Two Comedies From the Past
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
A Journalist's Nigeria Nigeria: Newest Nation. By Lois Mitchinson. Praeger. 122 pp. $3.00. Reviewed by Mercer Cook Author, "Five French Negro Authors," "Introduction to Haiti" THIS UNPRETENTIOUS...
...Comments like the last two are likely to give the unsuspecting reader a misleading impression...
...Miss Mitchinson is a journalist, the jacket tells us...
...moreover, she is a woman...
...Though she does not risk a categorical prediction, she seems confident that these obstacles will be overcome...
...On the other hand, her journalistic flair adds zest to her writing...
...Drawing on her extensive travel experiences, the author is able to compare Nigerians with other peoples...
...She tells a marvelous story to illustrate the young Nigerians' zeal for education: pupils actually asking to be assigned homework...
...Few visitors to Nigeria would quarrel with this statement...
...We can only hope that she will be as right as she is readable...
...In reference to Prime Minister Sir Abu-bakar Tafewa Balewa one reads: "I was told that some Northerners contemptuously describe him as a 'black man' because his skin is darker than a Fulani's, and when he travels from Lagos to the North, the Sardauna does not always bother to meet him at the airport...
...some of the other generalizations, based on gossip, with which this volume is liberally interspersed, are at least questionable...
...Perhaps this explains why she finds it so difficult to resist reporting little bits of hearsay, the picturesque exotic detail...
...She succeeds in whetting the reader's appetite to learn more about Nigeria...
...Realistically, the author lists difficulties that endanger Nigerian unity...
...Here, in a kola nutshell, one is introduced to the land, history, economy, politics, problems and people of Africa's largest and newest nation...
...Kenneth O. Dike...
...And, she points out, the very structure of the federation should favor the survival of democratic freedoms...
...Reviewed by Mercer Cook Author, "Five French Negro Authors," "Introduction to Haiti" THIS UNPRETENTIOUS little book, at once travel account and general study, is timely and interesting...
...And, on comparing the "romantic appeal" of Indian and Ghanaian independence with the absence of "prison graduates" among Nigerian nationalists, she humorously reports: "There is an almost em-barassing shortage of modern political martyrs...
...Ghana...
...Journalistically she refers to the recently inaugurated principal of Ibadan's University College as "Professor Ken Dike" rather than Dr...
...To compress so much in so few pages is something of a feat, and testifies to Miss Mitchinson's reportorial ability...
...Nnamdi Azikiwe (whose name is consistently misspelled throughout the book), Chief Awolowo, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Balewa, discusses the three regions, the civil service, and ends with a brief analysis of Nigeria's foreign relations...
...I found the general friendliness astonishing," she writes, "partly because the last time I had travelled outside Europe had been in the Far East where people do not smile, do not go out of their way to help push you out of the mud, and do not crowd shouting and cheerful round strange cars and strange people...
...The last chapter summarizes Nigeria's political background, traces the careers of Dr...
...By the same token we are told that "not all students, and not all their families, are happy when a Nigerian, however well-qualified, replaces a Briton" on the faculty of the University College of Ibadan...
...Does the author mean in actual numbers or in proportion to the total population...
...For example, there is the unsupported assertion that "the country as a whole has fewer educated people than...
Vol. 43 • November 1960 • No. 45
