When are you going to get a proper job? By Azu Ishiekwene

He was a young freelance journalist when his father asked him the question. Even though he lived to make his son worldwide, including some of the world’s most sought after newspapers and magazines, I’m not sure if his father would have withdrawn the question: When will you find a proper job? He didn’t say when his father asked him, but I wondered what the old man should think in his grave. Jonathan Power is now 83 and probably one of Europe’s most published columnists. He was a young freelance journalist when his father asked him the question. Even though he lived to make his son worldwide, including some of the world’s most sought after newspapers and magazines, I’m not sure if his father would have withdrawn the question: When will you find a proper job? Power’s father did not think of journalism as a job. Instead, he considers it a lens or a keyhole through which one looks at the world’s most striking work such as engineering or medicine. A side -bustle, in the contemporary language. It was perhaps the whole point to support him to study agricultural economics, a distant cousin – but a cousin anyway – of some of the world’s real work routes, just for his son to get lost. More than a betrayal I have known Jonathan Power for over 25 years. But I met him again in his new book, when are you going to get a proper job? It is a chronicle of his 60 years in journalism, which helped me understand why he once told me that I would be better to be a plumber than hope to make money from syndicated writing. It also helped me to understand why my son views journalism with courteous contempt. But Power’s 227-page novel-like autobiography published in 2024 by Namea is more than a son’s betrayal of his father’s wishes. It is also about relationships, love (especially Eros), travel, religion and faith in the intrinsic goodness of man. When are you going to get a proper job? Divide the life of Power into three main parts: his love/family life, his journey mostly meets his work as a foreign correspondent or lawyer for human rights, and his search for the essence of life. The heart is not smart power is a passionate man and a dull father, but a bad lover. If you discount the tragic end of the Barnes in Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, in which Dickie Barnes is a main character, you remind the life of his love and marriage how complications and unresolved issues in a marriage can even undo the best intentions, which will leave emotional scars that will not disappear. I started reading Power’s book of 15 chapter from chapter 4, entitled “My longtime friend, Nigeria’s big man”, but quickly returned to Chapter 1, “Me and me.” I should have started here. While I could easily be related to Chapter 4, which deals with the relationship of more than 40 years with one of Nigeria’s problems, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, “me and me” a more universal, human king: love. “If only I was more happy, wise, wise …”, Power writes. “I never found the clarity of the spirit, the right sound or (the) perfect woman. I died without money in the bank. ‘ He spoke to himself. The women in his life dominate two women the first more than 20 years of Power’s love story: Anne and Mary Jane. He met Anne when they both worked on the staff of Martin Luther King, and he met Mary, the Rentmeester, on the plane. For another reason, he was attracted to every woman – Anne was his philosophical soul mate, and Mary, who came afterwards, missing the Beyonce in Anne. When the tests realized after three children with Anne and one with Mary – all girls – the gardens of marriages were undermined by the foxes of incompatible individual differences. The ends were bitter. In the former novel of Power, the Human Flow, he quoted Chimamanda Adichie and said, ‘You don’t fall in love. You climb up to love. ‘ Power climbed, but fell badly. Man on the Road The book is more than a failed love story told by a journalist with a sincere, almost naive honesty. Power’s travel diary is striking, not only for his travels, but also for the purpose, people, attractions, sounds and smells, as well as the impact of some of the dramatic moments, such as when he was almost stranded in the Caribbean after losing his guide and later his wallet. His visits to Tanzania, Nigeria, Brazil, Guatemala and India provide fascinating reading. Curiosity took him on some of these visits, but the search for the truth, the desire to make a difference by chasing the lead actors – sometimes with a significant personal risk – made him return to the route. Journalism did not discover gravity, invent the submarine or divide the atom. However, this improper work can also be gratifying by sometimes giving the opportunity to change the course of history by involving those who sometimes use scientific inventions or power in devastating practices. Who knows what the world could have been if Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward did not play their role in exposing water holes, or if Oriana Fallaci did not take on the Shah of Iran? Power, who runs a turn of chapters 3 to 10, writes about his relationship with former Tanzania President Julius Nyerere, and how Ujamaa was very short of the promise of salvation despite the best intentions of the iconic leader. A Diary of Power about his encounters with influential people is devoted to his friendship with former Nigeria President Obasanjo, whom he met in the retired General’s first life as a military president. The dynamics of power’s relationship with Obasanjo are very interesting. He caressed the ego of Obasanjo when, for example, he asked testimony questions about the allegations of human rights abuse against Nigeria’s military – the most disturbing of whom was in ODI – who almost spoiled the interview. The relentless stream of presidential guests sometimes threatened its interviews. Yet he managed to navigate it as he navigates the temporary mood of his host by sometimes enduring his self -adulging game of pumpkin. Obasanjo is a bundle of contradictions, beautiful and nasty to an unequal extent. Yet Power managed to get away with the openly complimented with the ‘beautiful breasts’ of Obasanjo’s wife and teased him about the abuse of oil money, the track of all Nigerian governments. Did power get a pass because he may have contributed to saving Obasanjo’s life by talking to German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on his behalf when Sani Abacha imposed the general on a charge of coup? The spirit of Martin Luther King Power’s visits to Brazil, where, as changes in the Amazon took place, he observed significant shifts in power relations between small farmers and clergy on the one hand and politicians, including Lula, who would later become president; his sharp conversations in New -Delhi with Sonia Gandhi and Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad; And his encounter with Jimmy Carter, who, according to Andrew Young’s account, was tangential for Carter’s presidency, is much more than one can get by seeing the history from a keyhole. The author’s early years of work to the staff of Martin Luther King in the Ghetto -Krotbils of Chicago brought him the values ​​of social change through peaceful way in him, fought against injustice and discrimination and the promotion of a society where everyone is treated with respect. Power’s views on the relationships of the US Russia, which sometimes sound like a broken record, are also rooted in its sense of justice, respect and fair play. These values ​​come through a chastised life, whether in his journalism or filmmaking – even in his love joints, which may explain why, despite the cost, he prioritizes a peaceful collapse with Anne over a bitter divorce. The Peacenik in him sometimes even brings him into a head-to-clash with his improper work, journalism, which prefers to lead if it bleeds. The book ends as it begins: With existential questions about love, life and meaning, seen from Power’s Swedish soul marked by adventures. If the world was its oyster, the book is the reader’s shucker. As I look for a proper job, the book’s unpretentiousness and light touch in trying to answer the difficult questions of life will read me again. Ishiekwene is the editor -in -chief of leadership and author of Writing for Media and Monetising It.