My objective with this book is to bring people who hold different beliefs together so they can get to know each other and create a path towards moral courage, empathy, compassion and accountability.
My objective with this book is to bring people who hold different beliefs together so they can get to know each other and create a path towards moral courage, empathy, compassion and accountability.
Tayo Rockson
Tayo Rockson
Tayo Rockson
I wrote this book because we are in a time of deep divisions and I believe we need to learn how to cultivate relationships now more than ever. Today’s culture is defined by fear, uncertainty, intolerance and re activeness. It feels like a war zone sometimes because in a world of nuance, we are governed by binary systems. In addition to this, we are losing faith in many of our foundational institutions (religion, education, government, family, the Internet, media).
This isn’t just happening in some places. It’s happening all over the world. There simply isn’t any clarity on what we find threatening because we all feel things differently. Despite this, I am filled with hope because we are also in the midst of an awakening of sorts. An awakening that allows us to see who we are really are and where we can improve. The world has to awaken every now and then to the fact that we are responsible for the world we get.
My objective with this book is to bring people who hold different beliefs together so they can get to know each other and create a path towards moral courage, empathy, compassion and accountability.
In recent years we have seen dramatic changes to several institutions worldwide. Our increasingly interconnected, digitised, and globalised world presents immense opportunities and unique challenges. Modern businesses and schools interact with individuals and organisations from a diverse range of cultural and national backgrounds—increasing the likelihood for miscommunication, errors in strategy, and unintended consequences in the process.
This has also spilled into our daily lives and the way we consume information today. Understanding how to navigate these and other pitfalls requires adaptability, nuanced cross-cultural communication, and effective conflict resolution. Use Your Difference to Make a Difference provides readers with a skills-based, actionable plan that transforms differences into agents of inclusiveness, connection, and mutual understanding.
T his innovative and timely guide illustrates how to leverage differences to move beyond unconscious biases, manage a culturally-diverse workplace, create an environment for more tolerant schooling environments, more trusted media, communicate across borders, find and retain diverse talent, and bridge the gap between working locally and expanding globally.
Expert guidance on a comprehensive range of topics—teamwork, leadership styles, information sharing, delegation, supervision, giving and receiving feedback, coaching and motivation, recruiting, managing suppliers and customers, and more—helps you manage the essential aspects of international relationships and cultural awareness.
This valuable resource contains the indispensable knowledge required to:
Develop self-awareness needed to be a cross-cultural communicator
Develop content, messaging techniques, marketing plans, and business strategies that translate across cultural borders
Help your employees to better understand and collaborate with clients and colleagues from different backgrounds
Help teachers build safe environments for students to be themselves
Strengthen cross-cultural competencies in yourself, your team, and your entire organization
Understand the cultural, economic, and political factors surrounding our world
Dele Ogun LLB., LLM.
Dele Ogun, is a Nigerian-born author, lawyer, speaker and commentator on current affairs with strong connections still to Nigeria. Called to the Bar in 1985, he has practised as a Solicitor since 1995. He attended the Inns of Court School of Law for his call to the English Bar, the Nigerian Law School for his call to the Nigerian Bar and the Chartered Institute of Taxation to become a Chartered Taxation Practitioner.
As a student Dele worked as night security guard in various city establishments, some of which he later revisited for client meetings as a lawyer. He views this as formative, counting himself fortunate to have had the opportunity to see life through the different ends of the telescope
An alumni of the U.S. State Department’s International Exchange Programme, he has been a panellist in several high level discussions on Nigeria including the Guardian newspaper’s debate “Nigeria: Africa’s Superpower” chaired by Jon Snow of Channel 4 News; the Ditchley Foundation’s conference on “The Prospects for Nigeria” chaired by The Rt. Hon. Baroness Amos; and BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme
He obtained his LLB from London Metropolitan University in 1984 and his LLM in Company and Commercial Law from the London School of Economics in 1987.
