Ethical Dilemma

"The Ethical Dilemma - Charting a bold and new path for ethics and values in Nigeria." The book traces the history of Nigeria's ethical challenges from 1959 to the present date, and recommends that an Agency be established under the Office of the President with a mandate to monitor and recommend corrective steps for unethical behavior in both public and private establishments. In this timely and apt book, the author travels down memory lane to draw on key aspects of the turbulent history of the geographical expression called Nigeria to attempt an analytical description of the malady he aptly calls Nigeria's ethical dilemma. To broach a subject whose scope is as expansive as the culture and ethnicity of Nigeria is diverse, the author has ingeniously sought safety in the 1999 constitutionally-prescribed seven National Ethics of Discipline, Integrity, Dignity of Labour, Social Justice, Religious Tolerance, Self-Reliance and Patriotism; in a rare literary excursion into the complex subject of ethics and values in Nigeria. Unequivocally qualified to intellectually profess on this subject, having over the past decade earned the sobriquet, 'The Apostle of Ethics,' Tajudeen Toyin-Oke has acquitted himself creditably by engaging in a sound and lucid analysis of the underlying factors responsible for the decline in ethics and values in Nigeria. He draws from his own rich personal and professional experience to tell this less than savory side of Nigeria's story. The author, in recommending a brutally-frank national self-audit, while remaining optimistic for a glorious future, suggests that, Nigeria, in holding onto methods that are a mere relic of a mixed glorious and inglorious past, needs to courageously accept that even traditions can be remade anew so that a people can step out of their 'comfort zone,' and into a new and vibrant era of genuine growth and development. He concludes that, in this season, Nigeria needs leaders who are strategic in thinking and deliberate in deed, and who are committed to working with the best interests of the people they lead in mind, and that a remarkable transformation cannot be achieved without a fundamental shift in our long-held paradigms, and most importantly, an ethical revolution. It is that ethical revolution that has been the author's avowed and passionate quest over the past one decade.