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Subscribe for 10 copies of Timeless for 3 months at the subscription rate of N250 per copy to total N7,500, pay and confirm your subscription latest by Friday Dec 17. The first 4 people to do so
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08026861642. 

What does Christmas mean to you?

We write to invite you to partake in the upcoming December Christmas Issue of our magazine - Timeless. We would love if you can share with our readers what Christmas means to you - in not more than 300-500 words -

Kindly send your contributions to our email - timelesscourage@yahoo.co.uk or reply on our Facebook page.

Enjoy a TIMELESS Christmas

Win a Mona Matthews Sandals by doing the following:

Subscribe for 10 copies of Timeless for 3 months at the subscription rate of N250 per copy to total N7,500, pay and confirm your subscription latest by Friday Dec 3. The first 4 people to do so automatically win these sandals. No raffle draws. Simply pay into TIMELESS COURAGE PUBLISHING LIMITED Oceanic Bank Account No 0351101005381 and once you do, send your name, phone number, and teller details by email to timelesscourage@yahoo.co.uk or SMS 08026861642. 

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Mai Nasara wins Nigeria Prize for Literature

On Monday, October 10, 2011 at a world press conference held at the Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos, Nigeria, Mai Nasara, was declared the winner of the 2011 Nigerian Prize for Literature.

According to the judges, “After an exhaustive discussion of each of the three finalists, Eno’s Story by Ayodele Olofintuade, Chinyere Obi-Obasi’s The Great Fall and The Missing Clock by Mai Nasara, we decided that The Missing Clock by Mai Nasara is the winner.” Earlier on September 6, the Advisory Board for the prize, headed by Emeritus Professor Ayo Banjo, had approved and announced to the literary community a final shortlist of three books out of the initial shortlist of six.

The six works made the final cut from the 126 books submitted for the 2011 edition awarded for children's literature.

Mai Nasara is the pen name of Adeleke Adeyemi, a journalist and science communicator with interests as varied as girl-child education, television/film, tennis, poetry, biking, bird-watching, languages, and leadership studies.

Based on his belief that “the stories people tell have a way of taking care of them” (Barry L. Lopez), he is at work to set up a network of children’s libraries across Africa, starting from his native Nigeria.

Set to come after his critically acclaimed first children’s book, “The Missing Clock”, winner of the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2011, is another Reversal-Of-Fortune (ROF) story titled “Danfo Boy”. On his inclination to writing children's books, he says “It boils down to a desire to draw attention to the difference children can make. And thus make a difference for the child. Children have an astounding problem-solving slant in their thinking that adults have been taking for granted and thus untapped. I’ve been involved in their lives in various capacities: Sunday school, summer school literary/environmental awareness campaigns, etc.” 

Maddened by the toll it takes on children, ‘Leke, as he is also fondly known, is active in the anti-malaria media campaign in Africa; from Nigeria to Ghana and Tanzania, with articles in specialised journals like “Eyes on Malaria” (Ghana); he has also written and produced songs in aid of the fight against malaria, like “One Little Mosquito” and “To Keep Malaria On the Run, Keep Our Gutters Running”.

He was one of a select crop of young journalists from Africa sponsored by the department for International development (DfID) of the British Government to Kenya, in 2009, for “Better Science Reporting” Workshop, after an earlier one at the International Institute of Agricultural Research (IITA) Ibadan. He came back from Kenya to set up Science Café Nigeria, which organised the 2010 AMMREN World Malaria Day Forum in Lagos.

For his 40th birthday (October 31, 2011), he plans to plant 40 trees in every town, from his childhood Katsina, to Akure, Ife, Owo, Kano, Kaduna, Zaria, Jos and Lagos, every place he has lived in up to 40 days, over the course of his life till date – as a way of offsetting (i.e. erasing) his carbon footprint!
Mai Nasara has been a staff and editorial writer with Timeless since 2006 and a copy editor with Next Newspaper since early 2011. He was educated at Government College, Katsina, the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife and the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he earned his first degree in Geology. He is married to Wosilat Abolore. They have a daughter, Semiloré.

TIMELESS EDITORIAL: Post-Gaddafi Libya: The Road Ahead

It was a death foretold, even by the strongman himself. He had a death-wish that quite simply wouldn’t be cured. The events of the last few weeks have been epoch-making, to say the least. The death of the Libyan strongman once described with characteristic candour by US President Ronald Reagan, as “the mad dog of the Middle East” came as an anti-climax. It is now a past that isn’t quite past.

In the wake of the nationwide civil intolerance by the populace, both armed and otherwise, starting in February and culminating in the collapse of the Gaddafi regime which had been in power for some 42 years, Libya is currently administrated by a caretaker government, known as the National Transitional Council.

A country in the Maghreb region of North Africa, Libya is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west.

With an area of almost 1.8 million square kilometres, Libya is the fourth largest country in Africa by area. The largest city, Tripoli, is home to 1.7 million of Libya’s 6.4 million people. The three traditional parts of the country are Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica.

In the wake of the death of its ‘Brother Leader’, as Gaddafi fancied himself, outpourings of predictions about the future of Libya have been torrential. While degrees of expertise vary, the simple reality is that nobody knows what happens next.

The most obvious question to ask is who will now control the Libyan state. The National Transitional Council, with Mustafa Abdel Jalil as chairman, enjoys unstinted recognition from Western governments and pockets of allied nations around the world. Yet, that is not the same thing as recognition on the streets of Libya.

Reports from the country suggest that there are other political forces on the ground, including city-based groupings come from Benghazi, Misrata, Zentan and Tripoli. There are also a number of minor militias.

Pro-Gaddafi elements still exist, especially within the cluster of clans around his hometown of Sirte, where he was killed in action, or probably executed. These are likely to demand a place in any future government. There are also the traditional tensions between Arabs and Berbers and between Islamists and secularists to factor into these equations.

It is not for nothing that the United Nations said it wanted a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding Colonel Gaddafi’s death before his burial. Even his tucking-away, in a secret location deep in the Sahara Desert, something reminiscent of the treatment meted out to the remains of Osama bin Laden, is not enough guarantee that the ghost of Gaddafi will be kept at bay.

However, in the overall interest of nation-building and fence-mending, the UN would also have to call attention to the fate of Black African members of Libyan society for it to maintain its credibility as a force for good for resolving the lingering logjam on Libya’s path to a rebirth as a nation and a democratic and peaceful society.

All the ingredients are there for a protracted insurgency along the lines of what has been witnessed in Iraq. One can only hope that commentators who argue that Libya’s terrain is not suited to guerrilla struggles, and insist that the country’s ethnic and ideological fissures are not sufficient to spark conflagration turn out to be right.

It is slippery and it is unprecedented. The road ahead for Libya is as tough as nails as it is nebulous and uncharted. As one commentator has said: “There is no political heritage, no political culture, no political institutions. In theory they existed under Gaddafi but in practice they didn’t, so the biggest challenge is building a political culture. No one has been able to vote on anything for 40 years.”