After many years of service at Price Waterhouse Coopers LLP and in practice as a corporate tax lawyer with Hogan Lovells LLP, he founded his own law firm in 1997, London-based Akin Palmer LLP.
A lawyer for big occasions in commercial litigation and international arbitration disputes, his recent cases have been high profile representation of litigants against Specsavers Optical Group.
He enjoys self-expression as an author with his membership of the Society of Authors. His recent book: A Fatherless People was launched to rave reviews on Amazon and is a detailed history of Nigerian leadership, from the earliest days of British Colonialism to the present. It follows his equally acclaimed autobiography, The Law, The Lawyers and The Lawless.
A Fatherless People
About the Book
Nigeria is a country of which much is heard and about which little is understood: the product of an ambitious amalgamation, in 1914, of three hundred and seventy-one ethnic groups in the area of the River Niger, with as many languages, to form the most populous state in British-Africa (estimated at 190 million people).
Its unsettled history since the grant of independence, in 1960, has seen millions killed in the Biafran War, the rise of militants in the oil-producing Niger-Delta region, the emergence of Boko Haram Islamic separatists in the north-east of the country and the return of agitation for Biafran secession by a new generation of Igbos in the south-east.
The book seeks to make sense of the events in this country of many paradoxes: A land of extreme poverty alongside stupendous wealth; a country where, in the north, Islamists proclaim Western education to be sin even while, elsewhere in the country, world-class writers, like Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, are produced; a state which democrats and dictators have taken turns to rule with little to set them apart in terms of the progress and development of the country.
At a time when old colonial state boundaries in the Middle East are being redrawn by violent conflict and Scottish nationalists are campaigning to break away from their 300-year-old union with England (even as Britain itself seeks to exit from the European Union) this book raises important questions about the outlook for the continued existence of Nigeria as one country.
This book tells the story of Nigeria, from its early conceptualisation by British colonialists in the aftermath of the abolition of the slave trade, up to the present day. Comprehensive and compelling, it confirms Dele Ogun as one of the foremost writers on Africa in the modern era.
Oyinbo Came To Africa
About the book
This book tells the story of how Europeans and Arabs came to Africa, from mid-15th century onwards with their religions and model of civilisation, and how this changed the African way of life.
AMV Publishing Services (AMVPS)
AMVPS was originally registered in 2005 as a sole proprietorship home based business in the Greater Princeton area of New Jersey in the US. The company’s establishment was driven by the proprietor, Damola Ifaturoti’s love for books and writing as well as his then near two-decade experience in the book publishing industry from which he had developed a vision of producing good general reading material on varied subjects for a worldwide readership audience.
Previously Ifaturoti had worked between 1987 and 1998 with Evans Brothers (Nigeria Publishers) Ltd., a leading publishing firm in Nigeria. During his 11-year stint at Evans Nigeria he served the company in key editorial, promotional and administrative positions. In 1998 he relocated to the US and in January 1999 joined the sister companies of Africa World Press (AWP) and the Red Sea Press (RSP), then based in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, serving the joint companies as senior editor and editorial coordinator till 2015.
Going forward from that year, Damola began to focus his publishing efforts solely on his own personal operations with AMVPS, continuing to provide book production services for clients including other publishers, NGOs, research organizations as well as individual authors, while also formally producing a list of both general and scholarly works under his AMVPS imprint. The company has tapped on the emergent technologies for book publishing and marketing while employing the services of a wide range of highly skilled freelance production professionals for its output. AMVPS books have been produced on print-on-demand (POD) basis both in paperback and hardback editions while also including e-book editions of most of its titles.
