During his watch, A watchman has no sleep and no respite.”
Olusegun Obasanjo
Following
in the steps of his previous memoirs, My Command and Not My Will,
Olusegun Obasanjo’s ''My Watch'' is more than the story of the Obasanjo
presidency told by the man himself. It is a memoir of a lifetime spent
in service to country, of a man who has been destined with the watch,
with the vigilance, with the responsibility to his people to speak up
and speak out.
My
Watch spans large expanses of time, from the pre-colonial Owu history,
to early Abeokuta and the last throes of an independent city state at
turn-of-the-century colonial Nigeria, to the early life its author, his
civil war experience, his stewardship of the transitional government of
1976-1979, the interregnum, his second appearance on the national scene
as a civilian president on Nigerian’s return to democracy in 1999, the
completion of the first civilian-civilian transfer of government in
Nigeria’s history that inaugurated the Yar’Adua presidency and signaled
the end of Obasanjo’s tenure in office, and the years hence.
Presented
in three volumes, this exquisitely narrated memoir, in turns intensely
personal and broadly nationalistic and international, completes a
trilogy of autobiographies- My Command, Not My Will, and My Watch- told
by this sojourner of Nigerian and world history