New York, US (PANA) – Nigerian scholar, author and journalist Wale Adebanwi’s book on the country’s anti-graft war has been named among the ‘Best Books of 2013 on Africa’ by Foreign Affairs, the leading journal on US foreign policy and global affairs.
The book, ”Authority Stealing: Anti-corruption War and Democratic Politics in Post-military Nigeria”, was named by the journal alongside two other books – ”External Mission: The ANC in exile, 1960-1990” and ”Poor Numbers: How we are misled by African Development Statistics and What To Do About It” – as the three best books of 2013 on Africa.
”Although Adebanwi’s book ranges broadly across recent Nigerian history, its central purpose is to assess post-colonial Nigeria’s most serious campaign to eradicate large-scale corruption,” wrote Nicolas van de Walle, Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University in the US, who picked the books for the journal and also reviewed them.
Dr. Adebanwi’s book was published in Nigeria as ”A Paradise for Maggots: The Story of a Nigerian Anti-Corruption Czar”, a 463-page chronicle of the story of Nuhu Ribadu, the pioneer Chairman of Nigeria’s anti-graft Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Reacting to the selection of his book among the best of 2013 on Africa, the Nigerian scholar said in comments from his US base: “It is very flattering. However, I am happy because it is yet another recognition of the great work that ex-anti-corruption czar, Nuhu Ribadu, did at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), despite all the enervating conditions that surrounded and still surround such a task in Nigeria.”
Dr. Adebanwi described his book as an attempt to tell the story of Nigeria by examining how corruption has turned the country into a paradise for maggots.
He added: ”Even though the structural challenges that encourage, support and expand corruption in Nigeria eventually displaced Ribadu, his experience remains both of validation of the need to cure the cancer of corruption in Nigeria and the consequences of such a curative process for anti-corruption agents.”
Dr. Adebanwi teaches in the African American and African Studies Programme of the University of California, Davis, US.
He holds two doctorate degrees; one in Political Science from the University of Ibadan in South-west Nigeria, and the other in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in the UK, where he was a Bill and Melinda Gates Scholar.
Among his other books are ”Trials and Triumph: The Story of TheNews” and ”Encountering the Nigerian State”, which he co-edited.
His latest book, Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency”, will be published in March 2014.
