• Book Title: Abiriba Calendar of Events: Past and Present.
• Author: Dr. Nwojo Kalu Ugah and Prof. Igwe Ebe Udeh, PhD.
• Publishers:  MIDIUN GROUP INC.
• Reviewer: Emeaba Onuma Emeaba.
• Pages: 129.

History is often a silent, monochromatic affair—a collection of graying facts relegated to the dusty corners of the academy. But every so often, a work arrives that refuses to let the past remain quiet. In their latest volume, Abiriba Calendar of Events: Past and Present, Dr. Nwojo Kalu Ugah and Prof. Igwe Ebe Udeh, PhD, do more than document a region; they stage a sensory intervention. Through a marriage of historical rigor and lively visual storytelling, the authors transform what might have been a static archive into a pulsing, audible record of the Abiriba people.

The importance of this intervention cannot be overstated. As a long-standing observer of the region’s social fabric, I find that this work stands as a thoughtful and valuable contribution to the documentation of Abiriba’s history, institutions, and cultural philosophy. It will serve both scholars and future generations as an important record of the distinctive republican heritage of the Abiriba people. It is a sentiment echoed throughout the three pages of glowing commendations that preface the text, where community titans and political leaders unite to praise a volume that has clearly become a communal milestone.

Dr. Ugah and Dr. Udeh’s most striking achievement is the “physicality” of the narrative. The book is heavily illustrated with archival photographs, many of which have been meticulously restored and brought into vivid color. By injecting color into the black-and-white silhouettes of the past, the authors collapse the distance between the contemporary reader and the historical subject. These images are literal and evidentiary; they do not merely “decorate” the text but are woven directly into the paragraphs. As the eye moves from a description of a festival to a photograph of dancers in mid-motion, the prose begins to hum.

However, the book’s unwavering devotion to preservation occasionally veers into the hagiographic. By focusing so intently on the “lively” and the “republican,” the authors sometimes sidestep the more uncomfortable frictions between these ancient rites and the complexities of the twenty-first century. One wishes for a more rigorous interrogation of how these traditions—some rooted in rigid social hierarchies or exclusionary practices—survive the scrutiny of a modern, globalized generation. At times, the narrative feels like a rescue mission so concerned with saving the artifacts that it forgets to ask whether the culture itself can sustain the weight of its own history without significant evolution. This idealistic lens, while beautiful, can occasionally obscure the very real internal conflicts that define a living, breathing community.

Despite this leaning toward the ideal, the book’s “sound” remains undeniable. The authors’ meticulous approach to sensory details suggests a profound sensitivity to the mechanics of cultural memory. By documenting the “snoring and bellowing” of the village drums—the ufĩẽ and the ikoro—with such granular detail, they transcend mere description. We see maidens of Am̃anta village daintily dressed for the Obina dance and Ukpo youths clothed in green ẹkọrọ weeds, and in doing so, we hear the pulse of the marketplace and the rhythm of the festival.

The volume’s sensory immersion is matched by its structural precision. Dr. Ugah and Dr. Udeh have included a comprehensive glossary of Abiriba terms, complete with English translations, ensuring that the “sound” of the culture is decoded for the uninitiated. This appendix is more than a utilitarian tool; it is a vital act of cultural rescue. By documenting the specific vocabulary of the month of Iri Am̃a or the legal principles of Onye Parị Ọba, the authors provide a permanent bridge between oral traditions and the written record.

In an era where history is often flattened by the passage of time, Dr. Ugah and Dr. Udeh have added depth and dimension back to the record. By the final page, the reader is left with the sense that they haven’t just read a history; they have witnessed a revival. They have ensured that, for the Abiriba people, the past will no longer be seen in shades of gray and will certainly no longer be silent.

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♦ Dr. Emeaba, the author of “A Dictionary of Literature,” writes dime novels in the style of the Onitsha Market Literature sub-genre.

• Book Title: The Making of Bourdex Telecom
• Author: David Ogba Onuoha Bourdex
• Publishers: Bourdex
• Reviewer: Emeaba Emeaba
• Pages: 127

In the history of Nigerian entrepreneurship, stories of audacity often begin with frustration. A man waits hours in a dimly lit government office to place a single overseas call, his ambitions held hostage by bureaucracy. From that moment of exasperation, an empire begins. Such is the animating pulse of The Making of Bourdex Telecom, David Ogba Onuoha Bourdex’s sweeping autobiographical account of one man’s effort to connect the disconnected and to rewrite the telecommunications map of Eastern Nigeria.

