Sentenced

Chinedu Kizzito Uwalaka

           

A tree that was once struck by lightning is never

scared to see the sky darken with rain clouds.

An Infinity jeep with a personalised inscription on the number plate sliced through the suffusing air on the quiet street of a rescinding day. The tinted glasses conceal its occupants except with a careful study of the inscription on the number plate; NSG-C-Boss which meant ‘naira smells good with the Boss’.

Behind the Infinity Jeep, an escort Hilux car kept pace in the drove and together, they raced towards a building with a sky-high perimeter walls, weirdly barbed wires. The sensor active security gate opened to allow the vehicles drove in.

At the parking lot, the jeep pulled over and the escort car grinded to a halt. Two men jumped out with feet of alacrity, their hands firmly grasped AK 47 rifles and stood astride on the ground. Their eyes gleamed behind the dark glasses.

The boots on their feet clapped with sturdy weirdness. It meant no harm to the interlocking blocks that symmetrically filled the expanse of the compound’s floor. A crisscross of artistically patterned paints of red, yellow and green enchanted a unified fascination.

Clinically mowed grasses set the triangularly shaped lawns pheering at the flowers that stood above them. Flowers in the circular ring treasured the company of the fountains. At the fringes bordering the fence, the plants stood tall and flapped their comeliness gained from the grace of daily watering.

Continually, fragrance emitted from them to sweeten the senses of every guest. The white painted two-storey building had a central positioning as a damsel before the king for a final selection. A stain-free orange yellow colour gave a ribbon’s beauty at the baselines of the building.

                        Boss stepped out of the jeep dressed in a white toughly starched Italian silk. A stick of cigar stuck to his mouth and a gold walking stick supported his weight, stylishly. He really could walk without it. A macho looking man stepped out with him and walked into the building with Boss’ briefcase.

“Hello, come on,” said the Boss, bending to the door to signal the man seated on the front seat of the jeep.  

“Okay sir,” said Tochi and stepped out with difficulty because of the bruises on his right hand. He could not hide his fascination of what he saw. It did not look like hospital to him but if it was then his life was set to change, he thought. 

“Come with me, it’s my house…you’ll be okay,” said Boss, walking along into the building.

Tochi followed with deliberate strides, admiring the scenery that energized the zephyr. In the sitting room, the white leathered cushion chair complimented the classical layout design of the space. The chairs, arranged in a semi-circle stared at the resplendent centre table. Tochi felt rebuffed to sit on the chair.

“Don’t sit yet,” said Boss with a rustled voice. “Not in that condition,” he added.

“Yes sir,” said Tochi, looking at the stain of blood on him and confused that his thoughts revealed him.

Otti was one of Boss’ boys. He walked in at the whistle of Boss, dressed in black suit and stood metres away to get his orders.

“Take him to the guest room,” said Boss to Otti.  “Let him bath, change into decent attire and bring him back,” said Boss.

“Yes sir,” said Otti, turning to the new guest of the house. He beckoned on him to follow and together, they walked out and crossed the stripe that divided the main building from another smaller structure with integrated apartments. Otti led Tochi into a suite, “the bathroom…there…be fast,” he said and withdrew.

The bath was warm and the wound thoroughly massaged. When Tochi stepped out of the bathroom, he saw neatly ironed safari shirt and trousers on the bed, and a pair of slippers was on the floor. He wore them and thanked his god who led him in the path of Boss.

Otti returned and led Tochi back to the sitting room.  Boss was impressed with the new look of his guest.

“Sit down”, said Boss in a quiet tone. “The table will be set soon.” Boss got up from where he sat, walked through a door and disappeared.

Tochi moped at the giant size portrait of Boss placed near the self-supported TV set. He pulled his feet out of the slippers to have direct feeling of the enamelled ties succinctly laid. Tochi relished in his experience of a lifetime achievement. He considered Boss being barely two or three years older than he was with luck working for him.

Tochi did not know when he sat down in the chair overwhelmed by the feeling of been in heaven.  In his trance, he rode in opulence and was already a lord over many attendants.

“Tochi, can you hear me, I’m asking you…where do you live?” said Boss, sitting in the opposite direction with a cigar in his hand.

