Biography/Autobiography
The book has been conveniently arranged in six parts as follows:
A. Cultural Development, Traditional Institutions and Governance.
B. Exploring the Past.
C. Vision from the Ivory Tower.
D. Education, Social Mobilization and Sport.
E. Politics, Economics and the State.
F. Media, Religion and Standard of Service.
While it is tempting to review this path-breaking publication by going from one category to the other, the danger is that the output will be excessively long and unnecessarily narrative. The preferred approach adopted is that which is essentially analytic. This requires regrouping into fewer categories in which the world-view or ideological perspective of the revered author arc captured. These are Politics/Constitution Making, Education and Religion.
There can be no better platform to register the debt that Osundare owes his parentage, the rigorous discipline of his mentors and the diverse environments in which his outlook on the world has been shaped than this carefully crafted biography. Egya highlights Osundare’s prodigious talent, his unwavering ethical compass, his infectious humanism, his enduring faith in the capacity of literature to reshape the world, and the harmony between his creative imagination and polemical writing. Readers and critics will find the biography an indispensable companion to reading Osundare not just because of the illuminating personal and cultural information that it offers, but also because it equally periodizes Osundare’s work in a way no other book has done.
Prof. Oyeniyi Okunoye, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife
In Niyi Osundare: A Literary Biography, Sule E. Egya takes us on a journey of the life experiences of the artist-scholar Niyi Osundare. Indeed, there are some books a reader just can’t put down. This is one of them. It takes you to the other worlds beyond the popular world of artistry and scholarship of one of Africa’s most accomplished men of letters.
Dr. Ogaga Okuyade, Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sule E. Egya is professor of African Literature and Cultural Studies at Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai, Nigeria. He was formerly Head of the Department of English and Dean of Faculty of Languages and Communication Studies. Widely published and travelled, his interests include literature and politics, literature and the environment, literary theory, and creative writing. He is also an award-winning writer, having authored works of poetry and fiction under the style name E. E. Sule. Among his works are Sterile Sky, winner of the 2013 Commonwealth Prize Africa Region, and the AHP-sponsored Nation, Power and Dissidence in Third Generation Nigerian Poetry in English.
Ama Ata Aidoo was born in Abeadzi Kyiakor in what was then the Gold Coast (later Ghana) in 1940 and grew up in a Fante royal household. She attended Wesley Girls’ High School in Cape Coast and then the University of Ghana at Legon from 1961-1964 where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English. During this time, she also wrote her first play, ‘The Dilemma of a Ghost’, which came out in 1965 and made her the first African woman dramatist to be published.
Since then, Aidoo has written other plays, novels, short stories and poetry as well as numerous essays on African literature and the status of women in African society. One of her best known novels is ‘Our Sister Killjoy, or, Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint’ (1977). She has won many literary awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Africa) for her second novel, ‘Changes: a Love Story’ (1991). Aidoo’s works of fiction deal with the tension between Western and African world views and the politics of gender and sexual inequality in African society.
In addition to her literary career, Aidoo was appointed Minister of Education under the Provisional National Defence Council in 1982, but resigned after 18 months. She then moved to Zimbabwe to become a full-time writer. She has also lived and worked in the US, the UK and Germany. Aidoo was a long-term Visiting Professor in Africana Studies and the Literary Arts at Brown University.
His intimidating political profile, stupendous wealth, international connections, acceptability among his fellow politicians, transparent leadership, crusade against social injustice, corruption and inequity and above all, divine anointing are some of the qualities that stand him out.
Governor Kalu has over 200 traditional titles to his honour and several books to his credit.
Some of the titles are:
OLUIGBO
TUKURAN GWANDU
ZANNA MU'AMALAM OF DIKWA
BANNA ZAKI OF LAPAI
KACHALLA MISAU
KACHALLA BIU
BARDEN MATASAN KEBBI
MMILI NYILI ENYI OF NRI KINGDOM
ARO OF OGBOMOSOLAND
KOLO OF BORNO
AARE BAALORO OF ISOLO
AGUNECHE ABIA
AHAEJIAGAMBE OF IGBERE
AKU ZURU IGBO OF EZIAMA, IMO STATE
ODEZULUIGBO OF NNOKWA, ANAMBRA STATE
ISIBUIGBO OF ATTA IMO STATE
OMENANWATA OF IGBOLAND
ASHIPA SERIKIN MAYEGUN OF IBADAN
BABA METU OF IKARE, EKITI
GARKUWAN KANO
He is yet to formally receive a special title conferred on him by the Alaafin of Oyo, and the Emir of Damaturu respectively.
