal to repel and stop them. If it is internally orchestrated, I will use all the security apparatus to unsettle all the groups so that it does not escalate and affect other regions of the country. You don’t have to resort to dialogue. Dialogue should not be an option. Who would you dialogue with? Dialogue with faceless people? No my friend! A complete different orientation is needed in tackling the state of insecurity in the country. There is a raging controversy arising from Prof. Chinua Achebe’s new book, There Was a Country, where he accused the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and General Yakubu Gowon (rtd), of genocide and using starvation as a weapon of war during the Nigerian civil war. As an active participant in the war, how agreeable are you with Achebe’s allegation? There are always two sides to a story. On one side, Achebe has presented the facts as he saw them during the war. On the other hand, Awolowo, during his life time, tried to present the other side of the story the way he saw it. So, whichever side you are and if you choose to believe either side of the story or not, it is immaterial because you can’t change our stance over our perception of what we think of the wrongs done to us. The same way, Gen. Gowon saw from his own point of view that the action he took was the right thing to do. He had a war, fought it and took his responsibility. On our own side, we had a war on our hand and tried to defend ourselves. No amount of argument or criticism can alter what happened at that time. So, I believe that the media has a job to document facts for posterity. I believe that if you look into the archives, all the things written about the civil war are either written to create more disaffection or that the media lacks the necessary documentation which it should have done during the period of that civil war. I did not fight on the side of those who used starvation as the weapon of war. Consequently, I could not judge their frame of mind. I can only tell you how I felt being a recipient of the pressure of starvation. Also, I cannot tell you how the person who thought it up and decided to use it on us felt that it would expedite the objective at that time. In other words, Achebe is right that starvation was deployed as a weapon against the Igbo during the war? Look, I repeat again, Awolowo did not deny taking such a decision neither did Gowon. They were the ones who executed the war and they deployed starvation for whatever reason that guided their action. I was the recipient of starvation and its pressure as all borders, ground, air and sea, were closed against us so that we could not retreat. We were as encircled as to be exterminated. That was how I felt at the time. But whether the intention was to exterminate us, I cannot tell. Those of us who survived the war saw it like that because there were many others who did not survive. So, whoever is denying that starvation was used or the war itself was not genocide against the Igbo is living in denial. But now, we should be thinking of showing love and understanding towards one another. Achebe did not go out of his way to stoke controversy. He is a journalist and a writer. The basis of people gifted to write is to chronicle events for posterity. And that was what he did. Ahead of 2015, would the Igbo be ready to stake a claim to the Presidency? When Jonathan was canvassing for the presidency and the North stood in opposition, my people and I stood behind him. I made a statement at the time that after Jonathan, it would be the turn of the Igbo. And because Jonathan at that time said that he could manage only one term, I also said that in 2015, if Jonathan did not go for a second term, it would be our turn and it would not be negotiable. I still stand by that statement that it is not negotiable. And by that I mean that you either concede to the Igbo their right to aspire to the office of the president or otherwise, it is to your tent oh Israel. How sincerely prepared are the Igbo for the challenges of wresting power, given their lack of unity? You seem to have spoken the minds of most Igbo, but how prepared are the Igbo for this? The seemingly lack of consensus by the Igbo, as people see it, is the fact that the Igbo have an organisation which is trying to arrive at what you just noted, consensus. But we fail to address one issue, our collective political interest. And Nigeria took advantage of it. The North, during the period they were ruling, took advantage of it. During the census, they said that everybody should be counted where he was, knowing that most of the northern areas are populated by the Igbo, as a result of the Igbo penchant to pursue wealth. When it is time for census, they are not allowed to go to their ancestral home to be counted. We have been singing and asking that for the sake of equity in the country, there