The Negative Thinking and recognizing true leaders.

The negative thinking circulating the Nigerian air space is not helping the situation, Nigeria finds herself. These negative thinking is caused by the corruption, bad leadership,and loss of faith in the government. However the reversal of such trend is absolute if at all we are serious about fight corruption. We need to begin to realize that recognition of true leaders in the country would renew our faith and encourage Hard work, Service to the people. WOLE SOYINKA A true-leader by example, Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near Ibadan in western Nigeria. After preparatory university studies in 1954 at Government College in Ibadan, he continued at the University of Leeds, where, later, in 1973, he took his doctorate. During the six years spent in England, he was a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London 1958-1959. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to Nigeria to study African drama. At the same time, he taught drama and literature at various universities in Ibadan, Lagos, and Ife, where, since 1975, he has been professor of comparative literature. In 1960, he founded the theatre group, "The 1960 Masks" and in 1964, the "Orisun Theatre Company", in which he has produced his own plays and taken part as actor. He has periodically been visiting professor at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Yale. During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an article for cease-fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and was held as a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969. Soyinka has published about 20 works: drama, novels and poetry. He writes in English and his literary language is marked by great scope and richness of words. As dramatist, Soyinka has been influenced by, among others, the Irish writer, J.M. Synge, but links up with the traditional popular African theatre with its combination of dance, music, and action. He bases his writing on the mythology of his own tribe-the Yoruba-with Ogun, the god of iron and war, at the centre. He wrote his first plays during his time in London, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel (a light comedy), which were performed at Ibadan in 1958 and 1959 and were published in 1963. Later, satirical comedies are The Trial of Brother Jero (performed in 1960, publ. 1963) with its sequel, Jero's Metamorphosis (performed 1974, publ. 1973), A Dance of the Forests (performed 1960, publ.1963), Kongi's Harvest (performed 1965, publ. 1967) and Madmen and Specialists (performed 1970, publ. 1971). Among Soyinka's serious philosophic plays are (apart from "The Swamp Dwellers") The Strong Breed (performed 1966, publ. 1963), The Road ( 1965) and Death and the King's Horseman (performed 1976, publ. 1975). In The Bacchae of Euripides (1973), he has rewritten the Bacchae for the African stage and in Opera Wonyosi (performed 1977, publ. 1981), bases himself on John Gay's Beggar's Opera and Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. Soyinka's latest dramatic works are A Play of Giants (1984) and Requiem for a Futurologist (1985). Soyinka has written two novels, The Interpreters (1965), narratively, a complicated work which has been compared to Joyce's and Faulkner's, in which six Nigerian intellectuals discuss and interpret their African experiences, and Season of Anomy (1973) which is based on the writer's thoughts during his imprisonment and confronts the Orpheus and Euridice myth with the mythology of the Yoruba. Purely autobiographical are The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972) and the account of his childhood, Aké ( 1981), in which the parents' warmth and interest in their son are prominent. Literary essays are collected in, among others, Myth, Literature and the African World (1975). Soyinka's poems, which show a close connection to his plays, are collected in Idanre, and Other Poems (1967), Poems from Prison (1969), A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972) the long poem Ogun Abibiman (1976) and Mandela's Earth and Other Poems (1988). HRH SANUSI LAMIDO SANUSI Many has heard of the name Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and it is virtually a household name in many homes in Nigeria. I will discuss about the man who has achieved a lot both in Nigeria and outside Nigeria. Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was born on 31st of July,1961. He was born into a prominent family, his father was a permanent secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1960’s and he was the grandson of Emir of Kano and Islamic Scholar, Alhaji Mohammadu Sanusi. He started his western education at St. Anne Primary School, Kakuri, Kaduna (1967 – 1972). He had his West African School Certificate at the prestigious King’s College, Lagos. He also proceeded to further his education to another equally prestigious Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics in 1981 and he also did his course work for Masters of Science degree in Economics where he obtained a distinction in Monetary Policy in 1983. He did his National Youth Service in former Gongola State (now Adamawa and Taraba State). Sanusi quest for more knowledge took him outside Nigeria and he went to study Sharia law from the International University of Africa, Khartoum in Sudan where he bagged a first class degree in 1997, Married with children. Sanusi started his career working as a academic at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria where he lectured economics in 1985 before he moved to the banking sector in 1985 before he moved to the banking sector in 1985 where he worked with Icon Limited ( Merchant Bankers), a subsidiary of now Gauranty Trust Bank of New York, and Baring Brothers of London. He later moved ahead his career and joined United Bank of Africa Plc( UBA) in 1997 where he worked in the Credit and Risk Management Division where he rose to the position of the General Manager. In September 2005, he was also the chairman of Kakawa Discount House. He later joined