A pregnant woman and a soon-to-be by bride were among those who perished in the explosion that hit an illegal refining site in Rivers state.

Within Nigeria had reported that an inferno engulfed the oil bunkering site in Ibaa community, Emuoha Local Government Area of the oil rich southern State.

The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps confirmed the tragedy in a statement on Monday.

Among the dead victims, according to the NSCDC, are a graduate and a lady whose wedding is billed for next month.

According to the statement issued by the spokesperson of the NSCDC, Rivers State Command, Olufemi Ayodele, 18 persons died in the inferno.

Ayodele disclosed that 25 persons were rescued by operatives of NSCDC.

On the cause of the incident, he said preliminary investigations on the Sunday night inferno show that it was caused by a local refinery cooking pot constructed close to an oil reservoir that contained combustible materials.

He said the burning temperature eventually became too high and caused the fire.

The statement reads, “Thus, the fire disaster which occurred in Ibaa community is highly condemnable and uncalled for.

“There is a need for conscious effort and stronger collaborations with the traditional institutions, community youths, and religious leaders amongst others to fight against oil bunkering activities in our various communities and this begins with giving credible intelligence and information to the NSCDC, the lead agency in the fight against vandalism of oil pipelines and protection of critical national assets and infrastructures in Rivers State”.

“The state NSCDC Commandant, Basil Igwebueze, hinted that information gathered suffice that the fire incident started at a very late hour hence 18 victims were burnt beyond recognition while 25 injured persons were rescued.

“From our preliminary findings, it was gathered that the inferno was caused by a local refinery cooking pot constructed close to an oil reservoir which contained combustible materials, the burning temperature eventually became too high and the environment gutted fire.”

Continuing, he said, “We also gathered that the cooking pot belonged to one Mr. John Bodo who sustained severe fire injuries while his son, Uche Bodo, a fresh graduate, died on the spot.

“It is also lamentable to relay that most of the victims were youths; then a pregnant woman and a young lady getting ready for her marriage ceremony next month were all casualties.”

While condoling with the affected families; the NSCDC state helmsman warned against the activities of illegal local refineries in communities across the state.

Igwebueze further said such negative activities cause huge damage to the environment and ‘irreparable loss’.

“Therefore, critical stakeholders must align and vehemently fight against illegal oil bunkering activities in Rivers State,” he said

The N30 billion lawsuit filed by the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria against Meta Platforms Incorporated (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) and its agent AT3 Resources Limited is scheduled for a hearing at the Federal High Court, Abuja Judicial Division in October.

ARCON’s Director-General, Olalekan Fadolapo, revealed this information during an interview with The PUNCH.

ARCON aims to secure a declaration, asserting that the ongoing publication and dissemination of advertisements targeting the Nigerian market via Facebook and Instagram by Meta Platforms Incorporated, without prior vetting and approval, are in violation of Nigerian advertising laws, illegal, and unlawful.

The regulatory body has emphasized that Meta Platforms Incorporated’s unvetted adverts have resulted in a loss of revenue for the Federal Government.

He said the decision to serve the company at its corporate headquarters became necessary after Meta claimed that it did not have any physical office in Nigeria.

He said, “The case is coming up this October, because the level of shenanigans that is happening in that place (Facebook) is too much. But trust me, we will use all legal means to sanitise that space.

“What we are saying is that what they are showing to the Nigerian audience, which is our territorial space is indecent. We will not go and regulate the media in the US, but what we will do is regulate the media space here in Nigeria.

“They said they don’t have an office in Nigeria, but they are doing business in Nigeria. So, we are not concerned about their office, we are concerned about the business they are doing in Nigeria. If you are doing business in Nigeria, you are supposed to abide by Nigerian laws.”

Several policemen in Anambra State are facing disciplinary action after a disturbing video emerged showing them brutally beating two sisters over alleged failure to pay security levies.

In the viral video, about five policemen and a civilian accomplice are seen punching and hitting the two young women outside their apartment despite protests from shocked onlookers.

According to reports, one of the victims had just undergone an appendectomy surgery a week earlier, making the assault even more egregious.

The Anambra State Police Command has expressed regret over the incident. Spokesperson DSP Tochukwu Ikenga confirmed the officers had been identified and arrested.

“They are currently facing disciplinary actions for acting unprofessionally and inability to control the situation,” he noted.

Ikenga explained that the man in civilian clothes seen repeatedly punching one victim in her stomach and face is not a policeman but the original complainant in the case.