must be fair, honest and transparent census and the Igbo should be allowed to be counted in their states of origin. It is there in the Bible. When the Jews were ruled by the Romans and they realised that they were being sectionalised by the Romans, they persuaded Rome to pass a law to enable everybody to return to their ancestral homes to be counted during census. This is what we are asking. As long as they are not allowed to return home and be counted, the South East would always remain a minority region. The whole of the South East and South-South combined cannot contain all the Igbo in Nigeria if they are allowed to go home and be counted. For 2015, we have set in motion an organisation that embraces all Igbo to take care of the political activities of Ndi Igbo and that also accommodates our cultural heritage and our social behaviour. We have been on this for the past eight years – pursuing Igbo zuru me (Igbos gathered together to accomplish). How do you mean ‘to your tent oh Israel’ should the Igbo not get the presidency? I am not the first person to use that clause “to your tenth oh Israel.” As I have said, if in 2015, Jonathan decides to run for the presidency, he can count on our support but if he does not, we would have the slot. And for anybody to say that it is not our turn, we have to be pushed out of Nigeria. How are you prepared as a socio-cultural organisation to deal with traitors among the Igbo? We don’t have such people in Igbo land. If we do, we will deal with them the traditional way. And don’t ask me what is the traditional way. What is your position on whether or not the six-zonal structure should be included in the revamped Constitution to be offered Nigerians? The constitution we inherited was crafted and skewed against the interest of the Igbo. And our position as Ndi- Igbo is that the current zonal arrangement should really not bother anybody because it has no legal backing in the constitution. Operating under the current constitution has given rise to maps being redrawn, boundaries being adjusted and ethnicities being rearranged through illegal activities of the boundary commission. I will repeat again as civilians, we must first suspend this present constitution. There is no need to amend what has been bastardised. That is my stance and that is why I am not prepared to discuss constitution review. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The fog of war Posted by: Sam Omatseye Posted date: November 05, 2012 In: Sam Omatseye | Achebe A few years back when I ran a column on 40 years of Biafra, my cell phone crashed from invectives of malicious fury. The overwhelming line from the rage was that I exercised the temerity to address a matter that I should have left in the grove of silence. I had tackled the Nigerian civil war and the opportunities missed for peace instead of the headlong rush to hostilities and I fingered Odumegwu Ojukwu and the genocidal bigots of the North for blame. Ironically, when Chinua Achebe published his now tempestuous work, There Was A Country, the Yoruba intelligentsia and political elite were up in arms, clobbering him for not keeping silent on issues like his charge of genocide on Obafemi Awolowo. I welcome this debate. Achebe brought his grand image as role model and Africa’s preeminent novelist to bear in his book. After reading, I discovered a wasted opportunity. His haunting style and limpid prose fell prey to a tendentious logic. Mostly, the book is marked by what he did not say than what he said. For a book that generated storm for its boldness, its lack of virtue derives from well-calibrated silences. For instance, he condemned the absence of the civil war from school curriculums. But he did confront some fundamental issues of the Nigerian crisis of the 1960s. The first was the pogrom. Igbo died in droves but the circumstances of that dark cloud of our history still loom over us. Nothing even Aburi, where Yakubu Gowon and Ojukwu parleyed like adversaries, tackled them. If important numbers of an ethnic group dissolved in the genocidal savagery from another ethnic group, how did anyone expect the nation to go on without justice being visited on those involved? It was a mercurial moment as Igbo ran away from what they thought was home. Tears, blood with carion flesh was Igbo in their own country. Relatives saw relatives expire just before they too vanished under the prejudice of knives, daggers and guns. Ojukwu was urged to ask Igbo to return to their various towns and businesses outside Igboland when no one had prosecuted the murderers. They wanted a nation built on a lie. The Igbo decision to go to war was difficult to fault. When the civil war came, there were stories of insensate killings. Federal generals lined up men, women and children and executed them in cold blood. All of these were well-documented. Rape, beatings, arson and