the Board of First Bank of Nigeria as an Executive Director in charge of Risk and Management Control and was in later appointed Group Managing Director (CEO) in January 2009. Sanusi has championed remarkable development in First Bank of Nigeria enterprises, risk management control mechanism. While working in United Bank of Africa has a General Manager he anchored the transformation of the credit and risk management division into an enterprising risk management sector, and also spearhead United Bank of Africa’s Basel 2 focus by establishing policies, framework, processes and systems necessary for compliance with the guidelines of the new capital accord and sat on the Board of the First Bank of Nigeria (UK) Limited. He was the first northerner to be appointed CEO in First Bank of Nigeria history of more than Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was nominated by President Umaru Yar ‘Adua as the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria 1st July, 2009 and his appointment was confirmed by the senate on 3rd June, 2009, in the middle of global financial crisis. In August 2009, the Sanusi led Central Bank of Nigeria bail out plan, and bailed out Afribank, Intercontunental Bank, Union Bank, Oceanic Bank and Finbank with 400 billion Nigerian Naira of public money. Sanusi was named as the Central Bank of 2010 for both the African Continent and the entire world by the Bankers Magazine. CHINUA ACHEBE Chinua Achebe was born on November 15, 1930, in Ogidi in Eastern Nigeria. His family belonged to the Igbo tribe, and he was the fifth of six children. Representatives of the British government that controlled Nigeria convinced his parents, Isaiah Okafor Achebe and Janet Ileogbunam, to abandon their traditional religion and follow Christianity. Achebe was brought up as a Christian, but he remained curious about the more traditional Nigerian faiths. He was educated at a government college in Umuahia, Nigeria, and graduated from the University College at Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1954. Achebe was unhappy with books about Africa written by British authors such as Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) and John Buchan (1875–1940), because he felt the descriptions of African people were inaccurate and insulting. While working for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation he composed his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1959), the story of a traditional warrior hero who is unable to adapt to changing conditions in the early days of British rule. The book won immediate international recognition and also became the basis for a play by Biyi Bandele. Years later, in 1997, the Performance Studio Workshop of Nigeria put on a production of the play, which was then presented in the United States as part of the Kennedy Center's African Odyssey series in 1999. Achebe's next two novels, No Longer At Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964), were set in the past as well. By the mid-1960s the newness of independence had died out in Nigeria, as the country faced the political problems common to many of the other states in modern Africa. The Igbo, who had played a leading role in Nigerian politics, now began to feel that the Muslim Hausa people of Northern Nigeria considered the Igbos second-class citizens. Achebe wrote A Man of the People (1966), a story about a crooked Nigerian politician. The book was published at the very moment a military takeover removed the old political leadership. This made some Northern military officers suspect that Achebe had played a role in the takeover, but there was never any evidence supporting the theory. During the years when Biafra attempted to break itself off as a separate state from Nigeria (1967–70), however, Achebe served as an ambassador (representative) to Biafra. He traveled to different countries discussing the problems of his people, especially the starving and slaughtering of Igbo children. He wrote articles for newspapers and magazines about the Biafran struggle and founded the Citadel Press with Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo. Writing a novel at this time was out of the question, he said during a 1969 interview: "I can't write a novel now; I wouldn't want to. And even if I wanted to, I couldn't. I can write poetry—something short, intense, more in keeping with my mood." Three volumes of poetry emerged during this time, as well as a collection of short stories and children's stories. After the fall of the Republic of Biafra, Achebe continued to work at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka, and devoted time to the Heinemann Educational Books' Writers Series (which was designed to promote the careers of young African writers). In 1972 Achebe came to the United States to become an English professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (he taught there again in 1987). In 1975 he joined the faculty at the University of Connecticut. He returned to the University of Nigeria in 1976. His novel Anthills of the Savanna (1987) tells the story of three boyhood friends in a West African nation and the deadly effects of the desire for power and wanting to be elected "president for life." After its release Achebe returned to the United States and teaching positions at Stanford University, Dartmouth College, and other universities. Back in Nigeria in 1990 to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, Achebe was involved in a car accident on one of the country's dangerous roads. The accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors recommended he go back to the United States for good to receive better medical care, so he accepted a teaching position at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. In 1999, after a nine-year absence, Achebe visited his homeland, where his native village of Ogidi honored him for his dedication to the myths and legends of his ancestors. In 2000 Achebe's nonfiction book Home and Exile, consisting of three essays, was published by Oxford University. These are just a few more to come.