He revealed the suspect’s relatives called in the complainant when police arrived to make an arrest, sparking the violent confrontation caught on video.

While conceding the officers erred, Ikenga stressed that the initial altercation was between the complainants and the suspects’ family members.

“The police officers failed to manage the situation professionally even as they struggled to control the fighting parties,” he added.

The video, shared widely on social media, shows the policemen intermittently hitting one of the victims on her back and face as she tries to shield herself.

Onlookers can be heard protesting that the girl just had surgery and questioning what offense warranted such brutal treatment.

The incident has sparked public outrage across the state, with many demanding disciplinary action against the officers involved for excessive use of force.

The police command says it does not condone such conduct and the affected officers will face sanctions to serve as a deterrent.

The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Fetus Keyamo, has weighed in on the release of President Bola Tinubu’s academic results by the Chicago State University, CSU.

Keyamo said the 2023 Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, embarked on self-humiliation odyssey.

In a post on X, the minister asked Atiku to tender unreserved apology to Tinubu and Nigerians.

According to Keyamo: “From the responses by Chicago State University, ATIKU’s journey to Chicago and back has been a journey to nowhere, a fruitless exercise and an odyssey in self-humiliation. President Tinubu and Nigerians deserve an unreserved apology from him.”

In the result released, CSU confirmed it found three diplomas matching the certificate Tinubu presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, after a diligent search.

Atiku obtained victory at the court in his fierce legal battle to probe into the academic qualification of Tinubu in the February 25 presidential poll.

Tinubu had supplied certificates from the Chicago State University, CSU, to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to secure eligibility to participate in the election.

A United States of America court on Saturday ordered CSU to release Tinubu’s academic records for verification and in support of Atiku’s petition challenging the result of the 2023 presidential poll.

Justice Nancy Maldonado in a judgment dismissed the objection raised by Tinubu against Atiku’s request and expressly ordered that the CSU must submit the academic records to Atiku.

CHAIRMAN of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr. Taiwo Oyedele, and the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Mr. Bosun Tijani, yesterday, declared that strong institutions and investments in manpower are key to building a great country, adding that the country’s youth are its biggest asset.

Oyedele and Tijani spoke during The Covenant Nation’s non-political and non-partisan national development fair, known as The Platform.

Oyedele, in his address, cautioned those leaving Nigeria not to wish others staying back evil.

He argued that strong institutions and investments in manpower are key to building a great country, adding that governments must, at all levels, pay attention to these areas.

Oyedele urged them to create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive, saying that way, people would not be eager to leave the country.

His words: “There is nothing wrong in leaving, don’t get me wrong. But if you leave, don’t wish the rest of us bad.

“And while you are here and continue to be here, don’t wish us evil. If you have citizens, who are actively working against their country, there is no amount of prayers you will pray, that country will not succeed.”

“Even if you are planning to leave, just remember, there are 95 per cent of us who cannot go anywhere.”

While noting the importance of patriotism, he said no foreigner can develop Nigeria.

“All the countries that were developed were developed by their people,” he added.

Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa has reassured the people of the state to maintain calmness, peace, and adherence to the law following the tribunal’s decision that nullified his election.

He emphasised that he remains their governor until a different verdict is reached by the Supreme Court.

Speaking to a large supporter of the APC at the Government House, Governor Sule described the judgment as a temporal setback and a wake-up call.He explained that he is going to carry on his duties as the governor just the way he has been doing while his lawyers will appeal the judgment.

He called on his supporters to remain calm and go about their normal activities as he was not rattled by the judgment.

In a significant development in the fight against malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) has officially recommended a new vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, for the prevention of malaria in children.

This groundbreaking recommendation comes following expert advice from the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) and the Malaria Policy Advisory Group (MPAG), and has received the endorsement of the WHO Director-General following its regular biannual meeting held on 25-29 September.

The announcement, made in a press statement on Monday, marks a crucial milestone in global health.

Nigeria had approved the R21 malaria vaccine back in April, b coming the second country after Ghana to do so.

This vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford and produced on a large scale by the Serum Institute of India, represents only the second-ever vaccine created for a disease that has inflicted suffering for over a thousand years.

The R21 vaccine is now the second malaria vaccine to earn WHO’s recommendation, following the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine, which received a similar endorsement back in 2021.

Both vaccines have demonstrated their safety and efficacy in preventing malaria in children, offering a beacon of hope in the battle against this deadly mosquito-borne disease.