other manifestations of abuse became routine parts of the story in eastern Nigeria. When the war ended, Gowon did not address these issues. He was only interested in bringing Ojukwu to trial, which reinforced the suspicions by historians that the egos of Ojukwu and Gowon overwhelmed any sense of propriety on the eve of the war. Gowon denied ever knowing of the barbarous cruelties of his generals who even defended their actions openly. Why were they never brought to trial? If Ojukwu and his men on the Biafrain side committed offences against the Geneva Convention, why was he also not brought to book on his own show of ruthless hubris? The militancy in the Niger Delta, the ethno-sectarian blisters in Jos as well as the eruptions of Boko Haram come from a nation that failed to address the fundamental issues that ruptured the nation in the 1960s. Up till today, all those who committed war crimes or genocide in the Second World War are being tracked around the world and tried. The Balkan crisis of over a decade ago still makes headlines today with the trials of generals like Karadzic. After the Rwandan earth clotted with brotherly blood, the nation could not be reborn without cleansing the past with trials and prosecutions. South Africa had its truth and reconciliation moments. If Ojukwu’s goal was secession, why did he occupy the neutral Midwest with all the tales of rape, harassment, curfew? Achebe wrote as though he had no evidence. It seemed Ojukwu wanted the Midwest oil? Why was he heading for Lagos? Achebe’s book has presented us with an opportunity. Too much malice festers in the Nigerian blood for us to look across ethnic aisles as a fraternal brood. We still evince what novelist Sembene Ousmane calls the “perfidy of lies and hypocrisy of rivals.” It is out of that tainted blood that Achebe churns out what should have been another masterpiece from the storied author. We cannot also address the pogrom without addressing some of the issues that triggered it. Did the Hausa-Fulani fear the ascendancy of the Igbo, and was that the reason for the thirst for Igbo blood? Was the Nzeogwu-led coup an Igbo agenda or the coincidence of more Igbo officers at the prime? Achebe failed to address the issue comprehensively. He did not drop an ink on why it failed in the east. On Ironsi, he argued that the general repulsed his attackers. But he did not even tackle the other suspicion as to whether the man had a tip-off or was spared by the majors. He merely painted Ironsi as reconciliator. On Decree 34, Achebe did not address the possibility that the law gave the Igbo advantage over other ethnic groups and some saw the decree as anointing that move. Some scholars wondered if Ironsi enacted the law out of hegemonic hubris or naivety. We shall never know. But Achebe feigned ignorance of this naunced perspective. Columnist Mohammed Haruna recalled a writing of a former New Nigerian head who was confronted after the Nzeogwu-led coup by writer Cyprian Ekwensi and other Igbo who claimed they had come to “take over.” There was no doubt of Igbo dominance of the civil service. If the Hausa-Fulani preened over their dominance, why should another group not try for power? It is the story everywhere. Only in the U.S. today is there a conscious effort to restrain such hegemonic pride. At the time of the Nigerian crisis, America resented voting rights for blacks. It was the extraordinary statecraft of President Lyndon Johnson that compelled Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act against the majority impulses. His Democratic Party has lost the South since. Even today, Ijaw openly flaunt their position because Jonathan is president. The point is not that a group cannot win, but that everything has to be done by rules agreed upon by all. The Igbo, including Achebe, have shied from admitting the obvious. Achebe claims Igbo are the most progressive people in Nigeria but falls shy of admitting that the Igbo seek to dominate. I would have loved him also to address the issue of Igbo political class that continues to play a game of mercantilist subservience and selling out the whole group for a mess of contracts and sinecure positions. On genocide, we cannot deny that many Igbo died of starvation. We cannot also deny that Awolowo saw “starvation as a legitimate weapon of war.” His singular move to change currency was, from the federal side, a policy of genius. It was death knell to Biafra. Achebe argued that Awolowo did that to foster his ambition and he wanted to kill many Igbo in order to ensure that. Awolowo’s assertion about starvation and war would have nailed him forever as a sadist of war. But history documents his visit to Biafra, even at the risk of dying in the hands of Adekunle. He returned wondering what happened to all the food sent to Biafra. He discovered that the food probably went to the soldiers. Sad as it