The President and the Diplomat

By KAYODE TAIWO OJURI

THE PRESIDENT AND THE DIPLOMAT

This story is set against the historical background of an independent but turbulent 1960s Nigeria, divided by civil war, united by the promise of an oil fuelled prosperity for all in the early 1970s, which quickly turns into prosperity for the well-connected few and a nightmarish, corruption induced suffering for the masses. This story is of a President serious about tackling the negative issues in his country and serious about building a more just society. It also shows how the best of us can succumb to temptations if care is not taken.

What had shaped him? The poverty he experienced as a youth which had, at one point, almost cost him his life:

"Now and again he tried his hands at pick-pocketing. Alas, on one such pick-pocketing expedition he was caught red-handed, and a lynch mob quickly gathered round him, baying for his blood. Blows rained down upon him, the ferocity of the attack cutting open his body in several places, spilling blood. But his wounds were not enough to pacify the mob. The sight of his blood only made them more bloodthirsty. A vehicle tyre was found and forced around his neck and shoulders. He fought desperately like a cornered animal, pushing the tyre off his neck and kicking against the jerry can of kerosene that someone had produced. The more he fought, the more determined the lynch mob grew, and soon his strength began to wane...............

This was jungle justice at its most primeval form. With tears running down his cheeks, he bowed his head, completely spent, reluctantly accepting his gruesome fate. He felt the moisture of the kerosene poured over his head and down his back, and waited for the flames..............."

He had also served in the military and saw what man can do to man while serving with ECOMOG and on the killing fields of Rwanda...............

But he is nursing a secret. Before becoming President he had a drunken one night stand with a married diplomat in London, impregnating her. Years pass with no one the wiser about the identity of the father of the female child, except of course the lady diplomat. Then things start to unravel when the child ends up in hospital in urgent need of blood from a donor - a donor who possesses the same kind of rare blood type as the child. The only person in the country with the same type of blood is now the President of the nation, while the child's father - the man known as her father - is the President's top diplomat at the UN.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0F28M3MMN
• ISBN13: 9798312789638
• Release Date: February 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 132 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"