Tag: non-fiction

Ikem Okuhu (2019), Pitch: Debunking Marketing’s Strongest Myths.
Lagos: Brandish Media. ISBN: 978-978-975-704-6

Pitch: Debunking Marketing’s Strongest Myths entered the market in the
best traditions of marketing communications. The decibel has been loud
and intense, as has been the effort to reach consumers and make them
at least buyers and probably readers of the book. The author of Pitch
demonstrates that you can achieve high levels of awareness and reach
for books in Nigeria bypassing the traditional book distribution channels.
Or almost.
Those building brands deploying public relations with modern platforms
such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter are following the paths of old
masters such as Anita Roddick and her The Bodyshop line that predated
the Internet. The idea was to tell stories around the brand through
various activations including events. The media then reported it.
Since its formal presentation in Lagos, Pitch has grabbed the Facebook
platform and gets a mention every week. It does this deploying Walter
Fischer’s Narrative Paradigm Theory. Narrative Paradigm states that all
meaningful communication is in the form of storytelling. Communication
happens between the narrator and the listener in the form of a story.
Ikem Okuhu has consistently shared a series of stories around Pitch,
from Lagos to Enugu with promises of adding Abuja and other towns.
Friends have shared similar stories of donating the books to university
libraries, mass communication and marketing departments.
Consequently, engaged professionals in integrated marketing
communications in Nigeria have heard of the book. They should, as it
addresses issues within their purview and professional competence.
Pitch is a journalist’s look at various issues in marketing communications
that he feels do not serve the best interests of stakeholders, from

consumers to brand owners and media platforms. He calls them
“marketing’s strongest myths”. Okuhu makes bold assertions and strong
claims.
A central assertion and thesis of the book comes early in the preface.
Okuhu states, “There are far too many things that have been taken for
granted in marketing. Perhaps out of respect for the ‘icons’ of the
industry that laid the foundation for the cultivation of the ideas or merely
because many people find it hard to interrogate certain issues, we have
carried on with a lot that don’t just work. The consequence has been
dire-wasteful marketing spend”.
In 12 chapters across 178 pages, Pitch discusses the marketing role of
the CEO; the “death of advertising”; the significance of mindshare versus
market share; line extensions; and the growing role of technology and
artificial intelligence in marketing. It also treats the role or non-
contribution of innovation, pricing, globalisation and corporate social
responsibility. It examines the matter of nation branding and what it
takes to brand successful nation brands.
An icon of advertising, Mr Lolu Akinwunmi, offers a strong endorsement.
Akinwunmi in the Foreword pats the author on the back with a “well
done”. He observes, “Dwelling mainly on some of the things marketers
hold very dearly and consider sacrosanct, the author offers some new
and potentially controversial perspectives into some of marketing
communication industry’s strongly held views.”
There is much learning in Pitch, particularly for persons coming to
marketing communications anew and students of the discipline. The
material on CEO Types and their impact on the business is very
informative. It draws on the western templates against which Okuhu rails
but offers deep insights into character traits and metrics. He ends it with
a useful guide to CEO positioning and branding.
Chapter 11 on “Every nation is not a brand” illuminates the challenges of
branding Nigeria and some of the reasons why previous efforts failed. It
contains material on the indices for national competitiveness and
comparison of branding efforts by countries such as India. Usually there
is a congruence of the internal and the external with communications
being the culmination of various other efforts.
Pitch offers many mini-cases and narratives of successes and failures in
the marketplace. Narratives include Hero lager beer, Star and its many