The WHO noted that malaria has long cast a shadow over the African Region, where nearly half a million children succumb to the disease annually, adding that the introduction of these vaccines promises to be a game-changer in curbing its devastating impact.

As the demand for malaria vaccines continues to surge, there have been constraints in the supply of the RTS,S vaccine.

However, with the inclusion of R21 on the list of WHO-recommended malaria vaccines, it is expected that there will be an adequate supply to protect all children residing in malaria-endemic areas.

In addition to this landmark decision, SAGE has also issued recommendations for new vaccines targeting diseases such as dengue and meningitis.

Furthermore, WHO has provided guidelines for immunisation schedules and product recommendations for COVID-19.

Additionally, key programmatic recommendations for polio and the Immunization Agenda 2030 have been addressed, highlighting the organisation’s commitment to public health.

The WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expressed his optimism about the development: “As a malaria researcher, I used to dream of the day we would have a safe and effective vaccine against malaria. Now we have two. Demand for the RTS,S vaccine far exceeds supply, so this second vaccine is a vital additional tool to protect more children faster, and to bring us closer to our vision of a malaria-free future.”

Also, the WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, emphasised the profound significance of this recommendation for the continent, stating: “This second vaccine holds real potential to close the huge demand-and-supply gap. Delivered to scale and rolled out widely, the two vaccines can help bolster malaria prevention and control efforts and save hundreds of thousands of young lives in Africa from this deadly disease.”

To address this demand, WHO allocated a total of 18 million doses of RTS, S/AS01 to 12 African countries from 2023 to 2025.

These allocations were made to Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Uganda, emphasising the urgency and importance of malaria prevention in the region.

Lawyers for Niger’s ousted president say they are filing a legal case in the West African country against those behind the coup that deposed the democratically elected leader.

The lawyers for Mohamed Bazoum, who was overthrown on July 26 and has since been detained, also said in a statement they were appealing to the UN Human Rights Council.

The complaint, seen by AFP on Monday, is aimed at new strongman General Abdourahamane Tiani and “all others.”

It constitutes a civil action and alleges “attack and conspiracy against state authority, crimes and offenses committed by civil servants and arbitrary arrests and confinements.”

It is expected to be lodged in the next few days with a court in the capital Niamey, one of the lawyers, Dominique Inchauspe, told AFP.

The lawyers also said they were appealing to two bodies of the UN Human Rights Council including its working group on arbitrary detention.

Inchauspe said the coup was “an infringement on the dignity of the Nigerien state” and reaffirmed the “absolute necessity” to restore the rule of law.

Bazoum filed a lawsuit with a court of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on September 18, his Senegalese lawyer Seydou Diagne has said.

He has been held in his residence since the coup.

On August 13, the coup leaders said they would pursue Bazoum for “high treason.”

Organised Labour last night suspended its planned nationwide strike for one month following an agreement with the Federal Government. Though details of the Memorandum of Understanding suspending the strike, were sketchy at the time of this report, the agreement, Vanguard gathered, was reached very late at night.

The meeting was reconvened yesterday for both government and labour to find common ground and avert the planned strike by organized labour to force the government to address the suffering and pains of Nigerians, occasioned by the petrol subsidy removal.

Earlier yesterday, the National Executive Council, NEC, of NLC and its TUC’s counterpart, had met separately to review Sunday’s meeting with the Federal Government’s offers.

Vanguard gathered that at the end of the separate NEC meeting, leaders of NLC and TUC set up a committee to harmonise their resolutions to arrive at common ground.

According to the sources, the joint resolution of NLC and TUC was presented to the government team around 5 pm.

But the meeting did not reconvene until 8.15 pm when the government team returned to the chagrin of labour leaders who Vanguard gathered, almost left the venue in anger. Recall that President Bola Tinubu had on Sunday evening succumbed to the N35,000, provisional wage award demanded by labour after his initial N25,000 for the average low-grade worker to run for six months was rejected.

Instead, labour insisted that the wage award should be across the board and run till a new minimum wage expected to be negotiated next year is put in place.

A statement issued by the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris explained that some of the resolutions reached at the Sunday meeting were that, “the issues in dispute can only be resolved when workers are at work and not when they are on strike.

“Labour unions argued for higher wage awards and the Federal Government Team promised to present Labour’s request to President Bola Tinubu for further consideration.

“A sub-committee to be constituted to work out the details of the implementation of all items for consideration regarding government interventions to cushion the effect of fuel subsidy removal.

“The lingering matter of Road Transport Employees Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) and National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) in Lagos State needs to be addressed urgently and Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who participated virtually, pledged to resolve the matter.

