Showing posts with label Bernard Shaw. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bernard Shaw. Show all posts

Thursday, March 16, 2023

A Toast To Odia Ofeimun At 73

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

There is no better way of introducing Odia Ofeimun than pointedly stressing that “Odia Ofeimun is Odia Ofeimun!” Enough said. 

*Ofeimun

Poet, publisher, editor, activist, polemicist, mentor, politician, columnist, factory worker, writer, dance-drama exponent, public intellectual, critic etc, Odia Ofeimun has packed uncountable lifetimes into one tumultuous lifespan. 

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Achebe: The Leadership Crisis in Nigerian Politics

The Leadership Crisis in Nigerian Politics

By Chinua Achebe

David and Marianna Fisher University Professor, Brown University, RI, USA 

There is a story about Bernard Shaw arriving at the New York harbour, and being immediately surrounded by journalists as he stepped off the ship. But before even the quickest of them could open his mouth, the celebrated playwright stopped them cold as he fired off: ‘Don’t ask me what you should  do to be saved; the last time I was here I told you and you haven’t done it!’

 

I feel very much the same way about what is happening in Nigeria. We know what we should do, yet we refuse to do it. Instead we have been “blowing grammar” all over the country as if our problem stems from

insufficient argument. So I have turned down or simply ignored all previous  invitations to join the talking.

 

My little book The Trouble with Nigeria published twenty seven years ago  on the eve of Shagari’s second term opens with these words:

                

The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigeria character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which is the hallmark of true leadership…

 

So the question of leadership was and is, pre-eminent, in my view, among Nigeria’s numerous problems. The little book does go on to identify other perennial issues such as tribalism, corruption, indiscipline, social injustice, preference for mediocrity over excellence, etcetera. But my thesis is that without good leadership, none of the other problems stands a chance of being tackled, let alone solved.