By Akinwamide Nifemi
I wanted to read this book because I was curious about what Toke Makinwa would have to say in her in. I wanted to understand Toke’s urgency in writing a book about her life. My hinge guts told me it wasn’t about her achievements. I was anxious to lay my hands on the book before it got sold out in just a week of launching.
I must commend Toke for putting into words clearly how her parents died and how she felt. She was able to encapsulate the horror of losing both parents at an early stage of her life. Many don’t come out of such horrors. I felt her pain too, it was clear this is an experience she often relives.
Toke has gone through some really tough times, no doubt. But, you can’t heal completely if you still feel the pains inflicted by others and reminisce on them. This was so throughout the book and according to the prologue, “this book is not a tell all but a must tell” was obviously a “tall tale”. It is a TELL ALL. If it was a must tell, then she would only give vital information. Should the title have been “How Maje and his other women almost ruined my life” is something we should look at for another day?
Like I said earlier, you can’t heal if you haven’t moved on from the past. If you write a book that contain just one name (Maje) 378 times in a 14 chapter book, you have not moved on. Hence, only one chapter (which was the last chapter) was dedicated to Toke’s lessons learnt, her responsibilities from the failed relationship and her advice to women on what to do if they found themselves in her situation. If she had built the book on this plot and used vital information from her own experience to bring the various points home, the book could have been close to a “classic”.
If she needed to tell her life story, there were other means to that but here we are in a country like Nigeria where the norm is the peak and celebrities or powerful people get away with anything. Miss Makinwa clap for yourself because it is an achievement to have your books sold out in just a week. It is laudable and you are obviously smiling to the bank especially with the money teaser from Dbanj. My advice is that you start a foundation that helps young ladies who are going through the same hurdles of life to be able to get back on their feet. We are in a country where ladies have no idea what a prenuptial agreement is and this could also be a way to give back to the society except the intent was to make money from it from the very moment you decided to write the book which I would like to doubt. I am sure there is going to be tours and more accolades to the book “On Becoming” and I wish you the very best in your other endeavors.
Akinwamide Nifemi I rest my case