“Yes,” Tochi awaken from his trance. “Sorry, I live everywhere that the day meets me and the night leaves me,” said Tochi smiling.

“I mean your house?”

“I have no house, sir.”

“Your relations?” said Boss, puffing smoke out of his mouth. The smell mixed with the air fresher dispelled by the steaming air conditional.

“None, sir”, Tochi said.

“Where did you grow up then, who brought you up…your parents, I mean?” said Boss, breaking the ash of the cigar into the ashtray that sat on the glass stool beside the chair.

“I grew up as a mate in the abandoned baby’s home,” said Tochi.

“Oh, I see,” Boss dropped off some ashes on the tray and continued smoking.

“Yes,” said Tochi with excitement. He wanted ask Boss a question about the meal he promised. But he felt restrained.

“What do you do for a living?” said Boss.

“I’m a labourer and wonderer,” said Tochi.

“Labouring…for what and how long?”

“I labour for everything…eighteen years now…on the street.”

“Eighteen years, wow!” said Boss looking at him closely. “Does the experience bring hell closer?”

“Yes sir, I live in it everyday but today, I’m in the best part of heaven here,” said Tochi, thinking that the answer suited the looks he saw in Boss’ eyes. 

Boss stood up slowly from his seat and walked across the floor. He dragged from the cigar and swallowed so that the smoke emitted through the month, nose and ears.

“Well, Tochi,” said Boss, halting. “You’ll join me in my business…no hard works but you’ll work smart.”

“Yes sir,” said Tochi, thinking that any business that provided Boss so much comfort would be a good one.

“You will?”

“Yes sir.”

“That’s okay…” said Boss, turning his back on Tochi. He measured five feet and two inches in height and had chubby cheeks. “Come to table then, table is set.” He walked to the dinning table and sat at the head of it.  “We’d have killed you when you ran into my car. The doctor will be by the time you finished eating.”

            “What I do on the road is not strange, that’s what I see in this country.  Everybody is a beggar and the wicked beggars are thieves either with the lips, pen or the gun.  You see, I grew up on the street and will die there,” said Tochi, putting a spoonful of rice into his month.  “Your car is the fifth that has hit me.”

“You must be very strong then but that’s a bad way of dying,” said Boss calmly.  

“Somebody needs to kill me…it’s the only gift I have to offer. The police shot twice, leaving scars here,” said Tochi, standing up to pull up his clothes to reveal them.

“Not now, just eat, okay, life is a risk but not the way you’re taking it,” said Boss.

“Sometimes, I pray for pardon, but what is my crime. Only my mother knows why she wrapped me in the Indomie carton two days after I was born and dumped on the refuse heap near Ikanete junction.  My prison life started then.”

“You’ve live a free man…free,” said Boss.

“Not in my mother eyes, I’m so guilty to be deprived her love. So early, she sentenced me.”

“Eat some more,” said Boss, pouring some Camus wine into the cup. He sipped to soothe his feeling. He studied Tochi to know what class he fitted in the category of his workers. “It’s ok,” he added.

“Sir…can I join you right away?” said Tochi, with stuck of chicken meat in his month.

“Drugs, hard drugs,” said Boss, dissecting the lump of meat with the cutleries. “That’s what we do and you’d stop hanging on the streets to ask for arms. If you work for me, you’ll travel abroad often.”

“I like it, you’re kind. Of all those who had hit me on the road, you’re the only one so kind and generous,” said Tochi, scratching his bony cheek.

Tochi had heard of hard drugs and smoked some hemp. Now, he was going to work with a baron. He poured some wine into the cup and sipped. Enthralled by the feeling, he filled his and emptied it. He conjectured that soon, he would live in such opulence like Boss.

The Wall

Karen Jennings

At first, it was a novelty and wasn’t sure how to behave. For a time he stood in the centre of the room, then, stepping forward to the window, he looked out. Through it; a metre away, he saw the wall of the opposite building. In the days that followed, he stayed in the room, thinking of no other thing than looking out through the window.

In the mornings and evenings when the water boiled on the stove, steaming up the glass, he would wipe the pane carefully and noticed the way the bricks rippled and steadied before him. He did not know what he was looking for; there was nothing to see, really. The wall remained unchanged.

