Shadows of a Troubled Republic (I)

SHADOWS: Protest Essays on Africa’s Most Consequential Country (1999–2023), Volumes 1 and 2 by Eniola Bello, Cable Books, Lagos, 2026

Okey Ikechukwu

Overview of Volume 1

This book is the first of a 928-page twin volume work, which is a collection of 25 years of Eniola Bello’s opinion articles, presented here as seventy essays and arranged according to publication date. It tracks five successive administrations of Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, Jonathan, Buhari, and the early Tinubu period, showcasing the recurring crises of Nigerian governance under these respective regimes. Electoral fraud, executive-legislature feuds, corruption scandals, insecurity, fuel-price shenanigans, and the severe and persistent gap between constitutional promise, leadership claims about delivery and the lived experiences of Nigerians are all serially captured as they occurred in real time.

The author brings the entire collection together here as “Protest Essays” in two volumes which, indeed, they are. In going further to say that the collection is about “Africa’s Most Consequential Country”, he is telling us two things. The first is that he deems everything he has written in this book a protest against what is unacceptable in leadership and governance, even where it is purely descriptive of symptoms and consequences. The second is that the country under reference here is Nigeria which, with its huge population and profile as Africa’s most notable nation, remains a matter of concern to the world.

But, before we go into his reasons for such a venturesome claim, let us me put it on record that Eniola Bello, or Eni-B should henceforth be declared, and addressed as, a Protestant by Self-proclamation. And this first volume of the Protestant’s work opens with a Prologue, wherein we hear about the blood curdling 1998 encounter with the Abacha-era military intelligence chief, Col. Frank Omenka. Even those who never knew, or had any encounter with, Omenka trembled on behalf of those who did, whenever they heard either the man’s name, or about his “exploits”.

Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah’s Foreword situates the book in a tradition of African protest writing. The author’s own Introduction frames the collection through the recurring image of a boy chasing his own shadow. This image was, for the writer, an emblem of Nigeria’s unfinished, self-eluding search for a workable political order; and a realistic and sustainable identity. 

From here the book moves into a into a rather the section titled “Governance”, which runs chronologically from June 1999, that is immediately after Nigeria’s return to civil, through 2022, to the eve of the Tinubu presidency. 

Thus, we have in the book a substantial front matter, namely a Foreword, Introduction and Prologue, followed by a back matter in the form of Acknowledgement and name index. It is important to note here that the writer’s career, as well as the context of our national politics at the times covered in his writings explain how the book reads. 

He was in the Media Theatre of War through much of the period he wrote about; and this fact alone gives the essays an insider’s access and immediacy which no outsider can successfully simulate. Omenka anecdotal episode, as part of behind-the-scenes details is outstanding. His pieces on Anambra’s godfather politics and the political undulations associated with could only have come from a participant observer with a volition for factual, narration garnished with personal interest in promoting specific societal values.

So, I stand before you with the first Volume of Shadows, which is a 468-page book organized around some dated newspaper columns of national and historical significance. on which I shall make some observations, look at the Voice and Craft, touch on Recurring Themes Across Administrations. I will also, in the course of that, point out some details for reconsideration, by way of conclusion. 

I shall say nothing about why The Protestant chose me as his victim here, by imposing on me the task of reading and reviewing a work of nearly one thousand pages at very short notice. 

Now, to my observations. 

Observations

A first-person archive of the Fourth Republic

The real value of this work lies in the fact that it is a dated, column-by-column record of actual events as they happened, rather than a reconstruction of experiences afterwards; in an Ali Mazrui fashion. Every single essay here is anchored to a specific week’s news, or set of national events. The real-time immediacy of a governor’s convoy ambushed, a Senate probe convened, a fuel subsidy withdrawn, etc., gave this book the appeal that makes it less of a memoir function and more of a serial, eyewitness’s lived diary of Nigerian public life. 

When read consecutively, the essays in this Volume show the reader that the same pathologies recur under presidents of very different temperaments and pretensions to leadership excellence. For instance, we find the contested census-style ethnic balancing of political positions, godfatherism, executive high-handedness and more across board. It is probably this that effectively thematizes the book’s strongest underlying message, namely, that Nigeria’s problems have outlived every single administration and still subsist.

Voice and craft

The author’s style has the unmistakable imprint of a seasoned newsroom editorialist. Short and punchy paragraphs, frequent rhetorical questions, anaphora, like “What matters is… What matters is…”), and a commendable fondness for subtly exhilarating and extended metaphors abound.  Take this for instance:  Tinubu’s troubles “multiplying in a spiral” like smoke from a magician’s pipe; Nigeria’s political order as an ever-elusive shadow. 

