text: Project MUSE - The Task of Today and Other Seminal Essays
  There is in man an inborn thirst to know the facts about the world ,- there is in him the urge to seek what is good for his being, and to shrink back from what is harmful to his welfare; there is the desire, native to him, to give lasting expression to the feelings which well up within him, both when he is buoyed up and exultant and when he collides with misfortune; there is the deep-seated urge to reproduce and enshrine the manifold excellence that he...
  Part I. Nightmare
  Part II. Random Leaves from My Diary
  Back in 1945, at the close of my course as a junior seminarian in Christ-the- King College, Onitsha, where I had done my secondary school studies; an idea got into my head to keep a diary. The first entry in it is dated Thursday, the 13th of December, 1945, the very day I quit the school, after finishing the Senior Cambridge exams...
  Part III. Will We Make or Mar
  One year has rolled round since ABBIA came into being. In the very first number, in February 1963, an appeal went out entreating us to bear a hand in this undertaking, an enterprise wide in scope and deep in merit. And in answer to this call, we launched out with zest into diverse fields — history, ethnology, literature, religion, economics, education, language, the fine arts. It...
  Part IV. Under the Sign of the Rising Sun
  With the Morning Sun for Symbol, President Ahmadou Ahidjo and Vice- President John Ngu Foncha have won an overwhelming mandate from the Cameroon people.
  If ever there was a date-making event in Cameroon history, this is it; for never before, since the hour when this country awoke from political slumber, has an agreement as spectacular and as unanimous as this ever been readied...
  Part V. The Task of Today
  The political chiefs, who, for fifteen years or so, have shared in shaping West Cameroon, and, who, over the issue of Reunification, split into two tendencies, have decided, at last, to come together once again, to form a new government, and to work together as from hence.
  I was a personal witness of all that passed, before this point was reached, and I can testify that it was; move notable for the lucidness that was evident...
  Part VI. A Case for Early Bilingualism
  This is far from idle bragging. We need but a cursory glance at the story of the world to see unmistakably the tremendous power that language possesses to overthrow and destroy, to pull down and demolish; to plant and to build. Any movement that ever shook the world to its foundations, that ever sent kingly crowns rolling in the mire, had its writers and its orators...
  Part VII. Idea of Literature
  pp. 271-324
  What is Art, what is Science, why are the Fine Arts fine, what are the intrinsic norms for classifying them in logical, hierarchical order, what the essence and substance of the Beautiful and the Sublime; what is Literature, what its intrinsic inherent characteristics, what its primordial purpose; are its norms of yesteryear, norms, thanks to which, certain writers of the past have become deathless; are these norms pertinent in our time and deserve careful...
  E-ISBN-13: 9789956727810
  Print-ISBN-13: 9789956727063
  OCLC Number: 807981609
  MUSE Marc Record: Download for The Task of Today and Other Seminal Essays
  Genuine Intellectuals. Academic and Social Responsibilities of Universities in Africa: Academic and Social Responsibilities of Universities in Africa