By Abiodun Alade
President-elect, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd), who defeated incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan during the March 28 General Election, has been named in the Time Magazine annual 100 influential people in the world list for 2015. He leads three other Nigerians in the list. The TIME 100 is an annual list of 100 most influential people in the world whose works are changing the world, regardless of the consequences of their actions.
In a release yesterday by the magazine, Buhari was named under the leaders category and described as a new choice for Nigeria, written by Time’s Africa bureau chief, Aryn Baker. Leader of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, Obiageli Ezekwesili and award-winning novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie were also included in the list. The inclusion of the leader of the dreaded Boko Haram sect, Abubakar Shekau in the list has generated mixed reactions among Nigerians. Buhari, Ezekwesili and Shekau made the leaders category while Adichie was named under the artist category.
Buhari: For ousting a sitting president
“Muhammadu Buhari made history in March by becoming the first candidate to oust a sitting Nigerian President through the ballot box. Now he has to live up to voters’ expectations,” noted Baker. He set agenda for Buhari thus: “From battling the Boko Haram insurgency to tackling endemic corruption, Buhari has many challenges ahead. The greatest may be overcoming his past as a military ruler who seized power in 1983. Already the born-again democrat is demonstrating the inclusivity necessary to lead a nation riven by ethnic and religious tensions. “We must begin to heal the wounds and work toward a better future,” he said in his April 1 victory speech.
“We do this first by extending a hand of friendship and conciliation across the political divide.” It’s a promising start for a President-to-be who wants to leave a legacy to match the historic conditions of his election” Baker submitted.
‘Chimamanda, a rare novelist’
Chimamanda Adichie was described as Conjurer of character, in an essay by Deputy Managing editor of Time, Radhika Jones. The author of Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus was described as a rare novelist who in the space of a year finds her words sampled by Beyoncé, optioned by Lupita Nyong’o and honoured with the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. “A MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, Adichie writes of the complex aftermath of Nigeria’s colonial history and her nation’s rise to prominence in an era when immigration to the West no longer means a one-way ticket.
With her viral TEDxEuston talk, “We Should All Be Feminists,” she found her voice as cultural critic. (You can hear it rising midway through Beyoncé’s woman-power anthem “Flawless.”) She sets her love stories amid civil war (Half of a Yellow Sun) and against a backdrop of racism and migration (Americanah). But her greatest power is as a creator of characters who struggle profoundly to understand their place in the world” Jones wrote.
Oby gets it for championing BringBackOurGirls campaign
“Like northern Uganda, where I live, northern Nigeria is very isolated. For many years, the women who were abducted from our region remained invisible. So although I have not met Obiageli Ezekwesili, I know the #BringBackOurGirls campaign that she championed is very important. It would have taken a long time to raise awareness about the girls taken by Boko Haram without her using her platform as a former Minister of Education,” were the words of Uganda activist, Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe on Ezekwesili.
Shekau, the scourge of Africa
Shekau was described as the “scourge of Africa” by Carter Ham, a former United States Army general, who served as the second Commander, U.S. Africa Command. He added that Shekau who took over the Boko Haram group in 2009 after the group had been weakened by the Nigerian military, is the most violent killer Nigeria has ever seen. “Shekau, who is believed to be in his 30s, began to stage increasingly daring kidnapping and killing raids on schools, churches and mosques thought by Boko Haram to be violating their interpretation of Islam. The taking of over 200 schoolgirls in April 2014 brought Boko Haram into the international spotlight”.
“By most accounts, Boko Haram has killed more than 10,000 people and is spreading into neighboring countries. Shekau’s latest action may finally summon a U.S. response: he has publicly aligned his group with ISIS, the terrorist group that holds territory in Syria and Iraq and has expanded its reach into Yemen and Libya,” he submitted. President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Barrack and Michele Obama of the United States of America; King of Saudi Arabia,King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud; North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un; Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu; German chancellor, Angela Merkel as well as entertainment stars like Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift made the list.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/04/buhari-shekau-others-make-times-100-influential-persons-list/
