NOBODY CAN TELL THE STORY of the people like the people themselves. In their voices, in their mien, in their display of affection brusque and gentle, you can feel the pulse of the ordinary Nigerian, the ordinary Lagosian. You can tell if they are harried and horrid. You can see their ecstasy and the thrills. With the people there is no hypocrisy or manoeuvre of lies.
Unless a leader is a megalomaniac and lover of lies, he will know when he has alienated the people. He will know when he touches their pulse. The idea of this project is to let the people tell their story. I have tried not to intervene in their voices. I have only given them outlet. The voices have come in many nuances and accents and intonations. They have come in tones of supplication, relief, triumph and gratitude. In all, they have told the story of a man in the centre of their little miracles, the man Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
They have talked in praise of one man’s vision, one man’s understanding of their peculiar terrain, one man’s mastery of their secret hopes and fears, one man’s tireless efforts and doings. They cooperated to let their voices be heard, Some of them saw this book as a telephone line to the man behind their little miracles.
The Faith of a Democrat: Principles and Practice of Welfare Liberalism is an account of the fundamental principles and ideals that have guided the administration of on of the foremost democrats and political leaders of our time. In this book, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu provides a succinct analysis of the foundations of welfare liberalism, a philosophy of governance that he grew up with and that has been his forte as a politician and statesman.
His analysis of the components of democratic governance, including the rule of law, welfare liberalism, development, federalism, and press freedom gives us a refreshing insight into the conditions for the freedoms that are taken for granted in every truly democratic society, and energizes us to struggle for similar freedoms for ourselves and our people.
In addition to a stimulating discussion of principles, the book also gives us an insight into the workings of the Tinubu administration in Lagos State, with an array of activities and achievements recorded in the second part of the book. This book has all the potentials of a classic in the annals of democratic politics in Nigeria and Africa.
FINANCIALISM is the product of two practical yet fecund minds. What they foud concerning the 21st century political economy is enlightening yet disturbing. A new, heretofore unnamed ideology and way of ordering the political economy has dislodged the capitalist, liberal democratic model. That new model is financialism.
The authors persuasively, often poetically, argue that, by making the financial sector the most powerful cog in the political economy, financialism has diminished the productive capacity of the economy and has undermined democratic governance. The authors sound a clear warning that the world stumbles toward recurrent financial crises and plutocratic governance should financialism take deeper root. This is an excellent work that will go down as an important contribution to progressive and Pan-African thought about the modern political economy. This book was written with Africa and Black America in mind, but its message is for everyone who disdains injustice and poverty.
The authors provide an unorthodox but compelling perspective of the financial and power relations that constitute the political economy. Much of what we have been previously told is the inexorable logic of economic science are but myths fabricated to make you believe the present system is all that is possible. The book shows that the economy is not the product of inevitable processes but the imposition of one group’s subjective values on the rest of us.
My Convictions is a book that is aptly named. It is more than a collection of excellent speeches and writings. “My Conviction” gives clear insight into the mind of a man who is one of Nigeria’s leading political figures and most forward thinkers. Rarely do the attributes of a political leader and those of a cerebral visionary reside in one man. However, they converge in Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.