Update!: Thanks to my friends: my crowed-sourced editorial team, this foreword (yes, i now know the correct spelling) was eventually put right! :-)

This is my draft forward to my Dad's upcoming autobiography. Feedback please after reading. Thanks.

With my big sister Cle at Dad's Call to Bar; 14 Feb 2012

It was the great Bob Marley in his song “No woman, no cry” who sang the world famous lyrics: “In this great future you can’t forget your past”. A phrase, testament to the fact that in this constantly evolving wonderful world, a thorough understanding of the past is essential in navigating the future.

Chikwado Raphael Ezeokafor, my father…my dad, knowing that, and inspired by several other autobiographies birthed this book you now have in your hands at the ripe old age of 77. Those who know him like I do would not at all be surprised, being a man with a knack for documenting and analyzing every single step of his life, every blessed day.

A quite amusing but at the same time invaluable trait. A trait which I have grown to greatly appreciate as being amongst the later issues of his offspring born in two batches-a decade apart, this body of work is an excellent historical tool for my young mind as can ever be.

This book is also an invaluable tool for any reader, as a dig through its pages teaches the lesson that hard work pays. And that success is inevitably the end result when opportunity/luck meets preparation.

It chronicles the life of “The Ambassador” as he is affectionately called as he struggles despite all odds to get an education, rides on the back of his scholarliness surviving the Biafran war all the way to a job in the Nigerian Civil Service and is eventually singled out to work internationally rendering over a decade of service to the Nigerian High Commission London-UK and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Uganda.  Topping it all with a call to the Nigerian Bar at over 70 years of age.

I highly recommend this autobiography and hope it inspires, particularly my countrymen Nigeria in these perilous times of ours and motivates who ever reads it for excellence such that in our old age we would also have such great stories to pass across to the generation ahead.

Much peace, love and respect as always.

Tochukwu R. Ezeokafor
(Trae Zeeofor/@trae_z)
Benue State, Nigeria
November 2015