Nigeria In Focus: Journeying into Nigeria (part 1)

Let's get to know more about Nigeria. If we want to counsel Nigerians, we need to know more about where they come from and we can start by finding more about what life is like in Nigeria, the conditions they live in, the values and customs and so on.

I recently found a book entitled "Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria". It's written by a Nigerian woman by the name Noo Saro-Wiwa. 

Noo Saro-Wiwa is the daughter of a human rights activist and journalist Ken Saro-Wiwa who helped found a movement to help his ethnic group, the Ogoni people of Nigeria by bringing a case against the Shell oil company for destroying the environment and against the government for its corruption back in the 90's.

The Ogoni greatly depended on the river delta making their livelihood on farming and fishing. The discovery of oil in that region in 1956 and it's extraction (mostly by the Shell oil company) let do to deterioration of the fertile agricultural region due to oil spills and pollution from gas flares (used to get rid of waste gas which is released on extraction of oil from the underground reservoirs). Ken's role in bringing Shell and the government to justice led to his execution by the Nigerian military regime in 1995. 

Noo Saro-Wiwa grew up in England with her family, refusing to return to Nigeria, a place she didn't want to call home because it was where she lost her father. But, as an adult, she felt ready to return to"learn more about it and perhaps call it her potential home". And so, she returns to her birth-place and tours the country. 

Her book is a humorous lamentation on the conditions of Nigeria, the crimes, the corruption, the stagnation, the backwardness and so forth but as she learns more about the country she hadn't seen in decades, she begins to see and appreciate the beauty, hope and vitality underneath all the chaos and corruption.

"Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria" is an interesting read, taking us readers on a personal journey into Nigeria enabling to understand a little more about it's people.

Wait for it in part 2!