line extensions, Guinness Stout, Origin beer, Thermocool, Access Bank
etc. The account of the fate of Heineken Magnum is particularly
instructive as it makes the case for the place of culture in communication
and marketing. The stories however come across as the impressions
and opinions of the author. They would read better, as both journalism
and marketing literature, if there is a balance featuring interactions and
interviews with the brand custodians to explain why and how they took
the decisions they made with actual data on market share and
competition. A revised edition should take care of this.
The controversies will centre around his assertions in chapter three on
mind share versus market share. He mentions the battle of Coca Cola
versus Big Cola, Gala versus Rite Bite and the war of the beer and
detergent brands. In this segment, the author falls into the trap of the
use of unverifiable data of which he accused the industry. He allots
market share of Coca Cola 51%, Pepsi, 41%, Big Cola 4% and Bigi, 1%.
The author credits this data to “Market Intelligence”. The book could do
with better statistics from identifiable and reliable sources.
Line extensions remain controversial in marketing since Ries and Trout
(1972). The chapter on line extensions is hard-hitting. It is a surprise that
since the book hit the market, none of the brands skewered has offered
a rebuttal or an explanation of what happened, why and the learnings.
The chapter raises a significant issue in marketing. Marketing
professionals distinguish between brand extensions, line extensions and
licensed merchandise. According to Mathew Healy (2010), in What is
Branding? brand extensions function vertically; custodians use the same
brand in a new category where the brand’s meaning still makes sense to
customers. Line extensions tend to be horizontal and geared to higher or
lower segments within the same category. Licensed merchandise
applies the brand to an item that may be unrelated to the original brand.
The author of Pitch assumes that the reader is familiar with the pillars of
marketing and its myths and does not bother to explain them for context
before busting them. Marketing revolves around these pillars: attracting
new clients; retaining and growing relationships for the brand and
company; increasing name recognition and awareness; and creating
targeted effective communications using all the tools including
advertising, public relations, trade promotion, sponsorships and social
media as well as community involvement.

What are the myths that Pitch then busts? The reader must infer that
they include the primacy of advertising using traditional media; the role
of line extensions; the link between pricing, brand value and customer
acceptance; the role of innovation; the role and limitations of branding,
the place and importance of globalisation and the routes to market.
The assertion that “advertising is dead” should generate a lively debate.
Much advertising features online and social media platforms. So how is
it dead? Is it advertising that died or there is a change in the platforms
for delivering it so much so as to leave the traditional ones lost?
Pitch is a must-have for professionals as well as students in the related
fields of marketing, mass communication and cognate disciplines such
as sociology, economics and psychology. It has started a conversation
that invites the active engagement of the IMC field. How well the industry
responds to the issues the book raises would also be an index of its
health and capacity for intellectual engagement. The nation awaits and
watches.

Francis Ewherido (2019), Life Lessons from Mudipapa. Lagos: Laddertop Ltd/
Mace Associates Limited. ISBN: 978-978-8033-45-5. 256pp

Is jealousy a lousy and utterly negative emotion that rubs off all
concerned in the wrong way? Could jealousy be a decisive factor in a
relationship? Could it be an indicator of something worthwhile?
The word has negative associations.  The Cambridge Dictionary defines
it as “a feeling of unhappiness and anger because someone has
something or someone that you want”. Synonyms are envy,
enviousness, covetousness, desire and resentment.
In Life Lessons from Mudipapa, Francis Ewherido urges a more
nuanced appreciation of jealousy as a positive if not a virtue when
applied in the right proportions. “Jealousy is like any other genuine
feeling we have for what belongs to us. Done in moderation, it is okay;
but taken to the extreme, it gets you into trouble. Everybody who cares
for his/her spouse harbours some degree of jealousy.”
He adds: “Many people use the words envy and jealousy
interchangeably, but it was not always so. Hitherto, jealousy was seen
as protecting what is yours, while envy was the act of desiring what
belonged to another. Jealousy is of God. What do you think the first and
second of the ten commandants are all about? God is trying to protect
his people. He is telling us he does not want to share us with the devil.
He wants no competition for our love for Him.”
Life Lessons from Mudipapa is an ambitious project aimed at
transferring the teaching notes of a marriage counsellor and platform
speaker into a compelling narrative that entertains, informs and instructs.
Ewherido chooses the novel format as a vehicle for this task. The
skeletal frame is the story of Chief Mudiaga Orien.
Mudiaga Orien becomes Mudipapa because of one of his daughters in
her infancy. She blurted out as little children do in her search for clarity
and meaning, “You say your name is Mudi, but mummy says you are
papa. So, you are Mudipapa,”
Life Lessons from Mudipapa centres on marriage and family life. It
covers the life choice of Mudiaga against a vocation in the priesthood
following an assessment of his strengths and weaknesses, his search
for a life partner and the journey of matrimony and building a family. We

