Olaoluwakitan Babatunde
The Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, will play host to the public presentation of Hope Rekindled, a comprehensive analysis of Nigeria’s nationhood challenges and possible solutions, on Thursday, November 24, 2016.
Written by a chartered Accountant and Managing Director, S.S. Afemikhe Consulting Nigeria Ltd, Mr. Sam S. Afemikhe, the over 800-page book, which is a product of over two-year painstaking research and analysis, arose from the author’s fears over the unrelenting socio- economic and political crisis of the nation since indepence.
The book benchmarks Nigeria against nine countries, most of them former British colonies that gained independence almost at the same time with it and were then its closest peers of comparative history and levels of development. While as the book revealed, Nigeria has completely regressed after 56 years of independence, most of the comparator countries have progressed tremendously, some of them leap-frogging from third to first world nations. The progress made by these countries compared to the retardation suffered by Nigeria is catalogued by the book, using the annual metrics and indicators generated by international organisations to rank the socio, economic and political performance of countries worldwide.
The book prescribes some solutions for the county’s persisting political and economic ailments, including total restructuring of the nation’s political systems, a re-adoption of the parliamentary system to check the high cost of governance the current presidential system has foisted on the nation, adoption of physical federalism, a total war on corruption in all its ramifications, a socio, economic and political rebirth to jettison our life of contradictions and a total overhaul of our justice system to strengthen the rule of law and our property rights and the urgent need to embrace the doctrine of economic freedom and ease of doing business.
Hope Rekindled isorganized into four broad sections of independent modular chapters that time-pressed readers could flip through as their interest dictates.
