Gov. Tanko Al-Makura to Unveil Time To Relcaim Nigeria

Source: huhuonline.com

Governor Tanko Al-Makura, executive governor of Nasarawa State, will on Thursday, December 15, 2011, in Abuja, unveil a book of essays written by journalist, Chido Onumah. Titled Time to Reclaim Nigeria: (Essays 2001-2011), the book is a collection

of essays in the last ten years from newspapers and online journals around the world by the author.

Onumah has worked in Nigeria, Ghana, Canada, USA, the Caribbean, and India. He has been involved for more than a decade in media training for professional journalists as well as promoting media and information literacy in Africa. He is currently coordinator of the African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), Abuja, Nigeria. AFRICMIL is a pan-African centre dedicated to a new vision of media and information literacy as a key component in the education of young people in Africa.

The book presentation which has Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as chief presenter will be chaired by Engr. Buba Galadima, National Secretary, Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). Special guests and co-presenters include, Owelle Rochas Okorochaa, governor of Imo State, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, Senator Chris Ngige, Prof. Ukachukwu Awuzie, President, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Comrade Owei Lakemfa, General Secretary, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). The guest speaker is Dr. Hussaini Abdu, Country Director, ActionAid, Nigeria while the book will be reviewed by Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim, Director, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD).

'Time To Reclaim Nigeria is an excellent collection of essays which reveal the Nigerian reality, but which also point to the fact that another reality of a society founded on the principles of social justice, meaningful democracy, and equality before the law is possible to construct,' notes Kwesi Pratt Jnr. Managing editor of the Accra-based Insight newspaper in his introduction to the book. According to Harry Garuba, Head of Department and Associate Professor in the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa, who wrote the foreword to the book, ' Time to Reclaim Nigeria provides us with a historical record of wrongdoing spanning roughly the just-over-one decade of the return to democracy in Nigeria and takes us through the hurt to the home of hope'.

The author says the idea behind the book is to jolt Nigerians, to help them remember the past and to remind them that the country lies prostrate today because of their actions, and sometimes inaction. The event is expected to draw members of civil society, the human rights community, political activists, students, academics, and labour leaders.

 
Lewis Asubiojo
Director of Programmes, African Centre for Media & Information Literacy.