follow his quest for a partner and the failures, his successful union with
EseOghene, his wife, and their efforts at raising their family, starting a
business, his unfruitful endeavours as a business owner and the lucky
break of paid employment with a big multinational.
He grows in his job, rising to Finance Director. The challenge of caring
for their young children forces EseOghene to set up a creche which
became very successful. Mudipapa buys land in Agbara Estate enough
to house their house and a big school. They face the tough decision of
selling their creche and moving over to Agbara where they set up the
Orien International School. It became an even more significant success
and a legacy. We follow Mudipapa until retirement after successfully
training his children to acquire first degrees in Nigeria and postgraduate
qualifications abroad.
The book treats courtship, marriage, family, and parenting. It also
tackles business start-up, planning for retirement and life in retirement,
as the cover and blurb promise. It does more.
“Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches”, Mortimer J
Adler and Charles Van Doren asserted five decades ago in their classic
“How To Read A Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. The
great achievement of Life Lessons from Mudipapa is combining
imaginative literature with didacticism. It is usually a tall order to do so,
and the strain shows in passages of the book where the teaching notes
of Mudipapa dominates the story and takes the reader to sessions on
various lessons in marriage and family. The author pulled it through.

Chris Enuke (2017), The Practice of Human Resource Management
with Examples from Nigeria. Ibadan: Feathers and Ink. ISBN: 978-978-53624-7. 670pages

With its positive approach to human resource management, this tome
belongs on the bookshelf of C-suite executives in MSMEs as well as the
more prominent and smaller players. It is a comprehensive handbook on
best practises in the management of the most critical asset of any
organisation. It draws on a quarter-century and counting of practice in a
global exemplar in managing the human capital, the behemoth Unilever,
with practical examples backing every subject.
While most firms agree that people are a crucial asset, the management
of that asset is often sub-optimal. Chris Enuke, a veteran of HRM in
Unilever and consultant to local and international organisations,
commences this dissertation with the case for clear-headed policies and
structures in talent management. “Of all the factors of production, it is
only men who can think and answer back. Because man can be
temperamental, exhibiting good and bad moods, we need specialists to
manage them. There should be a system in place to accomplish this;
there should be a Human Resource Policy, well-articulated, and in
writing and well-known to all key performers in the enterprise.”
People management is critical to organisational success. The Practice of
Human Resource Management with Examples from Nigeria makes the
case and systematically outlines the how and why of managing this vital
function. Practical examples in the best pedagogical traditions fill the
book. However, the reader will search in vain for management theories
and influences on HRM. Missing are classical management theory,
classical organisation theory, systems theory, the behavioural school,
TQM, excellence studies. There is no exegesis on Maslow’s Hierarchy of
Needs, Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene Theory, or McClelland’s three
needs theory.
The Practice of Human Resource Management with Examples from
Nigeria shows how to do things in talent management with sample
forms, tables, queries, letters, and policy documents. It then explains
why with an exposition of the theories and history.

