Premium Times Books and Jude Ilo’s project of change-making, By Musikilu Mojeed

At Premium Times Books, we feel like a ring-side participant in history-making, and feel both honoured and privileged for being entrusted by Jude Ilo with the noble task of giving concrete form to this vital tool he has designed for dealing with the necessity and demands of change-making.

It gives me great pleasure to be before this very distinguished gathering at this presentation of Jude Ilo’s It is Possible: Influencing Change in Nigeria, a very welcome and inspiring addition to the body of knowledge and tools available to intervene in the fairly complex reality that life has become across different spaces – and particularly Nigeria – at this point in time.

At Premium Times Books, we feel like a ring-side participant in history-making, and feel both honoured and privileged for being entrusted by Jude Ilo with the noble task of giving concrete form to this vital tool he has designed for dealing with the necessity and demands of change-making.

Jude Ilo has engaged a very bold and significant subject and theme, which is one that really touches home and has informed what many of us have carried out over the past several years, and which we keep working on relentlessly, in spite of everything that might want to make this impossible.

Most of us here – I am tempted to believe – are in the business of change, whether as agents, stakeholders or beneficiaries, while a sizeable number of us likely straddle or interface with the three levels simultaneously. Either as individuals or in groups, many belong to different communities of practice with regard to making change not only possible but equally a major reality of our personal and national lives.

At Premium Times, when we started our journalism enterprise close to a decade-and-a-half ago, it was in putting journalism at the service of deepening and sustaining democracy by creating a platform for accountability in governance, and other forms of public or private services. This is one important level of seeking and being an agency for change.

It has also been about lending our platform to give voice to other agents and agencies for change, so that their messages travel far and make the desired impact. This is a vision that has also informed our work in Premium Times Books.

Not a few will disagree with the fact or thesis that we live in very peculiar times, both locally and globally, in which there are all sorts of pressures and distortions – from and by the state – on different aspects of our experience as citizens – from healthcare to education, nutrition, and the general quality of life.

At Premium Times Books, we are on a mission to keep publishing books that continually deepen knowledge on important aspects of our lives, and which continue to serve as crucial resources for engaging with our histories and experiences. It is all about fostering the human capacity to keep making change possible.

No doubt, things are very difficult in Nigeria at this point, if not over the past decades, which has made many to keep thinking and acting in ways that could resolve much of these difficulties, making the business of change very crucial, and important. And, one which we all need to be equipped to deal with. This is the knowledge that Jude Ilo has put before us in this important book.

At Premium Times Books, we are proud to be associated with Jude Ilo and the leadership of Thoughts and Mace Advisory, for deeming us fit to publish this primer on their behalf. It is a manual and roadmap that is essential to all students, scholars, agents and practitioners of change.

Premium Times Books has three principal missions, which is to expand the reading public in Nigeria, to make essential books easily available to the reading public and to bring books about Nigeria published in Europe, America and elsewhere home to Nigeria.

In this light, we have a growing catalogue of highly remarkable books and titles, from Naija No Dey Carry Last, by the late distinguished Professor Pius Adesanmi, to the Boko Haram trilogy anchored by Professor Raufu Mustapha – from Overcoming Boko Haram, to Sects and Social Disorder, Creed and Grievance; also, the greatly insightful Quranic Schools in Northern Nigeria by Hannah Hoechner; the piquant voyages around nationhood in Remaking Nigeria: Sixty Years, Sixty Voices and We are All Biafrans by Chido Onumah; ground-cutting studies such as Dr Omoniyi Ibietan’s Cyber Politics, and The Sokoto Caliphate by Murray Last. There is also my own very well received book, The Letterman: Inside the Secret Letters of former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, and Azu Ishiekwene’s literary gem on the media, Writing for Media and Monetising It, among a growing list of noteworthy titles that are about to be released.

At Premium Times Books, we are on a mission to keep publishing books that continually deepen knowledge on important aspects of our lives, and which continue to serve as crucial resources for engaging with our histories and experiences. It is all about fostering the human capacity to keep making change possible.

Musikilu Mojeed, the author of The Letterman: Inside the Secret Letters of former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, is the Editor-in-Chief and Chief Operating Officer of the Premium Times Group.

This is the text of the remarks made at the public presentation of “It is Possible: Influencing Change in Nigeria” at the Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja on Monday, 14, October.