He has some published and unpublished books to his credit and they include:
My Reflections on Nigeria's National Assembly (Unpublished)
The Problems of Nigeria Unity (Unpublished)
Military in Nigeria Economy (Unpublished)
Police and Crime Operation
Nigeria Foreign Policy and June 12 Crisis
Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sir Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo: The Height of Truth in Nigeria
Orji Uzor Kalu: Lessons from a Master Strategist
He has presented several speeches and lectures locally and internationally. Among them are:
Wake-up call for the Igbo at Igbo Summit in Enugu, January 2001 June 12 Presidential Election and Transition Crisis in Nigeria delivered in Lagos on June 12, 2002 to mark the 11th Anniversary of the annulled June 12 Presidential Election;
Democracy, Accountability and Good Governance at Papa Club, Lagos, September 14, 2002;
The Media In a Democratic Nigeria at the Communications Department of Howard University, Washington D.C. USA, October 25, 2002;
Issues In Nigeria's Contemporary Politics at Liberty University, Virginia, USA, February 2002;
Electoral Violence and the Future of Democracy in Nigeria at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, February 19, 2003, and Roadmap to Igbo Renaissance at the World Igbo Congress, Tennessee, USA, September 29, 2003.
He is married with a wife. Dr. (Mrs.) Ifeoma Orji Uzor Kalu, and they have two beautiful daughters
Throughout his long career, Achebe was a voice for the peoples of Africa and also a formative influence on a new generation of African writers. This volume of tributes and reflections is a fitting testament to his legacy.
The introduction lays out the background of the book when Bernth Lindfors attempts to settle a score with Biodun Jeyifo and Soyinka. Lindfors first retells Jeyifo’s position in Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics and Postcolonialism (2004), in which the latter identified Lindfors as one “who, almost alone among students of Soyinka’s writings, has been obsessed with his literary juvenilia, hoping therein to find materials to prove Soyinka was once a rookie writer, a neophyte artist, even if his rise to fame seemed instantaneous and meteoric.” Then, Lindfors reveals Soyinka’s misunderstanding of his efforts to demonstrate that Soyinka’s earliest writings were not the “awkward fumblings of a neophyte artist but the handiwork of a skilled craftsman who could articulate original ideas with fluency, precision and persuasiveness.” Soyinka had apparently taken issue with Lindfors in his essay “The Critic and Society: Barthes, Leftocracy and Other Mythologies,” by branding the latter as a “hagiographer extraordinary, who re-creates my juvenilia, in the old University College of Ibadan; every page of his essay contains at least one inaccuracy of time and place and a series of absurd attributions.” Lindfors’ probable purpose in bringing out these two misinterpretations of his interest in that early expressive body of work is to show the reason why many critics have refrained from studying Soyinka’s writings prior to publication of A Dance of the Forests, The Lion and the Jewel, and Three Plays in 1963. By considering these first published works as the starting point for an exploration of Soyinka’s talent and personality, those critics have been “studying the growth of a tree without examining its roots.” Early Soyinka aims then at putting things right by studying the growth of Soyinka from a close examination of his roots.
- Olusegun Obasanjo
Following in the steps of his previous memoirs, My Command and Not My Will, Olusegun Obasanjo's My Watch is more than the story of the Obasanjo presidency told by the man himself. It is a memoir of a lifetime spent in service to country, of a man who has been destined with the watch, with the vigilance, with the responsibility to his people to speak up and speak out.
My Watch spans large expanses of time, from the pre-colonial Owu history, to early Abeokuta and the last throes of an independent city state at turn-of-the-century colonial Nigeria, to the early life of its author, his civil war experience, his stewardship of the transitional government of 1976-1979, the interregnum, his second appearance on the national scene as a civilian president on Nigeria's return to democracy in 1999, the completion of the first civilian-civilian transfer of government in Nigeria's history that inaugurated the Yar'Adua presidency and signalled the end of Obasanjo's tenure in office, and the years hence.
Presented in three volumes, this exquisitely narrated memoir, in turns intensely personal and broadly nationalistic and international, completes a trilogy of autobiographies—My Command, Not My Will, and My Watch—told by this sojourner of Nigerian and world history.