At once memoir, corporate history, and national parable, the book reconstructs the emergence of Bourdex Telecommunications Limited—the first indigenous private telecom provider in Nigeria’s South-East and South-South regions—against a backdrop of inefficiency, corruption, and infrastructural neglect. Its author, a businessman turned visionary, narrates not merely how a company was built but how a new horizon of possibility was forced open in a society long accustomed to closed doors.

Bourdex begins with a stark diagnosis of pre-deregulation Nigeria: a nation of over 120 million people served by fewer than a million telephone lines. Through a mix of statistical precision and personal recollection, he paints a portrait of communication as privilege, not right—of entire regions condemned to silence by state monopoly. His storytelling thrives in such contrasts: the entrepreneur sleeping upright in Lagos’s NET building to place an international call; the Italian businessman in Milan conducting deals with two sleek mobile phones. That juxtaposition—between deprivation and effortless connectivity—serves as the book’s moral axis.

From these moments of contrast, Bourdex constructs the founding myth of his enterprise. What began as an irritation became a revelation, then a crusade. “I saw a people left behind,” he writes, “a region cut off while others dialed into the future.” His insistence on framing technology as a means of liberation rather than profit underscores the moral ambition that threads through the book. The Making of Bourdex Telecom reads not like a manual of business success but like an ethical manifesto: to build not simply for gain, but for dignity.

As the chapters unfold, Bourdex’s narrative oscillates between vivid personal storytelling and granular technical detail. He recounts his early business dealings in the 1980s and ’90s, the bureaucratic mazes of NITEL, and the daring pursuit of a telecommunications license under General Sani Abacha’s military government. There is a cinematic quality to his recollections—the tense midnight meetings in Abuja, the coded alliances with military officers, the improbable friendships that turned policy into possibility.

These sections recall Chinua Achebe’s The Trouble with Nigeria in tone and intention: both works diagnose the systemic failures of governance but find redemption in individual initiative. Yet Bourdex’s narrative differs in form. Where Achebe offered moral critique, Bourdex offers demonstration—an anatomy of perseverance in motion. He documents the letters, negotiations, and international correspondences with Harris Canada, showing how an indigenous company emerged through sheer force of will and global collaboration.

Such passages risk overwhelming the reader with acronyms, specifications, and telecom jargon—R2 signaling, SS7 interconnection, E1 circuits—but they also lend the book an authenticity rare in corporate memoirs. What might have been opaque technicalities become, under Bourdex’s hand, instruments of drama. The machinery of communication becomes metaphor: wires and waves as extensions of faith and tenacity.

To situate The Making of Bourdex Telecom within Nigeria’s socio-political history is to confront the paradox of private enterprise under public decay. The book chronicles the twilight of NITEL’s monopoly, the hesitant dawn of deregulation, and the emergence of entrepreneurial actors who filled the void left by government paralysis. In this sense, Bourdex’s story parallels that of other indigenous pioneers—figures such as Mike Adenuga and Jim Ovia—whose ventures in telecommunications and banking transformed the national economy from the late 1990s onward.

Yet Bourdex’s tone is less triumphant than reflective. He does not romanticize deregulation; he portrays it as both opportunity and ordeal. The government’s inertia, the labyrinthine licensing process, and the outright extortion by state agencies form the darker undertones of his tale. His clash with NITEL’s leadership—recounted with controlled indignation—stands as one of the book’s most gripping sequences. When a senior official demanded an illegal payment of ₦20.8 million for interconnection rights, Bourdex’s defiant reply, “You are not God,” rang out like an act of civil disobedience. In such moments, the narrative transcends the genre of business autobiography and enters the moral theatre of national reform. The entrepreneur becomes citizen-prophet, challenging a corrupt establishment with the rhetoric of justice and self-belief. That blending of economic narrative with civic conscience is perhaps the book’s most compelling feature.

Stylistically, The Making of Bourdex Telecom occupies an intriguing space between oral history and polished memoir. The prose is direct, rhythmic, and often sermonic, reflecting its author’s background as both businessman and public speaker. Anecdotes unfold with the cadences of storytelling; sentences sometimes pulse with the energy of spoken word: “Amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic.” The repetition of such aphorisms imbues the work with a sense of conviction, though occasionally at the expense of subtlety.

Where the book excels is in its evocation of atmosphere—the dusty highways between Aba and Lagos, the sterile corridors of power in Abuja, the crisp air of Calgary where the author first glimpsed technological modernity. These scenes transform what could have been a linear corporate chronicle into a textured work of memory.

