SHADOWS: Protest Essays on Africa’s Most Consequential Country (1999–2023)

Eniola Bello, Managing Director of THISDAY Newspaper, will present his two-volume book, SHADOWS: Protest Essays on Africa’s Most Consequential Country (1999–2023), at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, on July 23, 2026.

The book presentation will feature a keynote address titled “Strengthening Electoral Institutions: Pathways to Free, Fair, and Peaceful Elections in 2027,” to be delivered by Prof. Joash Amupitan, Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). 

Spanning over 900 pages, SHADOWS is a collection of selected essays critiquing Nigeria’s search for purpose during the first 25 years of the Fourth Republic. 

In the book, Bello, who is also known by the moniker EniB, offers a rigorous, episodic narration of Nigeria’s democratic journey over the last quarter-century, chronicling the country’s “democracy in action” — including the critical institutional issues, policy triumphs, and systemic challenges that have shaped its contemporary history. 

In the book, he reflects deeply on the complex socio-political dynamics, expectations, and milestones of that period.

The essays address governance issues such as corruption, human rights abuses, policy failure, insecurity, leadership incompetence, executive-legislature rift, the high cost of governance, and the vanity of public officials, among others. 

The book also examines godfatherism, political parties’ disdain for internal democracy, electoral fraud, the exploitation of religion, the hypocrisy and moral vacuity of the Nigerian elite, the ethnic manipulation of the people, and the pervasive love of money.

In sum, SHADOWS presents a rich historical excursion into the interplay of people, events, and issues that shaped Nigeria’s politics and power relations between 1999 and 2023 — issues that have continued to shadow the country’s development.