It covers the employment cycle, from entry into employment, recruitment,
engagement, firing or retirement and exit from work. Chapter Four x-rays
“The legal basis of employment, and Nigerian Labour Laws”. It is a must-
read for owner-managers and those who sign the cheques or supervise
the entire workforce. It educates on the seven laws central to managing
employer-employee relations. They are the Labour Decree No 21 of
1974 and subsequent amendments to it; Factory’s Decree (as amended)
1987; and the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1987. Others include The
Trade Union Act No 31 of 1973, Wages Board and Industrial Councils
Act of 1973, Trade Disputes Decree No 7 of 1976 and Trade Disputes
(Essential Services) Decree No 23 of 1976 and subsequent
amendments.
The Practice of Human Resource Management with Examples from
Nigeria covers the core issues in HRM. They include training and
workforce development, performance appraisal principles and policies,
and employment maintenance issues such as welfare, medical, health,
uniforms, and protective clothing. Other areas include wages and salary
administration, job analysis and job evaluation, human resource records
and management of the human resource function.
What determines the structure of your organisation? Is it structured
along with the functions or the roles senior executives played in its
formation? Company organisation and structure, grievance and
discipline, industrial relations and relations with trade unions, collective
bargaining, strikes, and negotiations also feature.
Appendices containing practical examples and templates take up more
than half of the book. They ought to be incorporated into the relevant
departments as the term appendix may make unsuspecting readers fail
to pay attention to the rich trove of material herein. The absence of
theories of human resource management is a minus from the appeal of
the book. Well-grounded theories provide a sound handle for the
practices espoused here.
Many students will treasure this book. They include those seeking
chartered status with the CIPM, as well as in MBA and similar
programmes where HRM features. It is luxurious, practical, global, yet
local.

Ifueko M. Omoigui-Okauru(ed) (2014), Making Change Happen:
Partnering to Build Nigeria. Lagos: Andersen Alumni and
Storyteller Services. 466pages. ISBN: 978-978-941-318-8
By Chido Nwakanma, School of Media and Communication, Pan Atlantic University, Lagos

People. Principles. Practices. These are the sum of the contributions of
80 persons around the attributes and personality of Richard (Dick)
Kramer who gave 40 years out of his current 85 years in service to
Nigeria and who left for his final retirement only in July 2019. Friends
and associates held many a send forth party to honour the American
who loved Nigeria with passion and positivity. This book is a true
testament guaranteed to serve as a beacon to many people down the
line.
On the surface, this book of many stories is primarily a collection of
tributes to Dick Kramer. Deeper exploration shows more. Making
Change Happen: Partnering to Build Nigeria is both a many-sided mirror
as well as a compass for the vessel MV Nigeria with some of its most
accomplished holding the oars.
Dick Kramer started and grew the Nigerian office of the global
accountancy and consulting firm Arthur Andersen in 1978 and retired in

1994. He finally left Nigeria in 2019. His footprints are traceable to the
      Harvard Business School Alumni Association of Nigeria (HBSAN), the
      Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce, and the Lagos Business
      School/Pan Atlantic University. Include the Enabling Environment
      Forum, the precursor to the Nigerian Economic Summit Group,
      American Business Council and Vision 2010.
      He spent post-Andersen days building Nigeria’s largest private equity
      firm African Capital Alliance. Making Change Happen has the first-
      person account of Dick and Wanda Kramer.
      It also has a Who’s Who of Nigerians, 80 persons, who were either
      alumni of Arthur Andersen, African Capital Alliance or worked with Dick
      Kramer on his many community projects. Community service was a
      guiding philosophy for the Kramers. He states, “Fundamental for a family
      is a strong commitment to leaving our community better than we found it.