Book Info
Publisher: Kachifo Limited under its Prestige ImprintYear of first release: 2014
Planned release date: November 2014
The book is presented as a three-volume boxset in hardcase and paperback editions. The book is trimmed at 150x235mm, portrait. The page counts are 506, 672, and 400 pages respectively for Volumes 1, 2, and 3. We present a well-designed, illustrated in full colour where relevant, and factual memoir written by the man himself.
Author's Bio
Olusegun Obasanjo, soldier, statesman, author and farmer, born on Ifo Market Day in Ibogun-Olaogun in what was then Abeokuta Province of 1930s colonial Nigeria, joined the Nigerian Army in 1958. He served in the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in the Congo between 1960-1961 and rose to become the General Officer Commanding the 3 Marine Commando Division of the Nigerian Army, which ended the 30-month Nigerian Civil War.After the war, Obasanjo resumed his duties as the commander of the Nigerian Army Corps of Engineers. He was appointed Federal Commissioner (Minister) for Works in the Gowon Administration, and was appointed Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters—thus becoming the number 2 man in the government hierarchy—after the change of government in 1975.
Obasanjo served as Head of State of the Federal Military Government and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces from 1976-1979 following the assassination of General Murtala Muhammed in a failed putsch. He handed over to a civilian regime in 1979 and retired to private life of farming. As a statesman he was called upon by the international community, in one instance to serve as co-chair of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons' Group constituted to work on negotiated settlement for the ending of the South African Apartheid policy in 1985. He was also a candidate for the office of Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1991.
Olusegun Obasanjo, a fearless critic of bad government in Africa and particularly in Nigeria, was jailed after the "phantom coup" trial in 1995 by the Abacha Military Regime. He emerged from prison in 1998 and became a candidate for the presidency in the run-up to the military handover to a democratic civilian administration. He won the election and was sworn-in as President of the Federal Republic of Nigerian on May 29 1999.
He stepped down from the presidency in 2007 at the end of his second term and returned to his farm. He still serves the international community in several capacities. He is currently the chief promoter of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library.
Olusegun Obasanjo has authored several books, significant amongst them, My Command, about his experiences in the Nigerian Civil War; Not My Will, about his service to the nation as Military Head of State; This Animal Called Man, a philosophical reflection on the nature of man written during his time as a political prisoner; and Nzeogwu, about his friend and key figure in the January 1966 coup. This book, My Watch, his latest memoir, promises to join the other books as odes to a life of service to God, humanity and country.
Table of Contents
VOLUME 1: My Watch - Early Life and the Military
Introduction
Part I: Early Life
1) Ifo Market Day
- The Owus in Yorubaland
- The Family
- Village Life
- From Village to City
- The City of Abeokuta
- Ibadan- The Oluyole City
Part II: Military Career and Administration
- Teshie - The Beginning of a Career
- From Dream to Reality: Going to the UK
- Close to Active Military Operation
- Returning Home
- Kaduna-The Cosmopolitan City of Crocodiles
- The Congo
- From Infantry to Corps of Engineers
- Assuming Command of Engineers Unit
- The Indian Staff College Course
- The First Coup And Its Aftermath
- Ibadan On Military Assignment
- The Nigerian Civil War
- The Royal College of Defence Studies
- First Step Into Government
- The Third Coup
Part III: Life After Military Administration
- The Inter-regnum
- Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group on South Africa
- The Race to the 38th Floor
- National Unity Organisation of Nigeria (NUON)
- My Arrest: The Abacha Saga
- The Prison Experience
VOLUME 2: My Watch - Political and Public Affairs
Part IV: Second Coming – Politics & Political Affairs
- Entry Into Politics
- Political Consultations and Convention
- Campaigns and the Elections
- Planning & Preparation for Governance
- Beginning of Governance
- Constitution Amendments
- The External Dimensions
- Atiku and US Justice Entanglement
- Succession, Transition and Exit
Part V: Second Coming - Governance
- Credo and Orientation
- Credo
- Worship
- Death of Stella
- Judicial Commission
- Investigation of Human Rights Violations – Oputa Panel
- Conflict Resolutions
- Bakassi
- Militancy in the Niger Delta
- Internal Conflicts
- Regional Conflicts and Relations
- Fuel, Energy & Power Reforms
- Fuel Shortage
- Oil & Gas, Local Content, Marginal Fields
- Power & Energy
- Economic Reforms
- Transportation
- Privatisation
- Agriculture & Presidential Initiatives
- Tourism
- Debt Relief
- Needs & Vision 2020
- Financial Management Reforms
- Fighting Corruption
- Wage Increase
- Monetisation
- Contributory Pension Scheme
- Recovery of Looted Funds
- Price Intelligence Unit
- Banking Reform
- Social Welfare Services Reforms
- National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS
- Polio Immunisation
- National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC
- Millennium Development Goals, MDGs
- Universal Basic Education, UBE
- Housing and Urban Development
- Census 2006
- Civil Service Reforms
- Federal Capital Development Authority, FCDA
- Local Government Councils
- e-Government
- SERVICOM
- Administrative Enhancement
- Independent Policy Group, IPG
- Informal Inner Circle in Governance (Kitchen Cabinet)
- Honorary Presidential Advisory Councils & Other Committees
- Executive-Legislative Relations
- Visits to States
- Improving the National Image
- Stated Goals and Proven Performance
VOLUME 3: My Watch -Now and Then
Part VI: Now and Thereafter
- Stand Up and Look
- Critical Assessment of Yar’Adua Administration
- Special Envoy of UN Secretary-General in DRC and Great Lakes Region
- To Be Or Not To Be: Jonathan
- The Presidential Library
- The Nigeria Centenary
- The Media and The Critics
- Global Events, Involvement in Note-Worthy Organisations and Leaders
- Elections Observations
- The Missed, the Missing and the Lost Chances
- From Now To...