With time, he learnt the pattern of the bricks; the neat rows, and the lines of cement. He felt their shapes filling him up. By the end of the week, the bricks sat in his eyes so that when the window misted he no longer needed to wipe it clean. He found a newspaper and some tapes to cover the window. After that he began looking down when he was in the room.

***

In the early morning, cool air touched his cheeks and ears as he walked. From beyond the streets and buildings, there was a smell of salt and the sound of calling gulls. He walked with his hands in his pockets, taking small and slowed steps, careful to balance as he climbed off and onto pavements. Before him the sky was grey over a grey mountain, behind him the sun begins to show pink. To his left the flower sellers unpacked.

Cramping the pavement, buckets and buckets of flowers were unloaded from vans. There was nowhere to walk. He stood for a while and watched. After a night alone in the room, all the colours surprised him by the chattering of men and women, by the smell of flowers that weighed him down. By nightfall, he knew, they will be gone, the pavement scattered with the remains. Now the breath of flowers was heavy in the air.

It was uncertain where he came from and he had no memory of anything before; only of the place where they sold flowers. It was where he, once, chose to make a nest for himself and where he had continued to return night after night. It was there that he breathed all night of the damp smell of the pavement on which the content of the buckets emptied, where leaves and petals lay. 

He remembered the scent at dawn, when the trucks arrived, laden with their buckets of flowers, loud with the flower sellers calling out to each other. At this cue he would stretch and unstiffen, rising to earn a few coins by unloading the trucks. The names he never bothered to learn, but he knew, still knows, each flower by its scent. Come back at six, they’d say. We’ll pay you to help us pack away. But he never did. He could not risk having money on him after dark.

He continued to walk, passing shops now, keeping his eyes on the ground, watching where he stepped. His heart taught him the observance’s rule. He learnt it years ago; scanning pavements and gutters for coins with which he could buy single sweets, single cigarettes. He was yet to unlearn the habit, and often he would stoop for brown coins, despite the humiliation of manoeuvring his legs in such a way that made it possible.

Behind him, three women talked loudly, shouted at each other as they walked side by side. Their voices caught him; calling, they pass him, turned their heads slightly to look at him, greet him. He lowered his head further, did not acknowledge them. He waited for them to turn a corner before he continued walking up the street. At the traffic lights he stopped. That was where he would stand for the rest of the day.

 By noon, his knee locked. By three, he would be in pain but he could not sit. If he sat he was glared at, resentment. Therefore, he stood. It was still early, only a few cars passed, the drivers frowning. As he stood, he felt the wall before him. The rows of bricks were around him; he thought about them, tasted them. He rarely spoke and if he did, the wall was on his tongue. His words patterned into bricks and cement.

Standing there, he could see back down the long road. Towards the end of the road, he knew, in a circle of traffic, was an island with a fountain. He could not get to it nowadays; he was not agile enough to dart through the moving cars, but as a boy, he spent long afternoons there, cooling his feet in the water. He remembered the mulch of litter and bird droppings that lined the fountain, how they sucked at his toes, how they clouded and pooled around his feet.

With seagulls and pigeons sitting nearby, he longed for sunset, staring back up towards the city, watching as the light faded slowly behind the mountain. It was the Christmas lights he was waiting for, for that moment when the road before him would become a mass of shapes and shifting lights, everything colouring and moving, indistinguishable, alive, against a black sky.

The day was warmer. Around him, there was noise. Cars slow and speed up. Vendors called to each other as they set up their stalls on the pavements. Shop owners swept, washed windows, men and women walked to work, looked clean and tired.  Everywhere, people were on the move. Everything was moving.

All around him, the city seemed to grow taller. Buildings stretched above him. He felt drawn out; he felt his head pulled upwards, his face pulled towards the sky. He could not look down. His head was full of car fumes, of sea air, of flowers and coffee. His tongue felt bound; his eyes took in the sky and the tops of the buildings. In all of that, the noise and motion, the elongating and stretching, he stood still as the city lengthened around him and the scent of the morning filled his nostrils.

Thieving Chiefs

James Lisandro Jnr.