Still, the narrative structure is not without flaws. The absence of an external editor’s restraint is occasionally felt in the pacing; digressions into technical exposition or moral reflection sometimes interrupt narrative flow. Readers accustomed to the concise storytelling of international business memoirs—Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog or Elon Musk’s authorized biography—may find the prose dense in places. Yet such density mirrors the complexity of the terrain Bourdex navigated. His sentences, like his towers, are built from layers of persistence.

Beyond its entrepreneurial chronicle, the book doubles as social history—a record of Eastern Nigeria’s encounter with modernization. The chapters on “The FUTO Boys,” a cadre of young engineers recruited from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, offer a microcosm of the new Nigerian professional class emerging in the late 1990s: educated, idealistic, and determined to prove that technical expertise could thrive outside the state. Their improvisations—installing antennas by candlelight, building networks amid power outages—embody the collective grit that sustained Bourdex’s vision.

The narrative’s cumulative effect is generational. Through the story of one company, we glimpse a society in transition—from analogue isolation to digital awakening. The book captures that liminal moment when the sound of a dial tone became a symbol of freedom.

Running through The Making of Bourdex Telecom is a persistent theology of success. Bourdex attributes every turn in his journey to divine orchestration: friendships “placed by the Invisible Hand,” setbacks reinterpreted as “divine redirections.” Such language, while characteristic of Nigerian entrepreneurial spirituality, acquires here an almost literary force. It recasts corporate history as providential narrative, where the invisible infrastructure of grace mirrors the visible architecture of towers and transmitters.

For some readers, this piety may feel excessive; yet it provides the emotional coherence of the book. The author’s faith is not ornamental—it is constitutive. Without it, the story of Bourdex Telecom would read as mere ambition. With it, it becomes vocation.

The foreword by Abia State Governor Alex Otti and the preface by former Anambra Governor Peter Obi frame the book as both inspiration and instruction. They read Bourdex’s career as parable: the triumph of private initiative over public inertia. Yet their presence also situates the work within Nigeria’s broader discourse on nation-building. The Making of Bourdex Telecom is not only the autobiography of an entrepreneur; it is a treatise on indigenous agency—on what happens when Africans cease to wait for imported solutions and begin to engineer their own.

In this respect, the book extends its influence beyond its immediate industry. Its lessons—about courage, timing, friendship, and faith—extend to any field where innovation must contend with adversity.

Judged as a work of literature, The Making of Bourdex Telecom is direct and sincere. Its prose favors clarity over ornament, and its authenticity gives the story a compelling sense of truth. Bourdex writes not to embellish, but to bear witness—to a time, a struggle, and a conviction that technology could serve humanity. The result is a hybrid work: part documentary, part sermon, part memoir of enterprise.

As a contribution to Nigerian business literature, it deserves serious attention. Few firsthand accounts capture with such detail the messy birth of private telecommunications in the 1990s—a revolution that reshaped the country’s economic and social fabric. In its pages, we hear both the crackle of the first connected call and the larger resonance of a people finding their voice.

Bourdex’s central message endures: progress begins when frustration becomes purpose. His journey from the backrooms of NITEL to the boardrooms of international telecoms is not merely personal triumph; it is a chapter in Nigeria’s unfinished story of modernization.

In the end, The Making of Bourdex Telecom stands as more than the history of a company. It is an ode to enterprise as nation-building, and to the stubborn optimism of those who refuse to let silence define them.

See the book on Amazon: >>>>>

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♦ Dr. Emeaba, the author of “A Dictionary of Literature,” writes dime novels in the style of the Onitsha Market Literature sub-genre.

• Book Title: A Journey in Service
• Author: Ibrahim B. Babangida
• Publishers: Bookcraft
• Reviewer: Emeaba Emeaba
• Pages: 440

In the annals of Nigerian history, few figures loom as large—or as polarizing—as Ibrahim Babangida, the military ruler who held sway from 1985 to 1993. Known to some as the “Maradona” of politics for his nimble maneuvering and to others as an “evil genius” for his controversial decisions, Babangida has long been a cipher, his legacy a battleground of competing narratives. His new autobiography, A Journey in Service, promises to peel back the layers of this enigmatic leader. What emerges, however, is a portrait both revealing and reticent—a calculated blend of candor and evasion that invites readers into the mind of a man wrestling with his past, yet unwilling to fully confront its shadows.