- Epilogue
About the Author
Mohandas Gandhi was born in Western India in 1869. After studying law in London and living in South Africa for many years, he returned to India in 1915, where he spent the rest of his life campaigning for India's independence and promoting his fundamental principles of truth and non-violence. He died in 1948.
Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years - as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues - this is the acclaimed, internationally bestselling biography of the ultimate icon of inventiveness.
Walter Isaacson tells the story of the rollercoaster life and searingly intense personality of creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies,music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written, nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.
Year of Publication: 2016
254 pages
In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America the first African American to serve in that role she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.
After brief periods with some consulting firms in the UK, he undertook the mandatory practical training in the Civil Engineering Department of Crown Agents London from 1961 to 1963. Thereafter, he returned to Nigeria for his civil service career in the Federal Ministry of Works where he worked on many construction and maintenance projects. He was also at the Planning Department of the Highways Division of the Federal Ministry of Works and took part in the planning, design, and specifications for many road projects in the country.
In 1978 he was transferred to the Federal Capital Development Authority as the first Director of Development and Engineering Services, where he contributed to the definition of the urban transportation system and the regional road network in the Master Plan of the new Federal Capital City, Abuja and the associated activities leading to the eventual construction and first phase of movement to the city.
While his main professional interests are transportation planning, the development of the indigenous construction industry, project management and computer applications, he has made huge contributions to the country's political development through his writings and commentaries. His writings have been delivered at conferences, lectures, and tribunals while some have been published in journals and newspapers. He enjoys sports, current affairs, motoring, flying and traveling.
Engr Oseni voluntarily retired from the Federal Public Service in 1981 to set up an engineering consulting firm, F.A. Oseni Consultancy Services and Oznick Computers Ltd in 1983.
He is a Member, Council of Registered Engineers of Nigeria, Member, Institution of Civil Engineers (London) and Fellow, Nigerian Society of Engineers. In June 2011, he "Achieved the distinction of having been a member of the British Institution of Civil Engineers for fifty years."
He was conferred with the traditional title of Olisa Bobaniyi by Sir Olateru Olagbegi II, KBE, the Olowo of Owo in December 1994.
Engr Festus Alfred Oladimeji Oseni is married with three children: two daughters and a son.
Ibrahim Lamorde, EFCC
“There will still be another day. Someday, some of these people would still be taken to court in handcuffs. They will go to jail.” These were the words of Ibrahim Lamorde who was appointed as Acting Chairman of the EFCC yesterday.
A book on the Nuhu Ribadu-era at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, A Paradise for Maggots: The Story of a Nigerian Anti-Graft Czar, authored by University of California, Davis professor, Wale Adebanwi, reveals how newly appointed Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde, predicted his return to the anti-graft commission in 2009, about a year after President Umaru Yar’Adua removed him and appointed Mrs. Farida Waziri.
Lamorde, who was then been posted to Kaduna after suffering harassments in the aftermath of his removal from the EFCC, assured Adebanwi that he would return to the EFCC and continue the anti-graft war that he and Ribadu waged before their removal by Yar’Adua.
Adebanwi writes: ‘There will still be another day,’ replied Lamorde when I asked if their removal from the EFCC could be taken as the end of a dream. ‘Some day, some of these people would still be taken to court in handcuffs. They will go to jail.’
