IT is not always that readers come across books written by final year undergraduates in Nigerian universities. With the daily alarm about a collapsing educational system, and the litany of distractions consuming the time, and wasting the talents of many Nigerian youths, giving birth to a book in such a climate is a rare feat. To have the book in question make the subject of the Nigerian dream its major preoccupation suggests that hope has not been totally lost, in the face of the myriads of challenges facing Nigeria as a country.The Nigerian Dream: The Passion, The Vision, The Hope by Kingson Uwandu is a manual that attempts to fire up the patriotic instincts of all Nigerians in a position to do anything positive to move the country forward. This call to duty is not made with any form of naivety as many would expect from a young and idealistic writer. Rather, the author discusses the possibilities of change within the context of the dire straits the country has found itself in.There is urgency, in the way the writer attempts to present possible solutions to the Nigerian conundrum. He suggests that while things have been made bad as a result of the actions of a few, it is possible for little, positive, and well taken steps to bring about a reversal of all ugly trends in the country, thus leading to a renaissance in all facets of nation life. As such, Uwandu's book brims with so much optimism about the possibilities of Nigeria.This great store of optimism is however laced with a sense of duty of what should be done to change the negative realities of the country, and place it on the path towards progress and development.Specifically, and expectedly, the young author has the teeming youths of Nigeria as his target audience because of an innate belief that the future of the country actually belongs to them. Again, however, Uwandu demonstrates an understanding that progress and development are a result of incremental efforts from generation to generation. In this area, he sees the transfer of knowledge, mores, and values that have worked, from one generation to the other as crucial to the overall goal of ensuring that the country continues to work. This diagnosis is apt because the have been a huge generational gulfs, and many rifts that have tended to show that the younger and the older generations in Nigeria, have been working at cross purposes.Each chapter of this 201-page crisply written book begins with some words of wisdom, in form of a quotation of words on the marble by great writers, statesmen, and others with something valuable to give. As such, the reader would get to encounter short, profound and easy to grasp messages from the likes of Edmund Burke, Zig Ziglar, Martin Luther King Jr., Jack Kemp, Babatunde Fashola and the author himself. Some passages within the discourse are also interspersed with poems that have didactic themes, such as the need to tame fear, and how to achieve the dreams of the nation.In the first chapter, the writer makes a bold call to his compatriots to rise. He flays what he refers to as the 'silence syndrome' a situation in which the people remain a state of docility, while the train of development and progress passes them by. Uwandu posits that the silence syndrome is made up of attitudinal deficiencies, such as apathy, complacency, captivity of the mind, lack of courage, selfishness and fear. Relating directly to the issues raised in the first chapter, the second dwells on 'the working wonders of the mind.' Here, the writer aptly describes the mind as the master key that unlocks every door.This prognosis suggests that the mindset of a people collectively determines how far they go in the development trajectory. For example, the author reasons that the difference between the average American and his Nigerian counterpart is the belief of the latter that his country is the best in the world, and therefore he is a first class citizen. With a mindset that does not believe in the greatness and the possibilities of the heights that their country could reach, Uwandu argues that Nigerians would not be able to bring about the much awaited transformation of their country.Consequently, the seventh chapter engages with the issue of human capital development. One of the most significant assertions in the chapter is that many Nigerians are disconnected from their potentials because their innate capacities have not been developed and honed through education, and other relevant engagements. Also in this chapter, the writer focuses on the Millennium Development Goals and Nigeria's Vision 20:2020 as catalysts for human development. Uwandu is of the view that there is a nexus between the two, and a synergy has to be formed to make possible the goals of both the Milennium Development Goals and the Vision 20:2020.Apart from other chapters, which dealt with issues such as credible elections and the price of good leadership, the last chapter touches on the labours of Nigeria's heroes, as well as world figures that have served as inspirational figures across the decades. In this chapter, the profiles of great men such as Martin Luther King Jr. Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, and even Barrack Obama were provided to serve as reminders to the readers, and the youths about how they can aspire to greatness by understudying the lives of men who have lived great lives.In all, The Nigerian Dream: The Passion, The Vision, The Hope is a simply written book that is easy to understand. The themes projected in each chapter are interwoven with what comes up in the next, and this gives the book a free flow. The only noticeable snag is the blurred image of a white man on the cover of a work that is supposed to be about the Nigerian dream. Beyond this, the work represents a promising start for a young writer with the intention to motivate his fellow Nigerians to greater heights.
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