In the 9th chapter, titled “Nigeria and the World”, there are 28 pieces which address sundry international issues as the US and the Third World, Nigeria and AFRICOM, Charles Taylor and the Liberian debacle, Libya and of course China. But the piece that has turned out to be prescient is the one titled “The Age of Bin Laden” where he wrote: “For sure the death of Bin Laden is good psychological relief for us all. But it is not likely to be the end of global terrorism as we have come to know it.”

Chapter ten is on “The Military in Politics” with five opinion pieces: “When Tomorrow Comes”; “Reforming the Forces”; “Twilight of the Generals”; “Cynics and Transition” and “Give me Dodan Barracks”. Published on December 16, 1991, that is 23 years ago, following General Ibrahim Babangida’s movement of the seat of Nigerian government from Lagos to Abuja, the author wrote: “National history and advancement is better served if, as we move to new habits and habitations, we carry along the memories or our past experience and transform them into higher and nobler potentials.” That we cannot do such grand thing is evident from the way we manage little things. For instance, the last time I visited Dodan Barracks, which was early this year, it had become an edifice in ruins, which in itself could be described as a metaphor for the Nigerian condition.

Chapter 11, appropriately titled “Contradictions of Journalism”, has 12 pieces that essentially deal with the power of rumours in our society and the role of journalism in festering such phenomenon, what public opinion really means and the concerns of a columnist under the current political dispensation. I am sure the offerings will interest professionals who seek to know the state of journalism in Nigeria today.

Chidi Amuta’s Writing The Wrong

Of the six pieces in Chapter 12, “Life and Living”, the one that I read twice, is “Give Us the Mad Cows”, which dramatises the tragedy of our nation with the vexation about the mental state of some cows that were bound for the pots of soup anyway. And here is the opener: “…a veteran of the ‘tombo bar’ accosted me the other day. He had just heard about these mad cows from somebody who heard it from somebody who happens to know somebody else who has the unhealthy habit of reading newspapers. The Nigerian chain of information control and command, for your information, is a mixture of oral tradition and enlightened rumour in print. The subject was infuriating to him: that any group of rational adults should allow their public discourse and political energies to be hijacked by, of all subjects, mad cows…”

The book closes with a chapter on Tributes and Salutations. The salutations were for two individuals (Prof. Wole Soyinka and Mr. Nduka Obaigbena) on their birthdays while the tributes are obituaries for Thomas Adeoye Lambo, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Stanley Macebuh, Maryam Babangida, Chuba Okadigbo and Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu.

Arranged in thematic order rather than by the period each of the pieces was written, if there is anything that Writing the Wrongs demonstrates, it is the fact that when the quality of content of a book combines with tight editing and brilliant production, the resultant collection becomes more than the sum total of its parts. Spanning 1065 pages, it is a huge collection that will task many readers but to the extent that the contents provide useful resource materials for those who want to know more about our country and its challenges, it is a book worth having in our private and public libraries.

What all the articles have in common is the writer’s attention to details, his curiousity and his sense of humour which most often reveals the foibles of the subjects, especially when dealing with political personages. At the end, he invites an honest confrontation with our stark reality as a nation. However, the book comes with the flaw generally associated with collections of essays written over a period of time and on sundry, most often, unrelated issues. The major drawback is that while some have dates of publication, many of them don’t.

In all, “Writing the Wrongs” is a fascinating collection that reminds us about where we are coming from as a people, the mistakes we have made, the lessons we have refused to learn and the consequences of the choices we make on a daily basis. In flowing prose, Dr. Amuta agonises over some of the challenges confronting us and in the process, proffered his own solutions to some of them. At the end, what the author says most clearly is that as bad as things may seem, if we embrace a more productive and cooperative form of engagement, the Nigerian project is not a lost cause.

Thank you for listening and good afternoon.

– Text of the review by Olusegun Adeniyi, Chairman of THISDAY Editorial Board, at the public presentation of Dr. Chidi Amuta’s book, “Writing the Wrongs” in Lagos on November 18, 2014.