was, you cannot feed your enemy soldiers. Achebe did not tell the story of the economic divide of Biafra. The soldiers and bureaucrats did not starve. This was well-delineated in Chimamanda Adichie’s Half Of The Yellow Sun and other books. Achebe suffers serial dislocations and one’s heart goes out to him as he tells the story of how his family escapes death from a bombing just when his mother reels in her death bed. But the writer does not show he and his family crave for food. He actually has two cars while ordinary Biafrans survive on desperate vegetables and lizards. Achebe will be veering into psycho-history to show that Awolowo intended to starve ordinary civilians with the currency policy and not to win the war. War policy has consequences. In the war against Iraq, General Colin Powell said: “Our strategy in this war is very simple: first we are going to cut them off, and then we are going to kill them.” Civilians tragically suffered deprivation. In such consequences, we cannot forget the slogan during the American civil war: “Richman’s war, poor man’s fight.” Awolowo wanted to win the war. What ambition did Awo want with Gowon when he was already second in command in the government? If he wanted to be president anointed by Gowon, would he not want the love of Igbo to win the election? Achebe was not clear with prose. Why did Ojukwu not open the food corridor, a thing that forced an expatriate adviser to resign? Ojukwu was believed by some to have allowed the starvation because it served as a potent propaganda tool? Was that true? Was it true that Awolowo saved all allocations to eastern Nigeria and gave them after the war? Why then did we not see massive rehabilitation in the east after the war? What did Asika do with the money? Was it even enough after all the depredations of war? The Igbo have remonstrated against the indigenisation decree and have accused Gowon and Awolowo as targeting them. The more this matter is examined, the more one is convinced that the Igbo suffered unfairly from that law. They had lost everything. That law put them at a disadvantage. But it is a credit to the genius of the race that they have bounced back in spite of such disadvantage. Why did the issue of abandoned properties not go through vigorous trials? That was one of the most vicious parts of the after-war imbecilities of the Gowon administration. Clearly Gowon’s reconciliation efforts were half-hearted. We did not address many issues and that is why they reincarnate. We can still look back, not in anger but for truth. We have done so without equity or truth. History continues to mean different things to different Nigerians. And we act according to our past. What one group sees in history, another denies. “I met history, but it didn’t recognise me,” wrote poet Derek Walcott. What history recognises the Igbo does not recognise the Yoruba. It is only if we have the courage to convene a body of truth and reconciliation, with the culprits named and victims vindicated, that we can avoid the replay of past eruptions. In future plotters will know that evil has official penalties. It is only then that we can fulfill Elie Wiesel’s words that “for the dead and the living we bear witness.” Or else the dead will continue to haunt the living in the Boko Haram, militants and the human infernos of Jos. Historian Cornelius Tacitus wrote in The Histories about the civil war that wracked Rome after Nero and how the tissues of its imperial splendour suffered from egos, greed, plunder, malice and lies. One of his epochal lines was, “conversation increases with hope.” Rome lacked that gift of hope. For us, we need conversation with the past. Without it, we cannot guarantee a future without rancour. That is the gift of Achebe’s book. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ezeajughi: The psychology of Achebe’s critics . Thursday, 29 November 2012 00:00 By Ogechukwu Ezeajughi Opinion - Columnists .User .NOW that the army of critics of Prof. Chinua Achebe’s new book: There was a Country are getting tired, it is appropriate to assess the psychology of these critics, their criticisms and the state of mind of the educated elite to the Nigerian project. I have to own up from the on-set that I have neither seen nor read the book about which hundreds of thousands of both ugly and beautiful words, attacks and counter-attack have been heaped upon. As a resident in one of the numerous back yards of Nigeria where access to the basic necessities of life is a mirage and the desperate quest for daily sustenance, a consuming passion affair of such high intellectual magnitude may receive little or no attention. I, therefore, do not expect early access to the book. Our counterparts, who constitute the diminishing reading public resident in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt, might have read the work. You can be sure