Hence, personal and family values are aligned with community service
and, ultimately, nation-building.”
Contributors include Chief Ernest Shonekan, Mr Adams Oshiomhole,
Prof Albert Alos and Atedo Peterside. Readers will share the thoughts
and experiences of Amina Oyagbola, Frank Aigbogun, Afolabi Oladele,
Mohammed Hayatudeen, Frank Jnr Nweke, Seyi Bickersteth, Pascal
Dozie, Juan Manuel Elegido and Bode Agusto. There are also Dayo
Lawuyi, Akin Laguda, Omobola Johnson, Charles Anudu and Emeka
Emuwa. Add Juliet Anammah, Keith Richards, Kelvin Balogun, and Ladi
Jadesinmi. Then Koyinsola Ajayi, Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru, Kunle
Elebute, Mansur Ahmed, Mazi Udochukwu Uwakaneme, Princeton
Lyman and Tani Fafunwa.
People, principles, practices and family. Kramer believed in people and
brought out the best in those he came across. Education was a priority
and accounted for much of his interventions. He practised what he
believed: the correct values as the basis for all actions, individual,
corporate and communal. Principle-based leadership is critical to making
the right decisions and effecting desired changes in Nigeria. Family,
finally, is the bedrock. Everything revolves around the family.
Making Change Happens lends itself to analysis using various
theoretical lenses. Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory explains the
influence of Kramer after whom many of the narrators modelled their
behaviours. The book shares many stories in the line of Walter Fischer’s
Narrative Paradigm. Editorial intervention is apparent in the themes, but
each story stands apart, and collectively they form a mosaic of exciting
perspectives.
Seek and read the colloquium on Nigeria featuring 80 of its leaders in
Making Change Happen. The publishers ask buyers to email them at
info@storytellerservices.com or call +234 8091114809.

A lifetime of friendships: And a career in television and Nollywood, Muritala Sule (2018), Lagos: MS Global Productions Limited. 242 pages.
ISBN: 978-978-55035-7-9
Reviewed by Chido Nwakanma
School of Media and Communication, Pan Atlantic University

Several areas make this book significant and interesting. It is a free-flowing
narrative about the inter-connectedness of life and how events even in
childhood catch up with us and take deterministic shapes and turns. A
lifetime of friendships is a biography in the best traditions as it anchors on a
pivotal moment in the life of the author.
Muritala Sule is a communication professional with experience in public
information management, journalism, and film production. He produced and
presented the immensely popular Lagbo Video magazine feature
programme on NTA Channel 7 between 1995 and 1999. The programme
was a platform for the then evolving Nollywood. Lagbo Video is
understandably the peg for this narrative, but it then draws in many
characters and personalities and a rich trove of experiences and
interactions.
At the heart of the story is his life-long relationship with Godwin Igharo,
unfortunately now on the other side of life. They meet in the streets and
cinemas of Mushin as teens who would sneak in to watch films even at the
cost of severe punishment by the parents of Mr Sule. Soon Godwin moves
in as part of the family and together they form a strong personal bond that
they transmute in later life into a professional one. Muritala Sule, MS to
many of his friends and colleagues, weaves a writer’s web that draws in
many persons, places and programmes of their lives into this engrossing
narrative.
Several areas of interest stand out in A life of friendships and serve as
learning points.
The author shows great skill and presence of mind in recollecting and
documenting the various relationships that stood out in his life and career.
People are the clothes that MS wears proudly as his sartorial signature. It
makes up for his often-downbeat sartorial taste. MS inherited and acquired
his love for people from his mother. Alhaja Raliat Sumbola Kareem was a
bleeding heart. She went out of her way to convert her home to a

communal restaurant, a semi-orphanage and a home for the homeless and
hungry. Her son took after her in bringing home a friend that would be a
significant part of his life.
Relationships and relationship management count down the line. A lifetime
of friendships brings to life in a Nigerian setting all the lessons and more in
Dale Carnegie’s famous How to make friends and influence people.
Lessons in managing the egos and turf battles in the relationship between
producers of independent programmes and managers of the broadcast
platforms where they run them.
Life on the streets, the thrills and dangers. This portion makes for sober
reading.
Childhood discipline and the benefit of strong foundations. His father caned
MS ceaselessly for going to the cinemas and returning late at night. Much
later, he gloried in the success of Lagbo Video¸ borne on the inspiration of
such childhood obsession with moving images.
The journey of ideas from gestation to germination.
The often-unhelpful attitude of advertisers, like bankers, who support
ventures only when you have market-place proof of concept.
Gratitude and giving credit to others. The author pours generous
encomiums on various cadre of staff with whom he worked on the
programme at the Nigerian Television Authority. They range from the
General Manager then, Chief Bode Alalade, to engineers L.O. Olajide and
others.
Many people stand out in this narrative, none more so than Mahmoud Ali-
Balogun. He was the anchor for the realisation of the vision of Lagbo Video.
Then the many personalities who featured in the programme, from King
Sunny Ade to Tunde Kelani, Mrs Duro Ladipo, Kanayo O Kanayo, Bimbo
Akintola, Alhaji Lateef Olayinka (Latola Films) to Shina Peters and the
many players in Nollywood and the larger entertainment industry. Then his
many friends in journalism, including Lanre Idowu and Taiwo Obe, then of
Media Review and Steve Osuji of New Age newspaper.
The author quotes his then broadcasting lecturer at the University of
Nigeria, Dr Emmanuel Akpan, as saying that a good broadcast show
should “show me the banananess in the banana.” Recalling it was a spur
for his idea of a TV programme on films. He also thought broadcast was
more effective than print in capturing the whole essence of the then
emerging Nollywood and film.
Even as he gives deserved credit to Dr Akpan, the author casts a withering
glance at the Nigerian university system. He blasts the inhabitants of the
Nigerian ivory tower for being disconnected with the reality of the market