“NLC and TUC will consider the offers by the Federal Government with a view to suspending the planned strike to allow for further consultations on the implementation of the resolutions above”, the statement said.

Members of the organized labour team present are, the NLC President, Joe Ajaero, his TUC counterpart, Festus Osifo, the NLC General Secretary, Emma Ugbaja, the TUC Secretary General, Nuhu Toro among others.

On the government team are the National Security Adviser, NSA, Nuhu Ribadu, the Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, and the Minister of State for Labour, Nkeiruka Onyejecha.

Last Thursday, I was invited to review a book on Odia Ofeimun, one of Africa’s leading poets and public intellectuals, a committed, “empathetic scholar” as Professor Tunji Olaopa describes him elsewhere. Our own Odia is not a man to be disappointed, he is our “Baba”, our ‘Owalen” as many of his brothers from his Iruekpen clan or Esan West kingdom of Edo State call him. But Lagos, the subject of Ofeimun’s anthology: “Lagos Of the Poets” can be often multi-dimensionally treacherous, the product of the chaos that is built into its structure, sustained by the inability to transform the city to serve the purpose of those who live therein on a sustainable basis. Professor Wumi Raji and Kunle Ajibade had been on my matter, in literal “Yorubanglish.” I promised them I would be there and indeed immediately I stepped off the set of The Morning Show on Arise TV, I started heading out towards Rights Hall, Adeniyi Jones Street, Ikeja, Head Office of the CDHR, the venue of the event. The car was properly fuelled and that is a statement not to be taken lightly in Tinubu’s Nigeria. 

But the road laid in wait, not for a sacrifice, but in mischief. The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) had served notice that it would embark on “a total and indefinite strike” on Tuesday October 3 in protest over the decision of the Tinubu administration to remove fuel subsidy, which resulted in the pump price of fuel jumping up by over 300%. Organized Labour raised its objections and at negotiation meetings presented a set of demands before the Federal Government. The same Federal Government set up a Presidential Steering Committee and sub-committees but this yielded no results as government officials abandoned the negotiating table, and resorted to appeals to Labour to be patient and understanding. Understand what? Labour issued a 21-day warning notice. The government kept begging. 

The NLC later embarked on a two-day warning strike on September 5 and 6.  Government officials including the Minister of Labour and Employment and the Vice President at the last meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC) continued to preach without addressing the issues. By that Thursday when I set out for Ikeja, the entire stretch of Awolowo Road was blocked by queues at petrol stations. People had embarked on panic buying of petrol, ahead of the announced Labour strike, with NUPENG having declared that all petrol stations would be shut down. I had to struggle through the traffic, endure the terrible potholes on the Third Mainland Bridge, which had been shut down on many occasions in the recent past for repairs, but where shortly after the repairs, the same potholes would return, putting motorists on that bridge in a state of prayer with fervent hope that the day would not come when those potholes would become craters and vehicles on that bridge would begin to drop into the ocean below. An imaginable calamity! 

I finally made it to Ikeja to meet even more difficult traffic hold-ups. I was lucky it wasn’t one of those days when the rains fell. When it rains in Lagos, it could be practically impossible to travel from one side of the city to the other. By the time I reached Rights House, the book presentation ceremony had begun. It was well attended: Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika, SAN, Chair of the occasion, Professor Kayode Soremekun, former Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Femi Falana SAN, Professor Mike Ikhariale, my former teacher at the Lagos State University (LASU), Professor Akin Onigbinde, my former colleague at Ogun State University (now OOU), Senator Yunus Akintunde representing Oyo Central, Molara Wood, writer and editor; Managing Director of The Guardian, Martins Oloja, Kabiru Aregbesola, representing his father Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, former Minister of the Interior, who later joined us straight from the airport. Editors. Reporters. Poets. Novelists. Word merchants. I met all the Mainland people already seated. The city of Lagos inflicts psychological terror on residents with its structural divisiveness. I know people who live and work on the Island who will never cross the bridge to the Mainland and vice versa. I was not even allowed to take a glass of water before Professor Sylvester Odion-Akhaine, the compere, announced that it was good I had arrived “in time” or “on time” – I arrived late anyway- and I should immediately present my review. It was an assignment I was glad to take seriously.     