A spade is not a wood in the hands of villagers

Whose valleys have deep belly where

Mild or wild pigs do not live encaged with loneliness,

Let no pilferer gain from their folly,

The comfort on a bull is fierce warning

If a masquerade reveals his face at the square

The beat and pump dies like ineffective herbs on a wound,

Let no greedy chiefs walk away in chameleon’s garment

Shoot at the watchers that yearns outside the box

Where a prepaid solace will snap at the jury

Propelled fury gapping at their dark hearts

Let nemesis assures them of a fair share.

James Lisandro Jnr. is transformational writer who hails from the deep west of Nigeria. His works have been published on Moraks’ Blog, Palapala magazine, YNAIJA magazine and www.omojuwa.com. James is hopes that one day Africa will assume its greatness and be respected. www.facebook.com/lisadrojnr

Bereft Of Love

Chinedu Kizzito Uwalaka

                          When a man’s heart is eaten

     up by lust he loses his senses.

A handful of people gathered in front of Mr. Vitalis’ house. They were sympathisers and hardly confined to a permanent position. Some hung by the door while others walked about. Another group sort support on the scrapped car packed metres away from the building in the compound.

“Chai, so dis woman don take like that go!” said a female sympathiser in Pidgin English. 

Forlorn cast on every face and most of them folded their hands across their chests.

“Wetin dem say kill lam?” a man said.

“Nawa…nobodi no,” replied the woman who lived next-door to Mr. Vitalis.

They sighed and shrugged their shoulders. Sad news never pampered faces with smiles except the faces of pitched enemies whose fervent prayers attracted such answers.

“Where em husband dey now?” another neighbour said.

“Inside the house, poor man” said a sympathiser.

“What about his son Chike?” the neighbour said.

“Nobodi no, they say na playboy,” said the same woman.

Everybody’s attention pulled at the black 190E Mercedes Benz car that drove in. The door opened and Chike walked out. He stood a while, looked at the spattered crowd that collected in two’s, three’s and four’s in the compound. His mind went to it and he walked into the room, not talking to anybody. 

“Old boy,” said Chike to his father, “I didn’t know you were serious.” He sat on the mat with his father amidst friends and relations. 

“It’s now you think of returning?” said Mr. Vitalis.

“What did I do wrong?” Chike spread his arms in bewilderment.

“For one week now, you’ve be gone and ignored calls from me until this morning?” said Mr. Vitalis, sternly.

“Business…from one hotel to the other,” said Chike.

“It doesn’t stop you from checking back home to know how your mother, at least, was fairing.”

Chike remained silent.

“You know your mother was sick…she had your name on her lips in her dead,” Mr. Vitalis clipped his hands together across his chest.

The silence was smashed by mutters from sympathisers.  .

“But dad I . . .?” said Chike, with an emotion-ridden voice.

 “Shush…, but what? You’re a worthless son. I don’t know why you choose to come to this family. You would have come to this world through other parents,” Mr. Vitalis said.

Grin…. grin… Chike’s phone rang and he received the call smiling.

“Ah! B.J,” said Chike into the phone. “B.J what’s up, So how far, did you get the babes...oh yeah, the night is not going to be easy, you know...in the hotel, I’m right on my way.” Chike ended the call and looked at his father.

“Just imagine you…” said Mr. Vitalis.

“You’ve always told me how worthless I am. I thank you for training me through university but I can’t do things your way. We’ll bury mama next weekend…I shall come back tomorrow to talk with you as a son; a bad one,” Chike looked at the faces in the room and stood up. “It’ll be a gathering of who is who with all my political and business friends in attendance. Everything turns into an opportunity in life, you know?” Chike walked out, entered his car and revved off.

Vain Merriments

 James Lisandro Jnr.

Hear them chanting, singing and dancing

Their laughter lurked beneath mourning faces

Panting like leopards on the run

With legs shaking from the thighs

Because health was lost health from the sinew,

Their deceptive smiles were hideous imperfections

With retrogressive impartations as crazy partakers

Walking round modern and mundane shrines  

With intoning incantations like herbalists

Seeking healing for infections yet sowing ominous seeds

They watch the trees giving up its health and life

The recession unclipping their delight to see more dead;

They show off the joy of a slave with lie-infected tongue

Convincing his master that he speaks the truth to keep his life,

The end will not come like torrential rain

That lives in a room where hope remains as a relief material,

Doers and those who approve of ruthless offences will become

Seeds in the hand a farmer who plants in heat infested soil

And wait without hope for produces of gnashed teeth.