that by the time some of us lay hands on the book, one would be quarreling with his vendor about whether what one is having in his hand is the original copy from Heinemann (assumed publisher) or pirated copy from the enemies of copyright owners. Written words are probably the most criticised of the ‘inventions’ of man. Imagine the mountain of criticisms that have been made on Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, Thomas Khun’s The Structure of the Scientific Revolution or Rashdie’s Satanic Verses. Even Chief Obafemi Awolowo reviled the forty-nine wise men that framed the 1979 Constitution and their product for having spent two years copying what took him six months to write. For the uniformed, the admirable chief was saying that the Constitution Drafting Committee headed by the late legal icon, Chief Rotimi Williams, copied or plagiarised his book: Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution. I am an ardent admirer of Achebe as an intellectual prodigy and Africa’s gift to the world that compares with established masters of English language and literature. I suspect you also admire him for his hard work. But certainly, I have also been a victim of his intellectual bravado whereby he cajoled Heineman into withdrawing the publishing right already given to translate Things Fall Apart, his magnum opus, into Igbo after the work has been rendered as Ihe Agbasaa by a publishing company in which I have financial interests. From my reading of excerpts from There was a Country, Achebe has not said anything new on Biafra and Chief Awolowo’s place in that dirty interregnum on Nigerian history that has not been written between 1967 and 2012. And the literature on the subject is quite high. If scholars still write and reinterpret American Civil War, which occurred more than 200 years ago, Achebe has the right as a participant in the Biafra project, to write his recollections on such a recent event. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria guarantees him safe landing. And the platform is also safe for Ebenezer Babatope, an ardent Awoist, Femi Fani-Kayode, an emergency Awoist, and others. It is to my mind, a good development that Achebe has written again at the age of 82. A leopard will never change its spots. And as usual, he has provoked the kind of reactions that his works have always generated. But any person that has got some sinews of Nigerianess in him should be worried that mere exhibition of such old data from a personal perspective would generate such huge ethnocentric invectives. It shows that the Nigerian intelligentia is irredeemably lost. Rather than being worried that the Cocoa House, architectural symbol of Awoism has been in decay; rather than being worried that no other stadium has been built in the Western Region after Liberty Stadium, Babatope and others are worried about data that Chief Awolowo acknowledged to be its author before his death. In Anambra State, I am worried that the only state-sponsored functional library is the one at Onitsha built by Dr. Michael Okpara, a political contemporary of Chief Awolowo, but commissioned by Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu in 1967. I am worried that in 2002, Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju claimed he had built a state-of-the-art stadium at Awka when the nearest one to Anambra State is the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium at Enugu. I am worried that while Biafra, which is the subject of discussion, successfully operated two International Airports at Uga and Uli, Enugu Airport inherited from the Eastern Region has degenerated so hopelessly that sometime ago, the Sam Mbakwe Airport at Owerri built through community effort in 1980, has been the saving grace for air travelers in the entire Igbo region. I am worried that Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s own state, Plateau, is an isolated illustration of a failed ‘state’ where life has been short and brutish, forty two years after his so-called war to keep Nigeria one. I am worried that while Biafran scientists refined their own petroleum, invented ‘shore batteries’, self propelled bombs (ogbunigwe) etc and sustained the struggle for self-determination for three long years, today, Nigeria cannot satisfy the petroleum needs of its population. For some of these writers to heap insult on Achebe and charge the atmosphere with anti-Igbo sentiments and ethnocentrism seems to be a continued portrayal of Nigeria as the ‘mistake of 1914’, which one would expect the Civil War to have corrected. I neither twit nor blog but I am informed that one blogger suggested that Things Fall Apart be banned in schools after he had exhausted his gangrene of tribalism on the Igbo. The corrective intendment of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) on the intellectual windsowers, whose primary and