One of Odia Ofeimun’s famous books, the product of a 2003 lecture at the University of Ibadan, is a collection of essays titled “Taking Nigeria Seriously” in which he reflects on issues about the making and the unmaking of Nigeria, the contradictions that have turned an otherwise promising country, of enormous potentials, into the very opposite of its original value, or perhaps something dangerously close to that due to the absence of enabling leadership opportunities, and an inevitable descent into the lower depths.  Those who know Odia, the title of the third part of the book under review: “The Odia We Know”, know him to be a man who takes everything that he does seriously. It is this single-minded devotion to his craft, and to his environment, to society that has been a defining characteristic of his polyvalent genius, encountered in virtually every facet of his persona as a poet, writer, polemicist, journalist, dramatist, producer, essayist, publisher, literary critic and entrepreneur. The last definition may seem odd to many but it is true, for as Chairman and Founder of the Hornbill House of the Arts, Odia has had a long experience running an enterprise, even if the main substance of that enterprise is literature and ideas, not money. Hornbill House has nonetheless produced profit in that regard: it published Tade Ipadeola’s The Sahara Testaments, winner of the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature, 2013. It is also the publisher of Obari Ogomba’s Grit, a play that has been shortlisted for the 2023 NLNG Literature Prize, both a firm confirmation of how Odia Ofeimun takes literature seriously too, not just as creator but also as promoter of the genres. 

While Odia Ofeimun takes what he does seriously, it is noteworthy that the publication under review is an affirmation of the man himself being taken seriously. Essentially, the book – Odia Ofeimun: In Search of a Common Morality – Essays, Tributes and Conversations (Ile-Ife: Obafemi Awolowo University Press, 307 pp.)  is the product of a conference in honour of the subject, on March 16, 2020, on the occasion of his 70^th birthday, held at the University of Lagos. Three years later, the presentations at that conference and other materials have now been put together for posterity in a book form by a troika of editors and scholars: Wumi Raji, Sylvester Odion-Akhaine and Akin Adesokan. The editors have done a praiseworthy and remarkable job of putting a fence around that year 2000 septuagenarian celebration, and whereas they claim that “the readers will be encountering for the first time what represents more or less a sustained critical engagement with Ofeimun’s writings”, I doubt if indeed this is the first effort of its kind. I refer the editors to an earlier book: Vicky Mnguember Sylvester (ed.) Critical Perspectives on Odia Ofeimun (Lagos, Ibadan: Malthouse Press, 2012, 271pp) with contributors including Kole Omotoso, Onookome Okome, Tanure Ojaide and Effiok Uwatt. But whereas this earlier book focused mainly on Odia Ofeimun’s texts, what can be seen at first glance in the latest appraisal is the extensive scope of the content, the depth of the analysis, the array of scholars and friends taking Odia Ofeimun seriously, and the focus on not just the literature, but also informed portraits of the man and his life and times, that is a near-balanced coverage of the literary and the biographical.

It is not difficult to see why this is so. Odia Ofeimun is one of the most impactful, productive, influential public intellectuals that Nigeria has produced in the past four decades, with his contributions to poetry, journalism, literary criticism, public affairs and stage presentations forming a formidable part of the canon. His influence is cross-disciplinary, multi-dimensional – politics, literature, drama, activism, journalism, culture, and as a person, he remains one of the most actively engaged citizens of our time. What further stands him out is his courage, his conviction and the sheer daredevilry with which he reinvents himself. Long before the Labour Party became such a movement in contemporary Nigerian politics, Odia Ofeimun had made an attempt to become a state Governor on the platform of the same party in pursuit of his oft-stated optimism that Nigeria can be rescued and saved through direct involvement of the “right persons” in the governance process. 

The book is divided into four parts, with a total of 18 chapters. The reference in the title to common morality is extracted from Akin Adesokan’s “The Fragmented Poetics of a Common Morality” in Part I titled “Critical Essays” – seven in total in this section. It would appear however that the common morality that is referred to is the humanistic temper that underlines Odia Ofeimun’s writings: his deep interrogation of what makes us human, what makes us less human and what could make us more human, across all the spectrums of human experience. These seven critical essays examine Odia’s writings, not the entire oeuvre but his essays, his poetry infused by what Idaevor Bello and Lizzy Onyeiwu call “the tradition of resistance writing”: “The Poet Lied”, “A Handle for the Flutist”, “Under African Skies”, “London Letter,” “Go Tell the Generals”, “I will ask questions with stones if they take my voice.” The city is a central symbol and referent in Odia Ofeimun’s writings. In “A Melting Pot: Representations of the Lagos Imaginary”, Professor Wumi Raji examines Ofeimun’s book of selected poetry, “Lagos of the Poets” (2010).

