I consider being asked to review this monumental book a great honour which I do not take lightly. The size of the book may look intimidating, at over 800 pages but believe me when I say that when you start reading it, you will not like to put it down. It is a personal story told with sincerity and deep passion. For a man who has come through the furnace of so much suffering and pain, one would expect that the book will be the account of a man who has been a victim of treachery, backstabbing, perfidy, intrigues, bitterness, anger, deception, betrayal. So, one would expect the pages of the book to be dripping with the vituperations of a broken soul.
The reader will be right to expect that this book will be the biography to end all biographies and accounts of Nigeria’s chequered history through three coups and a civil war. If you are expecting any revelations from declassified documents, private papers and notes, the reader might be disappointed. The reasons is that, from the beginning, the author confesses that: I want to emphasise that I am telling my story without access to my crucial personal records since many important documents taken from my desk after my removal in July 1975 were discarded by those who succeeded me. Other documents that survived were destroyed by two fire incidents in Bakori and Kaduna(xxi). Yet, none of this diminishes the book which obviously was written straight from whatever he could remember.