James Lisandro Jnr. is transformational writer who hails from the deep west of Nigeria. His works have been published on Moraks’ Blog, Palapala magazine, YNAIJA magazine and www.omojuwa.com. James is hopes that one day Africa will assume its greatness and respected.

www.facebook.com/lisadrojnr

Call For Submissions

Pitakwa Review seeks submissions for its forthcoming issue. Emerging and published writers are encouraged to submit their best and outstanding works to us. All genres of prose and poetry and their styles are considered. Send your best short stories of romance, science fiction, comics, and features writing, including metrical poetry or rhyme that are exceedingly contemporary/experimental.

Let’s also have your photography, digital art, reviews and essays.

You may, of course, explore varied themes in your writing.

Submission Guidelines

* All submissions must be previously unpublished in a book or anthology although they may have appeared in a journal or newsletter, so long as the writers own copyrights to the works.

* All submissions must be the entrant’s own original work.

* We accept simultaneous submissions, provided you inform us if your work is accepted elsewhere for publication.

* Each poem must not be more than one page or 33 lines in length.

* Each writer may submit up to 3 poems only.

*Each writing in prose and essay including book or film review must not be more than 2500 words.

* The entry should include a short biography of the writer in not more than 200 words.

*Each writer may also send his/her picture saved in .jpeg or .jpg format.

*All submissions must be in English.

*Submissions must be received by June 30, 2011, and should be sent by MS Word to:

pitakwareview@gmail.com.

The subject line of the email should read: Web Submissions-June.

Only shortlisted contributors will be contacted by our editors.



*Contact Information:

*For inquiries: pitakwareview@gmail.com

*For submissions: pitakwareview@gmail.com

*Website: http://www.pitakwareview.blogspot.com/

The Passion Of A Revolutionist

Book Title: The Twelve-Day Revolution

Author: Major Isaac Jasper Adaka Bori

Publisher: Idoko Umeh Publishers, Nigeria

Pp: 158.

By: Tamunobarabi Ibulubo

There is no pretension about it. Every word and page composition depicts that. And it is a commendable style of writing adopted by the author of the book, The Twelve-Day Revolution.

This subtle tint though compellingly forceful, keeps the reader curious to find the heroic traits of the chief character in the narration. The first person narration gives it that impetus, though limited of the account. And it is almost conversational where the narrative voice abruptly could stop either to digress or just refused to provide more information. But always it is done with an apology rendered to keep the reader-author’s contract on for the appreciation of the central issues of the revolution.  

The author reconstructs the heroic personality of Isaac Boro. He is the young Ijaw [Izon] son, most notable in Nigerian history as the person who wanted liberation at all costs, even to the point of death for the Ijaws. He turns down every attempt to bribe him to discard his dream for the Niger Delta people. It is just difficult for the reader to enjoy any room of liberty to resist, at the first instance, the biases in the narration of the issues. This is not to undermine the fact that the reader do have taste and time liberty to judge otherwise. And as the reader goes through the pages, he would be confronted with that magnitude of revolution talked about but may not succumb.

Although, rejected and vehemently opposed, the revolution still survives till this moment. Read the book to have your judgement if truly, such heroic personality could be deduced from the chief character of the book.

Isaac Boro was born in Oloibiri on 10^th September 1938. Oloibiri is the place where oil was first struck in commercial quantity located in the present Bayelsa State of Niger Delta Region in Nigeria. He grew up partly in Port Harcourt and in Kaiama, most of the time travelling with his father who was headmaster at the mission’s school.

He personally experienced gross injustice and monstrous corruption in the Nigerian system. He does not hide his anger against what he perceived as an unjust annexing of Niger Delta into the Nigeria in 1914. And he is uncomfortable with the refusal by the colonial masters to accord due consideration to the distinct characteristic of the people. So that it was obvious from the time of Nigeria political independence that Niger Delta would not always endure that unholy solemnisation. The only solace he has at the time was in Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who gave kind consideration to Niger Delta.