secondary allegiance has been to their tribe, is still lost as evident from anti-Achebe writings. The Yoruba no doubt rightly hold Chief Awolowo in high esteem on account of his seminal works that started with the construction of Yoruba unity from the time he founded Egbe Omo Oduduwa through massive social and economic development efforts in the old Western Region. But for the attackers of Achebe to allude sainthood to Awolowo is to emulate a man who through the intrigues of cross-carpeting in 1956, elevated ethnicism to a standard policy. Achebe merely pointed to the Yoruba house with his right hand; he did not use his left. The defenders of Achebe from the ‘East from whence I come’ have as usual fought back to prevent their kinsman from intellectual annihilation. The defence line is quite long - from both sides of the Niger shoreline to the littoral front of Igwocha (Port Harcourt). I doubt if I have come across any Yoruba writer that has called for a truce. From the Igbo side at least, I have read Dr. Anthony Nwaezeigwe simmering along that line. Prof. ABC. Nwosu’s detailed expose, which I suspect are excerpts from a forthcoming book on the same subject ‘I Horatio’ is authoritative and detribalised. We are waiting for I Horatio hoping that its production will not be encumbered with the mentality of publishing abroad. • Ezeajughi wrote from Awka. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Imoke, at book-signing , urges mentoring of young people . Monday, 04 June 2012 00:00 Editor News - Metro THE need to mentor young people has, once again been emphasized, this time by the Governor of Cross River State, Liyel Imoke during the book-signing ceremony of his biography, Born to Serve in Calabar recently. The event, which attracted people from all walks of life including past and serving members of the National Assembly, was chaired by Senate leader, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba who described the book as anecdotes of those who knew Imoke. In a brief review of the book written by Enuma Chigbo and Ejiro Barret, and published by Africagenda Publications, Senator Anietie Okon, described the biography as ‘a book written from the middle,’ noting that “the book celebrates the man not because of who he is, not because of his service to his people. No. But the book must be seen as an important contribution to political biography in Nigeria.” Responding, Governor Imoke thanked all who attended the ceremony, saying that all the money realised from the sale would go into the Bridge Leadership Foundation, a foundation he founded for the purpose of mentoring Cross River State youths. He said: “I was very excited that the foundation was beginning to take shape and help impact the youths, providing them with opportunities and an appreciation of what leadership is all about and a lot of mentoring.” He thanked those who have signed up as mentors to the foundation and appealed for more people to follow suit. “I will appreciate it if more of us sign up to mentor these young people because I have the privilege of interacting with them and young people of today are not exactly the same as we were when we were young, so a lot of mentoring needs to be done. They are sharper, more intelligent, sometimes they are more exposed but there are some issues that relate to values, which I think we still have an edge over them. It is important that we mentor these young men and women so that we can provide them with an opportunity to do better than we are doing. It is important to me that the foundation achieves the objectives and that is why the proceeds from the sale of the book will go to support the work of the foundation,” Imoke said. He added: “It is one thing to be successful in your profession and another thing to make a difference in the lives of others. There is no greater privilege in the world than that of service.” The Emir of Borgu Kingdom, Senator Haliru Dantoro represented by the Galadima of Borgu noted that Gov. Imoke has the capacity to make and keep loyal friendships from far and near. Among those who graced the occasion were former Governor of Cross River State and his wife, Donald and Onari Duke, State Chairman of PDP, Cross River State, Ntufam John Okon, Senator Segun Bamigbetan, Senator Bassey Ewa Henshaw, among others. ---------------------------------- Adegbola Launches Book 24 Mar 2012 Ile-Ife: the Source of Yoruba Civilisation by Prince Adelegan Adegbola It was a colourful gathering of the Who is Who of tradition and culture at the public presentation of the book, Ile-Ife: the Source of Yoruba Civilisation by Prince Adelegan Adegbola. The venue was the prestigious Oduduwa Hall, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife. The March 10 book presentation, which was graced by prominent monarchs from different geo-political zones, no doubt gave the Yoruba nation and