place to which they send students. “In nearly all universities where Theatre
Arts and Mass Communication are taught, many lecturers mock Nollywood
and talk disparagingly about it and the people who sustain it, making the
would-be graduates look down on them. Yet, this is an industry that is the
toast of Africa and respected around the world”.
Our academics, he asserts, are “All theory, no practise”. The chapter on
Emmanuel Akpan is deep, reflective and makes profound statements about
the direction of Nigerian education. Why are we not teaching and
formalising Pidgin, the language spoken by many citizens across West
Africa? What are we doing about our rich idioms and proverbs instead of
quoting Homer, Aristotle and all the Greeks and Romans? Why are we not
linking courses to real-life to help students?
A lifetime of friendships is so picturesque it shows the banananess in the
banana of this story.
An index and a section explaining the local terminologies in use evinces the
care in getting the message across as well as concern for the reader.
A lifetime of friendships is a useful book for persons interested in
broadcasting and film, Nigeria’s Nollywood, TV production and marketing,
as well as the history of Nigerian media. It would appeal to those in Literary
and Language Arts, communication and urban sociology.
It is most of all an intensely enjoyable first-person narrative of lives and the
intersections with other lives and how they play out many years down the
line.

A Story of Our Times: An Autobiography. Sylvanus A Ekwelie (2018),
Enugu: Rhyce Kerex Publishers. 428 pages
ISBN: 978-978-8506-09-6
Reviewed by Chido B. Nwakanma, School of Media and
Communication, Pan Atlantic University.

A constitutional through eight decades
Biographies are recommended reading for persons at every stage of life,
but more so for young ones because “biographies explore the events in
a person’s life and find meaning within them.” Meaning within a person’s
life is even more apparent in autobiographies.
Sylvanus Ekwelie brings to this story of his life and times the skill of the
journalist, the authenticity of the autobiographer and sociological
imagination. Renowned sociologist C. Wright Mills takes credit for
coining the term “sociological imagination” to refer to an awareness of
how the part fits into the whole or “the awareness of the relationship
between personal experience and the wider society”.
With a fitting title, A Story of Our Times: An Autobiography, takes the
reader on an exciting walk (a constitutional, as he taught our class)
through eight decades of development in South-East Nigeria, Nigeria
and Africa. Ekwelie tells the story of Nigeria in the 1930s up to the
2000s. It is one of struggle through the years of living almost in a state of
nature, battling and overcoming diseases and poverty, yet contented
with the leisurely pace of life in rural Nigeria and its many splendours
such as hunting for rodents. Then the journey through education; he ran
away initially, but soon became an exemplar of the values and benefits
of the new Western Education.
Sylvanus Ajana Ekwelie is an emeritus professor of mass
communication. He was a pioneer student of Journalism at the
University of Nigeria, Nsukka, part of those in the successful experiment
of UNN founder Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe to add academic rigour to the
training of journalists in West Africa. After that, most of his life and fame
revolved around his alma mater. The very brilliant Ekwelie excelled in his
studies and earned a scholarship to America. Hard work, brilliance and
grace enabled him to get an additional grant to pursue a doctorate. He
thus became the first graduate of the department of mass
communication, UNN to earn a PhD.

