November 07, 2024
Saturday, November 9, 2024, a 438-page literary endeavor from the pen of veteran journalist, writer and administrator, Emma Gogwim Kayi will be released to the reading public. A record of personal memoirs and snippets of historical events, the book goes by the improbable title, WITHOUT A NAME.
It is a mark of the authors prodigious talent that under that pretentious title, he finds his identity, with which he takes the reader through the epochs that shaped his own life and career. But, more than his own story, he provides the lens through which his reader has glimpses of the Nigerian story.
Employing the first person narrative, the book opens in the most dramatic way, as the author is set to rough it out in an intense emotional moment. But that is just one of many dilemmas that characterize the story as he navigates the turns, descends the valleys and scales the bumps that writing on the variegated issues in the book entails.
Emma Gogwim Kayis professional career began in 1987 at The Nigeria Standard, the Plateau State-owned newspaper where some of the best hands in print journalism were found in its heyday. With requisite training in the humanities, and a strong character that suited the exacting work ethics of the organization, he found the platform to report, write and comment on the various subjects that are meaningful to him and relevant to the development of the society.
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The author tells his story in thirteen chapters, weaving it around a multiplicity of themes, all dovetailing into an exciting tapestry of the Nigerian story: its rustic innocence, its urban sophistication, its endless possibilities and inherent contradictions. Inspired by his childhood, nativity and education, his journalistic work and public service career, Emma Gogwim Kayi finds the bare bones that he fleshes out into the seminal work that is billed for public presentation.
In typical reportorial style, the writer takes you to the picturesque hills of Golten, in Kanke LGA of Plateau State, where he was born, lets you in on his genealogy and makes you experience the social and cultural conditions in which he grew up. The first child of Christian missionary parents, the real world began to unfold before the author early enough, as his parents took the family to distant places, exposing him to ways and standards that today affect the way he interprets his world.
Confronting the tragedy of the Nigerian union, the author beholds the countrys fault lines, and then provides harrowing examples of the disturbances inspired by religion and ethnicity. His perception of Nigeria and its burdensome divisions would also seem to come from his involvement with activities that drove students movements on university campuses in the 1970s and 1980s. Deeply affected by the ideological tendencies of that era, his radical slant, if subdued, is no doubt a chip off that era.
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What is more, that streak began to find subtle expression at The Nigeria Standard, where he had joined a radical band, mostly former university graduates who had come out of the trenches of activism. The intellectual energy provided by the work environment at the time helped sharpen his perspectives on sundry matters. And such matters as the gains and pains of visioning would coalesce into a treatise on the bold vision of the papers founder, JD Gomwalk.
Emma Gogwim Kayi became the editor of the newspaper in a meteoric rise that occurred within four years, beginning from his first appointment as a features writer in 1987.
His book records many defining moments of that era among which was the principled stand of the papers editors on the inconclusive results of the 1993 presidential election.
Rising to the peak of his professional career, paying his dues in a field that had given him a name, the twilight of that phase had come. And the writer and journalist would, first, gravitate to local government administration where he was, at different times, secretary of Kanke Local Government Council and sole administrator, and then the state bureaucracy where he rose to the positon of Permanent Secretary before his exit from public service.
Funny, yet serious; intriguing, but revealing, WITHOUT A NAME slows down as you catch your breath under an appropriately titled chapter, The End is Near. The author recounts such sobering moments as his fathers death, mind-numbing massacres in many of Plateaus communities, marriage and family, visit to the Holy Land, among other highlights of his eventful career.
Delivered in elegant prose, WITHOUT A NAME indeed brings together shreds of information about a life, career and a dream. But it is about us all.
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"Forgive the Godfather" tells the story of Labo
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political godfathers, Labo aims to prove that one can succeed without their
blessings. However, his resolve is tested when his daughter, Linda, is
kidnapped just days after her twenty-fourth birthday. The kidnappers demand a
ransom of five hundred million naira—the exact amount Labo needs for his
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Faced with an agonizing choice between his political
ambitions and his daughter's life, Labo enlists the help of Xclusive Services,
a private detective agency led by the unyielding Luke Dew. As Luke delves into
the case, he uncovers a web of deceit, crime, and the dark machinations of
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