Secrets Of Upholding Integrity
IT is very easy to conclude after reading the first part of Lawrence Omotayo Olajide Taiwo’s book, The 9 Secrets of Upholding Integrity, that you have read all about it. However, on reading the whole book, you’ll understand that the first part is just a tip of the iceberg.
An imprint of the Global Centre for Healthy Relationship and Leadership, the 226- page book, published in October 2020, is complete and a breath of fresh air.
The book is divided into five parts, with each part further divided into sections. There is an epilogue, references and appendix A and B, as well as a foreword.
With excellent print, bold front, simple expression and sentences, the book provides great, workable and sustainable solutions to the conflicts associated with families, communities, organisations and nations. It tells the reader that life can be better for everybody irrespective of race, colour, sex, age, status, religion or continent.
The book is a product of years of in- depth study of the challenges facing families, communities, organisations and even nations at large, where equity, justice, accountability and reward system are of no value, but rancour, ethnicity, partiality, permissiveness and corruption holds way.
The author has written an academic work, which sociologically examines the concept of integrity. And with the benefit of research, statistics and native wisdom, he equally dissects the subject in entirety. The book, in fact, is anchored on one issue, quality. It notes that integrity is a bye- product of sterling qualities displayed by an individual, state, ethnic group, nation, which makes them who they are and why they are like that.
In his foreword, Justice Joseph Olubunmi Kayode Oyewole of the Court of Appeal, Enugu Division says the seminal work is recommended to everyone interested in acquiring and cultivating personal integrity.
According to him, “over the years, corruption has been identified as the bane of the progress of the Nigerian nation. Institutions of state have been created with the sole statutory mandate of decimating this national scourge but not withstanding the various dedicated efforts, it would appear the nation is confronted with the fabled hydra headed monster, regenerating each severed head. Our scorecard has been one step forward, two steps back.”
The legal luminary notes: “Ethical values, therefore, go beyond mere moral virtues to be cultivated by random individuals but are desirable qualities upon which the fate of peoples and nations could turn.”
According to the author, integrity is one of the four pillars of healthy relationships. The other three pillars are love, trust and teamspirit; it appears that the pillar of integrity is the most controversial and widely abused of all the pillars: In most cases, subjectivity, instead of objectivity, is usually applied in arriving at decisions requiring integrity, and standard texts on the subject of integrity are very scarce. Hence, wrong decisions have been made in marriages, appointments, contract awards, elections and many undertakings that require integrity.
Looking at this gap, and in an attempt to evolve an objective view in arriving at decisions requiring integrity, this book is written.
The 9 Secrets of Upholding Integrity posits that living life can be better for anyone, provided people are willing to uphold integrity as a way of life.
Taiwo envisions that individuals, couples, families, associations, organisations and nations can curb vices such as poverty, corruption, social upheaval, insurgence, insecurity, etc; using the nine secrets of upholding integrity for the mutual benefits of all.
In the book, integrity is interrogated as one of the four pillars of healthy relationship: The other three pillars are love, trust and team spirit. The author points out that the world system currently experiences strive, impoverishment, insecurity, poverty and hunger in various degrees and aspects with African being the most negatively affected.
The content of this book is capable of enlightening whosoever reads it and the generality of people who will benefit from its sharing towards upholding integrity as a way of life and as a lifelong educational need.
He puts forward the need to uphold integrity, one of the pillars of healthy relationships, as a prerequisite to reverse the negative trend.
It is a book worth reading with rapt attention, assimilation and meditation by those who appreciate total wellness in their endeavours.