So Isaac Boro started to team up with like minds. Together they find the path that leads to liberation of the region from the claws of a corrupt system. A system that is so frustrating that he said; “we are revolutionaries who want to save our people, the Ijaws, from slavery and cheating”. This is especially so because the Ijaws, the fourth largest ethnic group were denied the status enjoyed by the Hausa, Yoruba and Igbos. This is in spite of the face that lays the region lays the ‘golden egg’ that sustains Nigeria’s economy. You will read the book for yourself to get at the details. So this work will not recluse into such retelling of the story.

The book is an autobiographical rendition of the Isaac Boro’s reasons for staging the revolution which lasted for twelve days. And it was the first of such bold attempt to seek freedom from the injustice and corruption that had clogged the wheel of meaningful national growth.  Doing so, Isaac Boro with some of his faithful friends like Samuel Onwuru and Nothingham Dick who stuck with him from the beginning to the end, fought for liberation.

The first recruits were unemployed youths who had been charged to court for their inability to pay tax. They volunteered like other willing youths for the Isaac Boro-led Niger Delta Volunteer Service.

So on February 1966, the revolution started but by the 7^th March 1966, the Federal Forces had rounded them up and charged them with treason in the sixty days court trial. Isaac, Samuel and Nothingham were the “hens” before the judge, prosecutor and investigators who were “foxes”.

The book is written into sixteen chapters. There is an almost aloft nature given to the paragraphing style. If it is intentional, the effect intended is visible. They create the sequence of time, thought, plan and give a general direction to the movement felt in the narration. It does so with the most simple but expressive language that brings to the fore the import and the spirit of the story.

The book does not make any attempt at masking identity of geographical setting, characters and issues as it is common with most autobiographies. This Niger Delta son and his people feel and live in fetters. So he tries to retain his pride and live within the ambit of the law. This is evident in his dealings with the people as a school teacher at the rank of a second headmaster, a police man of a Divisional Inspector rank, a student union government leader at University of Nigeria and as a public servant with the University of Lagos as a Technical Officer. That liberation is the only option for the Ijaw people to live with pride, dignity and benefit from the resources endowed in the region is not lost in his commitment to the cause.

He is opposed by the entire system. And in response, he consults with reliable allies, a development that takes him to Togo and Ghana. But he is unable to muster the local people effectively to connect to his cause. Perhaps the time is ripe for the revolution and he is impatient with the people. He is propelled by the infamous military action of January 1966 in Nigeria that resulted in the death of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.

Being privy to plans by the Igbos to take over the central government, he is apprehensive that the Ijaws might suffer further subjugation. His belief is stronger for the Niger Delta People Republic with sixteen Ijaw clans of Apoi, Tarakiri, Kabouowei, Mein, Gbaran, Okogba, Kolokuma, Ogboin, Debe, Atisa, Buseni, Kalabari, Okrika, Opubu, Opokuma and Ogbia to be free from exploitation, denigrations and daily insult. His ability to treat the most grievous circumstances with a light mind becomes his greatest asset. 

And with a hundred and fifty pounds, the total emolument he receives from the University of Lagos on request becomes the start-off fund for the revolution project. He returns home with his wife Georgeinia and his friends for the struggle.

The book does have presence of the printer’s devil. It indulges itself in engaging in an argument to debunk claims of the descent of the Ijaw people that the Igbos are their forebears. And there are a total of eight pictures clustered in chapter nine. The insert adds a reality touch to the account rendered.    

*Tamunobarabi Gogo Ibulubo, with training from FRCN/BBC and NTA College, is a journalist. He writes and some of his poems with prosaic sounds, interestingly communicate idea, vision or feeling with vivid imaginary and interplay of words.  His art is a display of an individual expression of artistic essence directed towards a popular audience.And some of them have appeared in anthologies. And his work ‘Touch the Sky’ was short listed for 2009 ANA/FUNTIME children book award. His is a fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Administrators and Researchers. . He has certificates and degrees in Mass Communication, Public Relations, English Education and Business Management.

Entrancing influences of Pictures

Essentials of Photojournalism and photography,

Edited by Sunny Udeze,

Pp.144,

Rhyce Kerex Publishers.

