Rotary International District 9125 has launched the world’s thickest book.
The book, written by 12,000 Nigerians, is based on Rotary’s four-way test. It has 12,000 pages.
Ex-President of Rotary District 9125 and initiator of the project Mike Omotosho explained that the essence of the book was to give everybody an equal say where everyone has an opportunity.
Omotosho added that entries for the book were received from Nigerians of all shades, from Ministers and Senators to prison inmates, primary school pupils, secondary school students, university undergraduates, carpenters on the street,ordinary Nigerian.
The book which was launched at the Rotary charity cocktail event in Abuja, had as a highlight of the event, the humanitarian reporting awards to six Nigerian journalists who had written distinguishing humanitarian stories.
In his words, “It is a book written by 12,000 Nigerians based on Rotary’s four way test, what we are trying to do is change the psyche of Nigerians from looking at the problems staring them in the face to beginning to see the positive side of things. What do you want to see? How do you want Nigeria to truly be? So you come up with the dream of the Nigeria that you truly want to see. The idea is to get people dreaming of positive things and hopefully encourage them to wake up from their slumber, roll up their sleeves and begin to work.
“The book is not about the length or width but about the number of pages it’s 12,000 pages and that makes it the world’s thickest book, not the world’s largest book. We will only be launching it today. We can’t unveil because the Vice President is not here, so hopefully we will be able to take it to him to unveil. The prototype was unveiled by the Honourable Speaker of the house, Yakubu Dogara.
“The essence of the book is to give everybody an equal say, everyone has an opportunity. We have entries from Ministers, Senators, from even prison inmates, primary school pupils, secondary school students, university undergraduates, carpenters on the street, everybody we want to hear the view of every ordinary Nigerian, one it brings unity of purpose, secondly it puts Nigeria on the international stage for something positive because it is the world record holder for the world thickest book, so that way, things will change.
“It is all about the four way test that have been around for almost 84 years it is a guiding principal that Rotary and Rotarians use to make themselves better people and by extension the community a better place. It took about six months and a lot of sleepless nights for the book to be ready, we had about 26,000 entries and had to trim it down to the best 12,000, we had different options for submission, online, we went to schools, we went into prisons to get their entries, people’s definitely had mixed feelings about it because we just got 26,000 a community of almost 170 million people which is small number of entries,” he said.