This rich narrative tells of a life of many firsts, a true pioneer in several
areas. It chronicles his journey as a pupil, primary school teacher,
undergraduate, a post-graduate student in America and earning the
diadem of a PhD. Many themes resonate through A Story of Our Times:
An Autobiography. They include the role and influence of the
missionaries in education, the virtue and benefits of friendship and
integrity, hard work and grace. There are lessons on being African and
black in the United States, rebuilding of the department of mass
communication after the civil war, intrigues and games in the ivory tower,
the battle to maintain standards and more.
The felicity of the writing makes this book an engaging read. Ekwelie,
the style teacher, is evident in this his second book. His first work drew
on many years of teaching the subject as a foundation course in MC

111. Sylvanus Ekwelie (2005), A Master Style Guide gets high praises
     for teaching the principles and critical issues in style, from names and
     titles, through diction and spelling, choice of words, abbreviations,
     capitalisation and punctuation and usage as it affects gender.
     A Story Of Our Times expectedly conveys Ekwelie’s thoughts on
     journalism and the transition to communication studies as well as
     various developments in integrated marketing communication such as
     the creation of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON).
     The then Dr Charles Okigbo, a lecturer under Ekwelie’s supervision at
     UNN, was the first Registrar. Ekwelie served on the first Council.
     He offers a concise summary of the history and developments of media
     in pages 209-210. He distinguishes between journalism and mass
     communication, tracing the journey from print through advertising and
     public relations as well as broadcast journalism. He notes, “In the 20 th
     century, journalism became critical in daily life. Anything with such an
     appeal and reach is worth studying to determine what it does or does not
     do.”
     The appendix to this work is a must-read as it contains the Ekwelie
     manifesto or what he calls “My media philosophy”. The author comments
     on general issues in the public life of Nigeria in “The Author’s World”,
     chapter ten, pages 297-342. He laments the decline of values. A Story
     of Our Times is recommended reading.
     As his students noted while honouring him in 2010, “Every student of
     mass communication in the University of Nigeria from the years 1973 to

2006 has an Ekwelie story to tell. Students recount these stories to
celebrate the joy of learning and the thrill of discovery. The stories are
often humorous or witty, sarcastic or even comical, but each class tells
its story in appreciation of lessons learnt in the use of English, in writing
or the broad field of communication.
“Many students remember Ekwelie for the introductory journalism
classes in the use of English and Introduction to Mass Communication.
Pumped up and exultant at scoring very high grades in JAMB and
English and Literature in the West African Examinations Council School
Certificate examination, students come with a swagger. Ekwelie would
first deflate the balloon of self-importance and then redirect. After the
first few classes, you knew you do not know much, but you are
energised to learn proper usage, pronunciation and writing.”
Ekwelie earned his master’s and doctorate degrees from the University
of Wisconsin. He served as head of the department of journalism at
Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas, before returning to Nigeria.
He was the Head of Mass Communication from 1977 to 1985, and again
from 2001 to 2002, Director of African Studies Institute, UNN from 1988-
1989, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts 1998 -2000.
Upon retirement from the University of Nigeria, Prof Ekwelie spent seven
years imparting knowledge at the University of Port Harcourt on contract.
A Story Of Our Times reads well and digests quickly despite its
pagination. The criticism of the book is the fact of not having a central
focus around which the narrative revolves, as all the authorities advise
on writing biographies and autobiographies. The smooth flow of the
account here, however, precludes this seeming deficiency.
Ekwelie deploys vivid language to illustrate events. He sought and got
permission from most of the persons mentioned in the book for itself as
well as to confirm the accuracy of facts and circumstances long past. We
see places and people of significance in the life of this journalism
educator and can relate to his trials and triumphs.