others ample opportunity to discuss the unity of Nigeria. With over 100 royalties from across the country present, the programme was opened by panegyrics of kings and localities. These praises filled the air with a colourful display of royal panache while the venue was gradually filled by gusts that included Oba Okuande Sijuade, Alhaji Sa’d Abubakar, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Ado Bayero, Emir of Kano and Igwe Nnaemaka Achebe, the Obi of Onitsha. His Majesty, Ogiame Atuwatse II, the Olu of Warri, was represented by Joey Ema Evelukha, while the Deji of Akure, Zulu Gambari, the Emir of Ilorin, and the Esama of Benin, Chief Egbinedion, were also part of the event. The book, Ile-Ife: Source of Yoruba Civilisation was written by Prince Adelegan Adegbola, a journalist and historian who found the historical fallacies of both colonial and post-colonial representations disturbing. According to the reviewer, Abiodun Adedoyin, a professor of history at OAU, the influx of historical books on Ile-Ife by freelance writers, who are short of accuracy had led Adelegan to task himself to deeper research on the subject. Adelegan was reported to have a decade of investigative journalistic skills, archaeological findings and research to produce the voluminous book on the pre and post-colonial history of Yoruba land. Adedoyin noted that the book investigates “the fulcrum of Yoruba land in ancient and modern times”. He places Adelagun on the same pedestal with Samuel Johnson, the colonial historical writer, but asserts that Adelagun’s book will serve as a more valid and more informed reference on the history of the Yorubas. “The book is highly balanced, very similar to Johnson’s in size but surpasses it in the volume of new research and perspectives,” he said. According to the writer, the book takes into consciousness the collapse of the rich Yoruba cultural heritage in the 19th century and advocates that the book can be used by organisations, cultural research centres, libraries, and palaces to revitalise the knowledge of the cultural norms of the people. Adelagun stated that the book also “corrects the impressions of Oduduwa and puts in perspective the realities of the Orisas,” and the Yoruba kings. “The book also traces the source of many of the Kingdoms in South west Nigeria and influences on Kingdoms in West Africa to Ile-Ife”. The book attracted praises from the Sultan of Sokoto, who informed the audience that he felt at ease being in the source of Yoruba land. He also assured on the unity of the country saying: “Our presence here says a lot. It shows our belief in the unity of Nigeria,” he said. He expressed delight in the publication of the book, noting that it exuded the values of a people and their relations with others. He harped on the need to make history in secondary schools a compulsory subject. In agreement to the words of the sultan, The Obi of Onitsha reiterated the need for unity amongst Nigerians. He said “the more we understand ourselves, the more we understand our relations with other people, the better for us. Lord Lugard did not relate us with each other, our ancestors did.” “There is far more that puts us together than divides us,” he said and added that Nigerians should focus on the strengths of unity than on the issues that divide us as a nation. Other prominent faces at the event were Osun State governor Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, Mrs Olatokunbo Awolowo-Dosunmu who represented Mrs H.I.D. Awolowo, former head of service Princess Tejumade Alakija, Chief Olu Falae, Justice Bola Babalakin, Chief Micheal Adeojo, Professor Idowu Omole and Guild of Editors president Gbenga Adefaye. ------------------------ Baingana Reads at the Rainbow Book Club 18 Feb 2012 Port Harcourt-based Rainbow Book Club flags off its first reading of the year by hosting award-winning Ugandan author, Doreen Baingana. This means that Baingana’s book Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe is the Rainbow Book Club book-of-the-month. Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe clinchedthe 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book Africa, and the AWP Short Fiction Award. Biagana was also twice a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing. A law graduate of the University of Makerere, Uganda, she also holds an MFA from the University of Maryland. In Tropical Fish, a collection of eight inter-related stories, Baingana narrates about the choices made by three sisters and the inevitable consequences of these decisions on them. Most of the stories are set in Uganda after the Idi-Amin era and explores themes as diverse as the family, sex and relationships, disease, betrayal, and spirituality. Currently in Nigeria, as the first International writer at a residency programme holding at Iseyin, Oyo State, she will make a stop in Port Harcourt