Contemplative Footsteps: from Colonial to Republican Nigeria

Born in 1939 in Gboko, Professor Shima Kaimom Gyoh grew up in a totally isolated trado-cultural environment despite Nigeria being under British Colonial rule. From Government College Keffi to University at Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, his education spanned decades of interaction with African and English culture, culminating in the career of a surgeon. He describes his status as changing from a colonial subject to a free republican citizen but still apparently the subject of tribal monarchies politically created in his lifetime! He represents the age of the complex Nigerian psyche torn into a kaleidoscopic confusion of language, dress, religion, and character. This book “tells it as it is!” and makes for engrossing and sometimes emotional reading.In his words: “the book does not quite amount to an autobiography. It is a scientific record of the contemplations of a man undergoing steep, social metamorphoses that cross continents, cultures and ages. The generation that went through this experience is dying out, so I feel the urge to leave a record before my own exit.”