President-elect of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari as well as three other
Nigerians have been named among the world’s 100 most influential people
by Time Magazine.
The 3 other people on the list are former Minister of Education, Oby
Ezekwesili, bestselling author, Chimamanda Adichie and Boko Haram
leader, Abubakar Shekau.
Below is how the quartet were profiled on Time Magazine’s website:
Muhammadu Buhari – A new choice for Nigeria (by Aryn Baker)
Muhammadu Buhari made history in March by becoming the first candidate
to oust a sitting Nigerian President through the ballot box. Now he has
to live up to voters’ expectations.
From battling the Boko Haram insurgency to tackling endemic
corruption, Buhari has many challenges ahead. The greatest may be
overcoming his past as a military ruler who seized power in 1983.
Already the born-again democrat is demonstrating the inclusivity
necessary to lead a nation riven by ethnic and religious tensions.
“We must begin to heal the wounds and work toward a better future,”
he said in his April 1 victory speech. “We do this first by extending a
hand of friendship and conciliation across the political divide.” It’s a
promising start for a President-to-be who wants to leave a legacy to
match the historic conditions of his election.
Oby Ezekwesili (by Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe)
Like northern Uganda, where I live, northern Nigeria is very isolated.
For many years, the women who were abducted from our region remained
invisible.
So although I have not met Obiageli Ezekwesili, I know the
#BringBackOurGirls campaign that she championed is very important. It
would have taken a long time to raise awareness about the girls taken by
Boko Haram without her using her platform as a former Minister of
Education.
We need to remember that these girls are undergoing psychological and
maybe physical torture. So I love that the campaign says, “Bring back
our girls,” and not “Bring back my child.” Everybody is in unison with
the parents and the relatives. Everyone is feeling their pain. Everyone
will be ready to embrace the girls and offer them care and compassion if
they are rescued or manage to escape.
It has been a year, and the girls haven’t been rescued, but she has
made a difference by speaking about it. Not just speaking but shouting. I
know some people will say she is too loudmouthed. The loud mouth is
needed. People hear it.
Chimamanda Adichie – Conjurer of character (by Radhika Jones)
It’s the rare novelist who in the space of a year finds her words
sampled by Beyoncé, optioned by Lupita Nyong’o and honored with the
National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. But the Nigerian writer
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is just that sort of novelist.
A MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, Adichie writes of the complex
aftermath of Nigeria’s colonial history and her nation’s rise to
prominence in an era when immigration to the West no longer means a
one-way ticket. With her viral TEDxEuston talk, “We Should All Be
Feminists,” she found her voice as cultural critic. (You can hear it
rising midway through Beyoncé’s woman-power anthem “Flawless.”)
She sets her love stories amid civil war (Half of a Yellow Sun) and
against a backdrop of racism and migration (Americanah). But her
greatest power is as a creator of characters who struggle profoundly to
understand their place in the world.
Abubakar Shekau – Scourge of Africa (by General Carter Ham (U.S. Army, retired)
Most Americans do not yet recognize his name, but the citizens of
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, know Abubakar Shekau all too
well: he is the most violent killer their country has ever seen. Shekau
took over the terrorist organization Boko Haram in 2009 after the group
had been weakened by Nigerian government forces.
Shekau, who is believed to be in his 30s, began to stage increasingly
daring kidnapping and killing raids on schools, churches and mosques
thought by Boko Haram to be violating their interpretation of Islam. The
taking of over 200 schoolgirls in April 2014 brought Boko Haram into
the international spotlight.
By most accounts, Boko Haram has killed more than 10,000 people and
is spreading into neighboring countries. Shekau’s latest action may
finally summon a U.S. response: he has publicly aligned his group with
ISIS, the terrorist group that holds territory in Syria and Iraq and has
expanded its reach into Yemen and Libya.