Nigeria’s President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari has been named one of the
world’s most influential people by TIME Magazine.
Other Nigerians who made the list are former Minister of Education, Oby
Ezekwesili, bestselling author, Chimamanda Adichie and Boko Haram
leader, Abubakar Shekau.
Read their profiles as written on TIME’s website below:
Muhammadu Buhari - A new choice for Nigeria (by Aryn Baker)
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.
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.
Oby Ezekwesili
(by Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe)
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.
We need to remember that these girls are undergoing psychological and
maybe physical torture. So I love that the campaign says, “Bring back our
girls,” and not “Bring back my child.” Everybody is in unison with the
parents and the relatives. Everyone is feeling their pain. Everyone will be
ready to embrace the girls and offer them care and compassion if they
are rescued or manage to escape.
It has been a year, and the girls haven’t been rescued, but she has made
a difference by speaking about it. Not just speaking but shouting. I know
some people will say she is too loudmouthed. The loud mouth is needed.
People hear it.
Chimamanda Adichie - Conjurer of character (by Radhika Jones)
It’s the rare novelist who in the space of a year finds her words sampled
by Beyoncé, optioned by Lupita Nyong’o and honored with the National
Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. But the Nigerian writer Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie is just that sort of novelist.
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.
Abubakar Shekau - Scourge of Africa (by General Carter Ham (U.S. Army,
retired)
Most Americans do not yet recognize his name, but the citizens of
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, know Abubakar Shekau all too
well: he is the most violent killer their country has ever seen. Shekau took
over the terrorist organization Boko Haram in 2009 after the group had
been weakened by Nigerian government forces.
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.
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