The book opens with a disarming simplicity, tracing Babangida’s arc from humble origins in Minna to the corridors of power in Lagos. His prose, clear and occasionally lyrical, sketches a life shaped by ambition and camaraderie, from sharing shirts with childhood friend Mamman Vatsa in their bachelor days to navigating the treacherous currents of military hierarchy. This early narrative sets the stage for his presidency, a period he frames as one of service and sacrifice. He highlights tangible achievements—economic reforms, infrastructure projects, and institutions like MAMSER and DIFFRI—casting himself as a steward of progress amid turbulent times. Yet, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that A Journey in Service is less a reckoning with history than a meticulous exercise in self-fashioning.

At the heart of the book lies the annulment of the June 12, 1993, election—a wound that still festers in Nigeria’s collective memory. Widely regarded as the nation’s freest and fairest vote, it was poised to usher in civilian rule until Babangida’s regime abruptly voided the results, plunging the country into chaos. For the first time, Babangida expresses regret, acknowledging Moshood Abiola’s victory and calling the annulment an “accident of history.” “The nation is entitled to expect my expression of regret,” he writes, a statement that has stirred both praise and skepticism. Yet, his attempt to shift blame to General Sani Abacha and other officers feels like a sleight of hand—an effort to cast himself as a reluctant participant rather than the architect of a decision that altered Nigeria’s trajectory. The admission, while striking, lacks the depth of accountability that might have transformed it into a genuine mea culpa.

This selective candor extends to other fraught episodes. The execution of Mamman Vatsa, convicted of plotting a coup in 1986, is recounted with a mix of nostalgia and froideur. Babangida paints a vivid picture of their closeness— “we did several things together as peers”—before revealing a “recurrent peer jealousy” he now perceives in hindsight. The decision to approve Vatsa’s death, he argues, was a stark choice “between saving a friend’s life and the nation’s future.” It’s a poignant reflection, yet one that sidesteps broader questions about the trial’s fairness or the political climate that made such a choice inevitable. Similarly, his discussion of Nigeria’s first coup in 1966 challenges the “Igbo coup” label by highlighting the diverse ethnic makeup of the plotters and the role of Major John Obienu in quelling it. This revisionist take, while intriguing, feels more like a footnote than a fulsome exploration of a pivotal moment that sparked the Biafran War.

Perhaps the most unguarded moments come in Babangida’s tender tribute to his late wife, Maryam, Nigeria’s iconic first lady until her death in 2009. “Her ebony beauty set off enchanting eyes,” he writes, recalling a partnership marked by mutual devotion and rare discord. Their love story, woven through four decades, offers a humanizing counterpoint to the book’s political machinations, revealing a man capable of vulnerability—if only in the personal sphere. Yet even here, the narrative serves a purpose, reinforcing Babangida’s image as a figure of depth and relatability amid his sterner legacy.

What A Journey in Service omits is as telling as what it includes. The assassination of journalist Dele Giwa, the mysterious $12.4 billion Gulf War oil windfall, and other stains on Babangida’s tenure are met with a resounding silence. These absences lend the book an air of strategic curation, as if Babangida seeks to polish his record rather than illuminate it. The timing of its release, amid Nigeria’s current struggles, and the lavish donations at its launch by people who have never set up a business, manufactured any products or even sold any goods suggest is an eloquent reminder of his enduring clout within the elite.

Critics and admirers alike will find fodder in these pages. Babangida’s willingness to address June 12, however imperfectly, has won plaudits from some, including President Bola Tinubu, who hailed his courage at the launch. Others, like Abiola’s son Jamiu, see it as a belated balm, a step toward peace if not justice. Yet the book’s detractors decry its evasions, arguing that it sidesteps the raw honesty Nigeria deserves. This divide mirrors Babangida’s own duality—a leader lauded for infrastructure yet lambasted for corruption, a reformer who clung to power until forced out.

In the tradition of political memoir, A Journey in Service is a study in the malleability of memory. It offers a window into a complex figure, but the view is obscured by the author’s own hand. Readers seeking a definitive account of Babangida’s rule will emerge unsatisfied; those intrigued by the interplay of power and narrative will find a richer vein to mine. Sophisticated yet guarded, the book is a testament to its author’s skill at controlling the story—even if, in the end, it reveals more through its silences than its words. Babangida’s journey, it seems, remains as much a riddle as the man himself, a legacy still contested in the crucible of history.

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♦ Dr. Emeaba, the author of “A Dictionary of Literature,” writes dime novels in the style of the Onitsha Market Literature sub-genre.