By: Tamunobarabi Ibulubo


Photography seems to be an all comer vocation now. This is especially so because of the growing number of GSM cell phones in the hands of users. A tool it is that continues to evolve from being a smart phone to higher application types like the IPod, Iphone and Android including the BlackBerry brand.

With a full blast of multimedia support applications in these phones, the user is able to record images. And the photography comes to the viewer much as the same; image on paper. This was what the writers of the book: Essentials of Photojournalism and photography, enunciated. And a picture is still worth a thousand words.

So, the act of photography is a serious profession. And it requires requisite training for the professional to equip himself with both personal skin and adequate knowledge of the photographic tool; the camera. A trained photographer understands the photographic techniques.

This is what each of the six contributors to the book that was edited by Udeze outlined. The techniques would include a proper understanding of the camera, how it functions, knowing how to compose an image on the camera, making a good use of the lens and how much light exposure an image requires to a point where the aperture can be sufficiently manipulated to achieve the best illumination for the image. These are the same guide that the video cameraman is espoused to do his recording of any scene.

But while the photographer is given to mere composing and snapping of the ‘‘aware photograph’’ and sometimes does the ‘‘semi-aware photograph’’; all these are different types of photography, the photojournalist comes on differently.

He combines all of the afore-mentioned types with the ‘‘candid photograph’’ which gives the images factual voices because of the telling nature; an active perception of the scene. This requires of the photojournalist to have ‘‘speed, instinct, anticipation, ingenuity and presence’’, to get images snapped in the instant of the moment to retain an active telling voice of the image[s].

In the entire twelve chapters of the book, the contributors gave a rather expository outlook of the role and influence pictures have on the viewer. It is such an unequivocal authority stamped on the mind, much stronger than words alone can wield. There is an impelling order it demands when it is connected to the scene, a sense that is created on the audience when accompanying the news report.

The pin point emphasis is that picture alone has a universal language and interpretation which cannot be confused. Indeed, there is the need to give pictures a good storage, proper captioning, and not ignoring the need to engage in an effective sourcing from agencies when it is needed together with understanding how to properly arrange the picture to tell its messages.

The contributors differently asserted that while photojournalists are photographers the same cannot be said of the photographer in the reverse order. This is so because it is not all photographers that have the tacit discipline off required of a photojournalist. The modus of operandi is just not the same with the discipline of journalism eluding the mere photographers.

In fact, photography started in the 1770. At that time the killing of five Boston Patriots by the British was capture in pictures. Then there was the 1774 sociological cartoon which got wide admiration. It was Matthew Brady who popularized photography, giving it a wider spectrum of use in the field of journalism.
He took picture of Abraham Lincoln with the purpose of reconstructing the public impression of Lincoln. And that act, singularly drove Lincoln into the admiration of the America electorate who voted massively for Lincoln and he won the presidential election.

And in using picture in the journalistic sense requires that the photojournalist be guided by the need to take pictures that have human angles. He must also respect the privacy of the people in the picture and seek their consent before giving it a wide publicity as a news item.

This will steer him away from needless confrontation with the sedition articles and indeed the ethics of journalism practice. But the more bizarre the picture, the more newsworthy sense it attracts making its cost higher. But it must be within the borders of copyright.

The contributor asserted that it is increasingly difficult to see any journal of whatever nature without the evidence of what the photojournalist has done. And the alluring effect of pictures.

The book does have some typography errors and blurrily printed pages. But the effort truly has added to academic knowledge as it is written purely for instructional purposes.

 

 

*Tamunobarabi Gogo Ibulubo, with training from FRCN/BBC and NTA College, is a journalist. He writes and some of his poems with prosaic sounds, interestingly communicate idea, vision or feeling with vivid imaginary and interplay of words.  His art is a display of an individual expression of artistic essence directed towards a popular audience.And some of them have appeared in anthologies. And his work ‘Touch the Sky’ was short listed for 2009 ANA/FUNTIME children book award. His is a fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Administrators and Researchers. . He has certificates and degrees in Mass Communication, Public Relations, English Education and Business Management.

<a href="http://www.linkmaster.com/Business/" target="_blank">Link Master</a>