The company has utilized its own website www.amvpublishingservices.com, and the facilities of the general online book retail stores including amazon.com and the Barnes and Noble online store for both marketing and sales distribution of its products to a global readership target audience. Its authorship has been drawn predominantly from a community comprising both scholarly and general writers of African origin and on this basis the AMVPS list building process has grown progressively over the years:
The list includes one of the first institutional biographies of an important African industry - Nigerian Television: 50 Years of Television in Nigeria by a leading Nigerian scholar of media studies, Oluyinka Esan of Winchester University in the UK. The volume was published in 2009 on the diamond jubilee anniversary of Africa’s first television service- the Western Nigerian Television (WNTV) Authority founded in 1959
Prominent among the AMVPS list are also international editions of the autobiographies of two internationally renowned Nigerian scholars of the medical profession who also distinguished themselves in the fields of national educational development and university administration; Footprints and Footnotes: A Biography of Ladipo Akinkugbe, one-time Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and Water Must Flow Uphill: Adventures in University Administration by Roger Makanjuola, former Vice Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. These international editions of the two scholarly biographies were co-published in collaboration with Nigerian publishers; respectively Bookcraft Ltd and Mosuro Books, both based in Ibadan Nigeria.
Other important scholarly works on the AMVPS list include two titles by a UN expert in peacebuilding and global economic policy, Eloho Otobo: Africa in Transition: A New Way of Looking at Progress in the Region which recently won nomination for a prestigious international book prize, and Consolidating Peace in Africa: The Role of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission. Another notable scholarly publication by AMVPS is a collection of essays titled Nigeria and The United States: Twists and Turns through Five Decades edited by Shola Omoregie and Abiodun Alao, respectively ambassador/former Head of the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office in Guinea-Bissau and Senior Research Fellow at the King’s College London. Also of the scholarly category among the AMVPS list is Kanga The Cloth that Speaks a coffee table style large, format book produced in full color authored by Sharifa Zawawi, Professor Emerita of Columbia University New York. In the areas of literary works the AMVPS list includes prose fiction titles by US based award-winning Professor of English, Tanure Ojaide - The Activist, and an international edition of Tenants of the House (published in collaboration with Nelson Publishers, a subsidiary of Evans Nigeria) written by celebrated media columnist and former member of the Nigerian house of representatives, Wale Okediran. AMVPS has also published a number of works in the genre of poetry.
These include Goree’s Unwavering Songs by the recently passed Emeritus Professor of French and internationally acclaimed scholar of black studies and culture, Femi Ojo-Ade, Red Earth and other Poems by Adamu Ajinam and The Duet by a mother/son duo - Toki and Damola Mabogunje. Most widely acclaimed and celebrated among AMVPS’ recent publications is the 2018 historical volume Hubris: A Political History of the Nigerian Army by Akintunde Akinkunmi, a recently retired General of the British army of Nigerian descent. For the full quota of AMVPS’ books for order as well as information on the numerous titles in which the company and its proprietor have been involved in production of for other clients and groups please visit the company’s website at www.amvpublishingservices.com. AMVPS upgraded from a sole proprietorship to a limited liability company (LLC) incorporated in Trenton, New Jersey, in 2016 and remains dedicated to the vision of its principal i.e. the production of high-quality books and reading material of African content for a world-wide readership audience.
BEST SERVED COLD
BEST SERVED COLD
Akintunde Akinkunmi
Mike is a Nigerian-born lawyer turned investment banker in the city of London. Despite career and financial success, he is not altogether happy with his job and his life. A chance encounter at the theatre with an old school friend launches him on a second career of public service back home in Nigeria. In addition to finding contentment in doing a worthwhile job in his home country, he also finds love, and marries Ronke, a fellow returnee from the UK, with whom he starts a family.
Mike’s problems begin when he refuses to succumb to an inducement to bend rules and cut corners in the implementation of a big ports privatisation project in order to unfairly favour his erstwhile boss, a former minister who successfully runs for election as a state governor. The governor’s shadowy financial backers take a dim view of this, and devise a plan to teach Mike a violent lesson in the realities of politics and business in Nigeria by coercing him into falling in line with their nefarious scheme. However, their plan goes horribly wrong, leading to terrible fatalities that leave Mike grief stricken and single-mindedly committed to seeking vengeance. With the help of two maverick members of a mysterious elite unit within the Nigeria Police force, Mike sets out to bring his transgressors to justice. But how does one individual take on the might of a serving governor with official immunity from prosecution, and the powerful shadowy business and criminal community with whom the governor is entwined? Mike and his friends develop an amazing plot to do just this and in the process, take the intriguing storyline of Best Served Coldat a breath taking pace through various cities of Nigeria, Dubai and the US, to a gripping conclusion in a New York courtroom.
