'THIS BOOK - I FOUND MY VOICE'

I found my voice' -  "This book and its words continues to grow from the strength of my friends, Kolawole Onifade, Hillary Okoronkwo, Ismaila Zakari, Victor Amokeodo, Mukthar Bakare Anyante Ephraim, Oba ’Dokun Thompson, ’Femi Suleiman, Olumide Adisa, ’Sheyi Oriade, The Revd Gideon Para-Mallam, Folayan Osekita and ’Dayo Oleolo. These are people who reject the myth of their generation’s apathy; they have challenged me to take on the orthodoxy of current thinking and to ask the hard questions. You have challenged me because you understand the gravity of our task, which lies ahead and the futility of doing nothing. I hope I have been able to resist being imprisoned in a polemic that obscures the import of my story telling.

The pathway ahead remains hard, our ascent steep, and we may not get there with one book, but I am filled with more hope now than ever before that we will get there and we will reclaim our voice. I do not in a thousand years suggest that a book conceived in the depths of my anguish should end in the hype of a book launch. I am certain that this book is not the change others and I seek; but it creates a space for us to make that change. This is our chance to reclaim our voice to answer the call for this is our moment and this is our time. By default, we have had bad governments in Nigeria because we have allowed the past and present rulers to operate on the unending margins of despair and apathy. They acquired power not because they had a genius about them but because we were asleep in deep slumber and the coalition of progressives was fractured.

In the past, I have made reference to the template of President Obama, the improbability of a black man becoming the President of the United States. I have written about the near impossibility that was overcome when the first man was sent to the moon. The obstacle that Apartheid presented and the dismantling of it without a bloodbath, the impregnability of the Berlin Wall which came tumbling down! I therefore lay down a challenge to the cynics who claim that Nigeria is an impossible case and that without our abject surrender to corruption and its accompanying violence we simply do not have a chance at mounting a challenge to the status quo.

I ask what do we have to lose by trying? I suggest we lose more in not trying at all. I go further to state today that by helping the people find their voice across the diaspora in Nigeria from Sokoto to Lagos, Kwara to Taraba, Borno to Imo, Cross River to Kano, we will be able to proclaim with all certainty and voices soaring above the skies of Nigeria that our time has come!" Read more...https://www.createspace.com/4943826