Beating all odds: Diaries and Essays on how Bola Tinubu became President
- Format: Paperback
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At the moment, we only deliver to customers in Ibadan and Abuja. If you will like to have books delivered to you anywhere else in Nigeria, please visit our konga store to make your order.Sam Omatseye, a seasoned journalist, writer, novelist and poet, has offered in this book of diaries and essays a new way of writing about elections in Nigeria. During the maelstrom of the 2022/2023 election campaign season, he took it upon himself to do a week dairy in which he unspooled, for his own personal
records, the tempo, intrigues, manoeuvres and coalitions as they unearthed, took new forms and mutated before the Nigerian eye.
The diaries reflect the mood and fears and even triumphs of the period, from the earth-shaking hysteria over the so- called Muslim-Muslim ticket, the debates on the pages of
the newspaper, the PDP friction and fractures, the quest for a new naira redesign, the fears over whether the election would take place or not, the slugfest between the APC candidate now President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and what
many saw as the countervailing cabal in the Buhari presidency. As the elections drew near, we saw the battle of awareness and ignorance playing in the presidency about the Supreme Court ruling on the naira redesign.
The rise of Peter Obi and the weaponization of tribe and religion, the battle for the soul of the PDP with the wise daring of politicians led by Nyesom Wike, then governor Rivers State, now minister of the Federal Capital Territory,
he took on the party Chairman Iyorchia Ayu and the presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, all find verve in this book. His fellow travelers included Seyi Makinde, governor of Oyo State and Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue state.
The book is split in two. The first part contains the dairies. They were first private before he opted to unveil them. They are not only reporting but also reflections as pundit. In some parts, he made predictions, some prescient, some naïve, but always boiling with insights.
The second part are a selection of his essays, published in the The Nation, in which he engaged a nation in the battle for its own soul. Sonme of them drew partisan ire, especially
the column titled Obi-tuary, often misunderstood, but took a life of its own as a rabble developed in the social media and across class divide of a particular political persuasion that led to Omatseye's isolation for up to four months amidst threats and calls for his life.
Beating All Odds, How Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu Became President, is a book for journalists, journalism students, students of government and politics, students of language and literary studies and anyone who wants to
know what happens in a fractious political atmosphere. It is a book with the elements of a classic.
Thrilling read! Few events in Nigeria's national history have been as momentous as the 2015 Federal election. The emergence of the Buhari administration was a climacteric for the simple reason that Nigeria was beginning to stand out in Africa as the only country where incumbency was unimpeachable through a free fair election. President Buhari's election put an end to that self-destructive aspect o..
