FEATURE ARTICLE

Yahaya BalogunSunday, March 25, 2018
[email protected]
Arizona, USA

TOMI ADEYEMI: AN ILLUMINATION TO NIGERIA'S DARKNESS

ecently, Tomi Adeyemi a young Nigerian again recorded yet another success for Nigeria in Literature. We can�t be more proud when we see or read incredible news about Nigerians in the Diaspora.

To see your young fellow citizens doing great jobs in advancing the values and cultural heritage of your country is beyond imagination at a time when we find ourselves in political conundrums back home in Nigeria.

Interestingly, from Europe to Asia, from Asia to America and to Central America, the Nigerian storyline is the same. It is a story of success in the season of anomie at home. Nigeria is a reservoir of knowledge and intelligence with resourceful people who have various unique talents to enhance human progress and advancement.

In politics, we are returning to the periods of people like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azukwe, Tafawa Balewa and other nationalists who liberated Nigeria from the claws of colonial masters.

The youths in Nigeria are coagulating to take the country back from the present local or indigenous neocolonial masters parading as our leaders. We must begin mass mobilization to change the current trend.

In the literary world, the young ones are taking the center stage to go back to the glorious days of Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, D.O Fagunwa, J.F. Odunjo and others.

We are rewriting our tumultuous history again, and if the youth group in Nigeria can speak with one voice like their forefathers in politics and literature, we will out-pace our national progenitors in terms of local and global achievements.

It is doable! Some of our encumbrances would be religion and ethnocentrism. Nigeria is not a cursed nation. Only some of the people controlling her affairs are cursed. How do you explain a situation where an individual stole billions of dollars from the public till and believe that the person is normal or not cursed? We must collectively come together to advance the cause of unity and development.

Tomi wows our minds, and she makes us proud! We have thousands of Tomi in Nigeria and in the Diaspora...! Nigerian story has been omitted for too long in the house of success in the global community. The ugly news emanating from Nigeria has dwarfed the unprecedented good and incredible news about the Diaspora Nigerians.

Go to any library or bookstore here in the United States, Nigerian young literary giants have their signatures dotted the cognition of so many literati and the glamorous bookshelves everywhere. This is the time we must begin to catechize our minds.

It is newsworthy to note that Nigerians are blazing the trail in all human endeavors. This is the time we must begin to rewrite our own story. This is the time we must begin to change our deflated orientation in order to change our intractable, and repetitious history. Nigerians are phenomenal!

Yes! Some Nigerians are great people with great minds. Just imagine a situation where we have good leaders directing the affairs of the nation in an organized way; just imagine a situation where you have our current dysfunctional Judiciary, the jaundiced Executive, and corrupt Legislature functioning well to meet the yearnings of everyone! Our country will be a rising star, and a cynosure of all eyes in the international community.

These youth group blazing the trail in the global community must collaborate with the youth group at home to translate their dreams and successes to rewrite our ugly history back home. The glorious day shall emerge and it will be the dawn of a new era for a nation in self-inflicted conundrums.

We must speak to our collective conscience at every available opportunity to bring the change we hungrily yearn for at this period in the nation�s history.

Chimamanda Adochie, Ben Okri, Chiwenzu and a host of other Nigerian literary giants are giving us something spectacular to be proud of in our country. Our intellectual capital is second to none. The young Tomi Adeyemi has joined the league of these celebrated Nigerian authors in the Diaspora.

Tomi Adeyemi�s book is now a blockbuster in the literary world. Tomi�s book has also got her signed up at Hollywood for a contract worth millions of dollars. The future of Africa is very bright. The future of Tomi Adeyemi is literarily bright and secured.

We wish Tomi Adeyemi a continued success in her future career!

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