The discursive, research-oriented tone of the critical essays is sustained further in Professor G.G. Darah’s “Odia Ofeimun and the Dialectics of Nigeria’s Long Revolution” and Sylvester Odion-Akhaine’s review of “the Politics of Odia Ofeimun” both drawing attention to and exploring his interventions with regards to issues of nation-building, federalism, national conference and the centrifugal tensions in the Nigerian process. It may be said that this first part of the book for deliberate, obvious reasons is the more rigorous part given the academic, research-based flavour of the contributions. Two poems follow - by Professor Niyi Osundare and Okinba Launko – Professor Femi Osofisan’s nom de plume.  The editors describe this section of the book “as an interlude”. Osundare and Okinba Launko are Ofeimun’s contemporaries, members together, with Kole Omotoso, Bode Sowande, Tanure Ojaide, Funso Aiyejina, Abubakar Gimba, Festus Iyayi, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Tunde Fatunde, Zaynab Alkali, Buchi Emecheta…of the second generation of writers who helped to shape the ideological character of what came later.  

A much easier offering is Chapter III of the book titled: “The Odia We Know”, a collection of friendly, appreciative tributes to the subject by Owei  Lakemfa, Rauf Aregbesola, Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, Yewande Omotoso, Omowunmi Segun, Chris Dunton, Ogaga Ifowodo – presented in form of personal encounters and relationships with the poet, revealing how in the course of his career within the community, Odia as he is fondly called, or Uncle Odia as Yewande Omotoso and Chris Dunton refer to him, has been a source of inspiration and a mentor to many not just through his craft but also his example and generosity of spirit.

In Chapter 5, Professor Biodun Jeyifo’s keynote address during Odia’s 70^th birthday is reproduced, an even-handed, first-hand portrait of the subject by a fellow-traveller through the decades titled “When Poverty is Wealth – in Connection with the Word (for Odia Ofeimun at 70).” Chapter IV is titled “Conversations” and here in three Chapters: 16-18, we hear directly from the celebrant himself in three major interviews: his romance with the word, his life, literature and struggles – a more directly biographical section of the book which lends it a fresh momentum and appeal through story-telling and the vehicle of reminiscences.

There is no doubt that apart from documenting an important milestone in the life of Odia Ofeimun, a poet and writer of the first rank whose love for literature and language is in a class of its own, this book will generate further discussions about his art and thoughts as well as interest in his entire oeuvre. Few writers have been as prodigious and as compelling. It is important that the essays in the book do not convey any hint of hagiography or undeserved praise - for although it was Ofeimun’s 70^th birthday, the commentators and critics know him well enough to understand that he could not be swayed by any form of flattery. Ogaga Ifowodo tells him to write the long-awaited, long-promised book on Awo, otherwise “Nigeria would not forgive him.” Omowunmi Segun’s portraiture of Ofeimun at poetry reading sessions in a critical but humorous tone, is right on point, a well-pointed jab below the belt, but it speaks more to the man’s passion for the word, written or spoken.    

Adesokan, one of the editors, tells us that Odia Ofeimun is a writer that we will continue to encounter deep into the future. He is right. Ofeimun’s place in the world of letters is more than assured. After more than 40 books of essays, poetry, criticism and public affairs analysis, we can only look forward to a feast and a harvest of more words from his fecund imagination. The present book does not in any way, comprehensive as it may seem, exhaust the many possibilities for analysis that Odia Ofeimun’s work offers: his unionism for example as Secretary General and later President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), and the many battles he had to fight; his journalism before and after the military era as columnist/member of the editorial board of The Guardian and later as Chairman of The News Newspaper, and of course his practical involvement in politics either as Private Secretary to Chief Obafemi Awolwo, or as a Labour Party Gubernatorial aspirant who had progressive ideas about how society could be organized for growth and development but was limited by his own idealism in a political environment where commerce and vainglory prevail. 

As we look forward to Odia Ofeimun’s continued service in the literary vineyard, the editors have enriched our libraries and the growing bibliography on Odia Ofeimun’s writings by publishing this book that should be of interest to students and teachers of literature, culture and politics alike. People like Odia are hardly ever remembered when national honours and other diadems are given out, mostly to the undeserved, but it is his kind who speak and write truth to power who represent the vanishing oases of sanity and humanity in this land where the people’s hope for a better tomorrow is stained by the blood of the innocent and the wickedness of persons in high places. It is about time Nigeria and Nigerians began to take themselves seriously.