Wole Soyinka
August 31, 2007 | 1 Comment
Akinwande Oluwole “Wole” Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. Some consider him Africa’s most distinguished playwright, as he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, the first African since Albert Camus so honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family, specifically, an Egba family in Abeokuta, Nigeria in 1934. He received a primary school education in Abeokuta and attended secondary school at Government College, Ibadan. He then studied at the University College, Ibadan (1952-1954) and the University of Leeds (1954-1957) from which he received an honours degree in English Literature. He worked as a play reader at the Royal Court Theatre in London before returning to Nigeria to study African drama. He taught in the Universities of Lagos, Ibadan, and Ife (becoming Professor of Comparative Literature there in 1975).
Soyinka has played an active role in Nigeria’s political history. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War he was arrested by the Federal Government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for his attempts at brokering a peace between the warring parties. While in prison he wrote poetry which was published in a collection titled Poems from Prison. He was released 22 months later after international attention was drawn to his imprisonment. His experiences in prison are recounted in his book The Man Died: Prison Notes.
He has been an outspoken critic of many Nigerian administrations, and of political tyrannies worldwide, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. A great deal of his writing has been concerned with “the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it”. This activism has often exposed him to great personal risk, most notable during the government of the Nigerian dictator General Sani Abacha (1993-1998). During Abacha’s dictatorship, Soyinka left the country on voluntary exile and has since been living abroad (mainly in the United States where he was a professor at Emory University in Atlanta). When civilian rule returned in 1999, Soyinka accepted an emeritus post at Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) on the condition that the university bar all former military officers from the position of chancellor.
Kase Lawal
August 31, 2007 | 5 Comments
Kase Lawal is a Nigerian-born entrepreneur and Chairman of the second largest African-American owned businesses in the United States. He was born in 1954 in the ancient city of Ibadan (a city 100 miles northwest of Lagos) wherefrom he immigrated to the United States in the early 1970s. He attended Fort Valley State University in Georgia, before transferring to Texas Southern University, where he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering. He also holds a MBA in finance and marketing from Prairie View A&M University.Kase started out his career in Dresser Industries (now Halliburton) as a research chemist and later as a chemical engineer with Shell Oil Refining Co. He moved on to Suncrest Investment Corporation and afterwards Baker Investments before starting CAMAC Holdings, which began operations as an agriculture and commodities company.
Kase Lawal is presently the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CAMAC International Corporation and also the Chairman of Allied Energy Corporation. He serves as a member of the board of directors in Unity National Bank, the only federally insured and licensed African-American-owned bank in Texas. Dr. Lawal is the Vice Chairman of the Port of Houston Authority, the largest foreign tonnage port in the United States and Houston Airport Development System Corporation, the sixth largest international airport system in the world. In 1994, he was a finalist for the United States Business Entrepreneur of the Year and also served on the President of the United States Business Advisory Council.
He was recently awarded an honorary doctorate in philosophy from Fort Valley State University.
List of Nigerian Banks & Discount Houses
August 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment
There are 25 licensed banks and 5 licensed discount houses in Nigeria. The Central Bank of Nigeria recently increased the minimum capital base of the banks to N25B in order to provide more stability in the banking industy and equip the banks better to perform their financial intermediary role of matching financial resources from the surplus sector of the economy to the areas where money are needed. The recapitalization exercises decimated the number of banks in Nigeria and a lot of the banks had to merge in order to scale the capital requirement hurdle. The positive side of the exercise though is that the Nigerian banking industry is more stable, stronger and expanding into other African Countries. Click on the link below to view the listing of all the financial institutions and their websites.
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