as Rainbow Book Club hosts her to a reading at 4pm on Sunday, February 19 at Le Meridien Hotel, Ogeyi Palace. Rainbow Book Club, the organiser of the annual Garden City Literary Festival, has hosted many award-winning authors, including Caine Prize winner E. C. Osondu, Uwem Akpan, Adaobi Nwaubani and Kaine Agary, amongst others. ---------------------------- A Book for Fund Managers 05 Apr 2011 Font Size: a / A Public Procurement Policies and Practices By Funke Fadugba This book, Public Procurement Policies and Practices, as a capsule has been empirically tested in the area of content that is policies, regulations, processes and procedures and promotion of deeper understanding in giving preference and meaning to such acronyms that can throw a Jonnie Just Come (JJC) off guard. The book captures the various areas and technical points in the procurement process with the author making effective use of different typefaces, graphics, tables, diagrams, simple English language to break down complex T-junctions in the process. It kicks off with preparing the user/reader for the jargons necessary to take a walk down the procurement process that is the acronyms. This book, though technical, l has been made so attractive and relevant to all segments of the society from the policy maker, to the implementers, the investor, the activist, the contractor, the consultant and anti- corruption crusaders as well as students. All those aspiring to the legislative and executive arms of government should get a copy of this book to efficiently perform both their executive- implementation and oversight functions. A student of political science or those of us that are warming up to swim in the country’s political waters in one capacity or the other, need knowledge to excel and not just the oratory power. The author, Sam Afemikhe, has simplified a very crucial aspect of governance in this book to ensure that key players are above moral suasion, probes and threat of punishment in the course of service. Some may even become accessories to a crime due to lack of knowledge as ignorance is no defense in law. We have seen many who are daily cutting corners to remain in power mainly to circumvent probes and likely punishment when they no longer have the immunity cover or leisurely hang on the corridors of power. If they had the privilege of this book on Public Procurement Policies and Practices there would be no need for that. After the elections in April, any politician in any capacity who is still found wanting in the area of best practices or stumbles on the proverbial banana peels, will have himself to blame. Such political fatality would be attributed to no other thing than the inability to tap into the wealth of knowledge exhibited and precautionary steps outlined in this book. To achieve Vision 20-20-20 aimed at tackling underdevelopment and poverty, this book is a must for all those involved or who aspire to share this vision and nurture it into fruition. It answers questions such as how much process is Due Process. And how do we avoid it becoming a bureaucratic ordeal? In addition, as a law gets better after years of existence, the Public Procurement Act 2007 is sure to be better understood, appreciated and complied with, with this book as a practical companion on the pathway in the public procurement process. This book details in full the various steps to be taken to check corruption and poor public expenditure management bedeviling Nigeria’s development. In fact, this book is the author’s contribution, a great one indeed, in the fight against corruption not by treating its consequences but tackling its root causes as it relates to abuse of discretionary powers. It helps to empower those with discretionary power in public expenditure and management process on how best to retain this power and achieve delivery of goods and services to the citizenry. The author argues against the withdrawal or watering down of discretionary power saying this will make public expenditure management rigid, ineffectual and unworkable. This book is a further demonstration of Afemikhe’s passion for change management and process re-engineering. This book, Public Procurement Policies and Practices, in itself is a process which started with the very fundamentals of public procurement. Under the fundamentals, that are the elements and essentials, money is valued in terms of the economy, its efficiency and effectiveness to attain best value for public expenditure to support sustainable development. Thus, it is essential to note that the ultimate aim of Public Procurement Policies and Practices, is to evaluate money – the economy to the extent in which it has promoted best expenditure to guarantee sustainable development. • Mrs Fadugba is the executive director of Media Ethics Organisation, Lagos. Edited by GABRIELLA OSAMOR ----------------------------------