Below are the relevant parts of the book and a brief description of the new EFCC Chairman.
“‘I would like you to know that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is really recognised as a first-class institution and I would like to underscore to you today that the US government will be continuing our commitment and our support to the EFCC.’ Robin Renne Sanders, the US Ambassador to Nigeria, gave that assurance when she visited the EFCC headquarters in March 2008, while Ibrahim Lamorde was still in charge as acting chairman.
Overview
Corrupt, mismanaged, and seemingly hopeless: that’s how the international community viewed Nigeria in the early 2000s. Then Nigeria implemented a sweeping set of economic and political changes and began to reform the unreformable. This book tells the story of how a dedicated and politically committed team of reformers set out to fix a series of broken institutions, and in the process repositioned Nigeria’s economy in ways that helped create a more diversified springboard for steadier long-term growth.
The author, Harvard- and MIT-trained economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, currently Nigeria’s Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance and formerly Managing Director of the World Bank, played a crucial part in her country’s economic reforms. In Nigeria’s Debt Management Office, and later as Minister of Finance, she spearheaded negotiations with the Paris Club that led to the wiping out of $30 billion of Nigeria’s external debt, 60 percent of which was outright cancellation. Reforming the Unreformable offers an insider’s view of those debt negotiations; it also details the fight against corruption and the struggle to implement a series of macroeconomic and structural reforms.
This story of development economics in action, written from the front lines of economic reform in Africa, offers a unique perspective on the complex and uncertain global economic environment.
About the Authors
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is Nigeria’s Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance. From 2007 to 2011 she was Managing Director of the World Bank, overseeing activities in South Asia, Europe, Central Asia, and Africa.
Oskar Juhlin is Professor in the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University and founder of the Mobile Life VINN Excellence Center.
Table of Contents
- Contents
- Preface ix
- Acknowledgments xi
- 1 Setting the Stage for Reform 1
- 2 Advancing Macroeconomic Reforms 19
- 3 Promoting Privatization, Deregulation, and Liberalization 35
- 4 Launching Other Structural Reforms 51
- 5 Fighting Corruption 81
- 6 Obtaining Debt Relief 95
- 7 Reflections on the Reforms and Lessons for Reformers 119
- 8 Conclusions and a Look Forward 133
- Appendix: Figures and Tables 145
- Notes 181
- References 185
- About the Author 189
- Index 191
Endorsements
"This insider's account of the valiant attempt to reform Nigeria's economy will inspire anyone committed to changing the course of their country."—Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, 2001
"This extremely informative and thought-provoking book provides a masterful account of the interplay of technical economic management and political will constrained by vested interest in undertaking transformative reforms in developing countries. Every page speaks to the Liberian experience in microcosm. This will be required reading by the Cabinet and students in our institutions of higher learning. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala remains a courageous champion for sound economic management and performance."—Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia
"An important book which incisively reveals what the real barriers to development are, and the political constraints to removing them. Inspiring and compulsory reading for development scholars and practitioners."—James Robinson, David Florence Professor of Government, Harvard University
"Just as Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala forces open budget processes, these pages force open our eyes to the complexities of political life in Nigeria. Throughout her incarnations as the corruption cop, finance minister, tough decision maker, and managing director she has been and remains a great friend and an inspiring mentor. This is an essential guidebook for reformers everywhere."—Bono
Structured around key moments in Biden's life and career—and filled with Biden-isms like "That's a bunch of malarkey" and "I may be Irish, but I'm not stupid"—this blend of biography, advice, and humor will reveal the experiences that forged Joe Biden, and the lessons we can use in our own lives. Along the way, readers will also encounter fun sidebars on his love of muscle cars, his most endearing gaffes, his bromance with President Obama, and much more.
Yet beneath the memorable Biden-isms, the book will reveal an inspirational story of a man who keeps "getting back up." We need this right now. Much as Biden has come back from both professional missteps and personal heartbreaks, sometimes we all have to get back up and fight. Given Biden's reputation as a decent, plainspoken, patriotic statesman of integrity, this entertaining and practical book will be both a celebration of great political figure and an essential guide to creating the America he believes in so dearly
His odyssey begins with his boyhood in Onitsha, where he dreamed of owning a printing press, and he describes in fascinating detail his genealogy, his family background, and the traditions in which he was raised as an Ibo. He describes his early religious indoctrination in the Christian schools of Lagos and Calabar, where he first became aware of the anomalies of the colonial African societies in which an alien ruling elite imposed racial discrimination on Africans. During his secondary education, he was introduced to the writings of Marcus Garvey, the sermons of Dr. Kweygir Aggrey, and a biography of President Garfield. The messages of these men-Garvey's call for the liberation of Africa from the colonial governments, Dr. Aggrey's hope for a social rebirth and a new spiritual outlook among and toward Africans, and President Garfield's frontier spirit and willpower in the face of poverty-inspired Zik to pursue his university education in the United States in the hope that it would prepare him for leadership of the Nigerian independence movement.