About the Author
AKINTUNDE AKINKUNMI was born and brought up in Ibadan, Nigeria. He attended medical school at the country’s premier university—the University of Ibadan, followed by a stint of service with the Brigade of Guards of the Nigerian Army. Thereafter he relocated to the United Kingdom in the late 1980s, and over the next twenty-five years combined service in the British Army Reserve with postgraduate training as a forensic psychiatrist, while also earning a law degree along the way. He is the proud father of four daughters, to whom this first book of his is dedicated with great affection. He hopes the work of fiction will be the start of his fourth career—as a writer, as his medical, military, and legal careers gradually wind down. He is currently at work on his second book—Hubris: A Brief Political History of the Nigerian Army drawing on his personal experience of service with the military establishment and from a painstaking private research work he has engaged in over several years on the subject matter.
HUBRIS
HUBRIS
Akintunde Akinkunmi
“ A purely contemporary view of any problem is necessarily a limited and even distorted view. Every situation has its roots in the past…the past survives into the present; the present is indeed the past undergoing modification” (The Nigerianisation of the Civil Service, S. Phillipson and S.O. Adebo, Lagos, 1954, p. 49 – in Kirk-Greene Vol 1 p. 5)
The Nigerian Army is an institution that has played a pivotal role in the affairs of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. For more than half of the 56 years since Independence, Nigeria was directly ruled by a Military Government, largely composed of army officers, and always headed by one. It is impossible to explore any facet of modern Nigerian history or society without the military (and in particular the Army) looming significantly. Whilst several authors have documented the history of Nigeria (and significantly less many of its Army), rarely, if ever, has the impact of the politics of Nigeria on the Army, and vice-versa, formed the exclusive subject of study. This volume is an endeavour to plug that gap.
The interplay between the Army and the politics of Nigeria antedates the formal existence of both country and Army. In order to properly explore the interaction between Nigerian politics and the Nigerian Army, it is necessary to start by examining the evolution of both Army and country. The period leading up to the Army’s first overt entry into the politics of Nigeria is then looked at, firstly in the pre-Independence years, and then in the years immediately following independence. The effects of the Nigerianisation of the Army, especially of the officer corps, and of the policy decisions made following the passing of control over the Army from the British to the Nigerian Governments are considered. The political circumstances surrounding the Army’s first overt entry into politics - the January 1966 coup - and the political performance of the subsequent first military regime are discussed, as a precursor to the second coup in July 1966.
Previous brothers-in-arms found themselves on opposing sides in the bloody civil war that followed. The impact of the Army’s direct involvement in politics on the military performance of both sides in the Civil War is explored. The rapid and large expansion of the Army during the war had consequences both for the conduct of the war, and for the post-war political performance of the Military Government. After a 9-year interregnum, in July 1975 Nigeria returned to the era of coups, with at least eight attempted and successful coups, some of them bloody, over the next quarter century before the return to civilian rule in 1999. Other writers have explored the coups in some detail; that is beyond the remit of the present study, save for how the genesis, participants and execution of the coups impacted upon the military governments that followed each of them. The personalities leading the resultant military Governments, and the policies of those Governments, are explored, in an attempt to discern their legacy on the political development of Nigeria, and on the Nigerian Army as an institution. It is, for example, instructive to note that of the four civilian Presidents of Nigeria since the return to civilian rule in 1999, two are retired Generals who were former military Heads of State.
The analyses in this book will present evidence, direct and circumstantial, in order to reach conclusions that will provoke discussion, agreement and dissent. If, in so doing, this volume adds to the ability of Nigerians to better understand their history whilst retaining the ability to disagree without falling out, it will have served its purpose.