In just a decade and half Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, founded and built Alibaba into one of the world’s largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba’s $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age who is courted by CEOs and Presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China’s booming private sector and the gatekeeper to hundreds of millions of middle class consumers.
Duncan Clark first met Jack in 1999 in the small apartment where Jack founded Alibaba. Granted unprecedented access to a wealth of new material including exclusive interviews, Clark draws on his own experience as an early advisor to Alibaba and two decades in China chronicling the Internet’s impact on the country to create an authoritative, compelling narrative account of Alibaba’s rise.
How did Jack overcome his humble origins and early failures to achieve massive success with Alibaba? How did he outsmart rival entrepreneurs from China and Silicon Valley? Can Alibaba maintain its 80% market share? As it forges ahead into finance and entertainment, are there limits to Alibaba’s ambitions? How does the Chinese government view its rise? Will Alibaba expand further overseas, including in the U.S.?
Clark tells Alibaba’s tale in the context of China’s momentous economic and social changes, illuminating an unlikely corporate titan as never before.
The definitive biography of “the main animating force of African poetry”
JP Clark: A Voyage is the definitive biography of Clark by Femi Osofisan, himself one of Nigeria’s most accomplished playwrights. It chronicles the life and career of the man John Pepper Clark – Bekederemo, from his remarkable childhood to his emergence in the 60s among the best and brightest of Nigerian literature. For the first time, JP breaks his silence about the controversial position he took during Nigeria’s Civil War and discusses his relationship with Soyinka and Achebe.
Generally regarded as the most lyrical of the poets of his generation for his simple, down to earth, visual and descriptive imagery, which makes his poems among the most memorable, JP Clark is perhaps the most underrated of Nigeria’s literary giants: Achebe, Soyinka and Okigbo, being the others.
He rushed to the chapters dealing with issues like the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election widely believed to have been won by Chief MKO Abiola, the controversial Structural Adjustment Programme, Dele Giwa’s murder, etc. He compared the author’s analyses on the topics with his fiery comments on the same issues in the Newswatch magazine in the ’80s and ’90s to see if there were contradictions that would suggest he is an emergency biographer trying to repackage Babangida.
But Agbese’s perspective in this book proves to be quite consistent with his previous viewpoint: IBB is a tragic hero. The 433-page book comprising eighteen chapters is a classical case study of a leader who started out with the noble aim of bettering his country but got swept off by the whirlwind of his personal ambition and parochial considerations just when his noble dream was about to be realized.
How do we know who we really are unless we’re tested? Would you fight for what you believe in even if it could lead to your demise?
As a boy, I had dreamed of being a soldier, but when I grew up and enlisted I found it was not what I had imagined. Where I had envisioned camaraderie, honor, and respect, I found secrets, lies, and backstabbing. I found corruption where there should have been cooperation, and, worst of all, malice where only valor should have thrived. I became caught up in a series of attempts to overthrow the government—and became a target myself because I knew too much.
Most of all I learned that it is only in humility that we find peace. When we begin to think we are better than another man, that is the point at which our downfall begins.
About the Author
Lt. Gen. (Dr.) IshayaRiziWadtareBamaiyi (rtd.) was born in Stench village, Nigeria. He graduated from Bida Teachers College and joined the Nigerian army in 1967 as aspecial-enlistmentrecruit. He went to the Nigerian Defense Academy as a corporal and commanded seven different infantry battalions, four brigades, and the Lagos Garrison before being appointedchiefof army staff in 1996. He served under the military administration of late Gen. Sani Abacha and was on December 10,1999charged with attempted murder of Guardian Newspaper Publisher, Alex Ibru. He was charged alongside former Chief Security Officer (CSO) to Gen Abacha, Maj. Hamza al-Mustapha, and others by the Lagos State Government. Bamaiyi was, however, discharged and acquitted on April 2,2008of any wrongdoing in the saga, after eight years in detention.