His prose is perhaps at its strongest in narrative set pieces, like the genuinely griping and unsettling Prologue’s account of the Omenka reality and in the essays where the author builds an argument through accumulated, concrete details. In his dismantling of Rep. Ado Doguwa’s public boasting about fathering 28 children he moved from an anecdotal on the man’s curious boast to a much wider argument about population control, issues of policy, entitlement mentality and the almajiri crisis in northern Nigeria.

Recurring themes across administrations

This volume builds a cumulative case, starting with essays on Obasanjo’s early years and ethno-religious balancing in appointments, to the friction between the presidency and the National Assembly. It moves through Yar’Adua’s crisis of legitimacy and his prolonged medical condition to Jonathan’s partially sleepwalking presidency, circling back repeatedly to fuel subsidy removal, corruption scandals, and a weakening security response to Boko Haram. 

The section on Buhari is the most sustained in its criticism of a government’s many missteps. It returns, again and again, to shameless nepotism, appointments skewed in favour of the president’s home region/state. In a comparison captured in the essay “Buhari: As He Was in 1984…”, the author x-rayed the latter’s conduct as elected president and as the military head of state and saw him as still the same man in his negative proclivities three decades later. 

The structure of this volume makes it easy for a patient reader to see this collection’s core theses demonstrated live, rather than merely claimed; namely, that Nigeria’s governance challenges and failures are systemic and can be seen to outlast any single leader’s promises of lasting change.

Sequence and General Impression

Reading 400-plus pages on one theme, as a chronological, single-category, also demands a lot of reading strength. But the arrangement gives the book coherence, as themes that would have otherwise blocked a “flow of understanding” were reserved for the second volume of the work. 

The production of this volume is professional. The back-of-book index of names is a welcome convenience in a book this dense with Nigerian political figures across two decades.

Points to Note, Going Forward

As I conclude this review of a book that, itself, is the editorialized testament of a seasoned media executive, I would like to draw attention to the fact that the author leans hard on the same small set of rhetorical devices — anaphoric repetition, rhetorical-question cascades, the extended metaphor as an essay’s organizing device. The reader encountering these as standalone weekly columns will enjoy the undulations more than a reader going through dozens of essays read in sequence at one. 

But that is the point of the book being a collection otherwise autonomous media interventions, deploying the very tools that give each piece the flavour that makes it appealing on its own. It is like looking at, and admiring, a church member’s jewellery during major celebrations, and then seeing the assembled pictures of the same church member for all occasions, from which you then notice that it reveals a limited number worn at different times and within decent intervals.

The author may wish to consider the fact that the average reader lacks a working knowledge of Nigerian political history, as seen in the acronyms, party names, and second-tier officials mentioned in the work. A short biographical or explanatory footnote apparatus (even minimal) could be added, to widen the book’s impressions on readers may not have lived through this period.

Because protest journalism, to which the author has confessed himself committed, is usually tendentious, the book sometimes reads as advocacy rather than analysis; wherein government defences are often summarized and then rebutted in the same paragraph. But, again, the issue is whether what is in the book is what the author wanted to achieve. It is. A patriot confronted with the unrestrained plunder of his country, and armed with a pen and a platform, used both to make his interventions as an unapologetic advocate.

The chronological sequencing stands defended from the standpoint of historical record keeping. It captures the same recurring issues like fuel subsidy, misgovernment and nepotism across two decades. Perhaps a subsequent edition of the book would need a thematic cross-index, or brief interstitial framing notes, explaining how an older essay connects to a later one on the same subject. This will strengthen author’s subsisting thesis that our problems are not merely episodic and regime-determined.

Finally, a short retrospective postscript on a handful of the most consequential essays is needed for them to double as a history and not just archival material of past commentary.

Overall Assessment

This volume of Shadows is a compelling primary-source document of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, as written by someone who had a genuine front-row seat, who is competent to comment authoritatively on the issues raised and who showed great courage in presenting them without apologies. 

Part of the book’s strengths lie in its narrative vividness, its moral clarity and the cumulative weight instances of the same failures and challenges across five presidencies. It also exists in the author’s insight and his ability to capture the issues without extenuation. 

As a reference work on a great columnist’s piece of journalism history, it offers much to a reader would take it in smaller doses, essay by essay, the way it was originally written and published. Any weaknesses perceived in this regard are largely the weaknesses of the anthology form of presentation: the repetition of stylistic devices when essays are read back-to-back. 

This volume of Shadows is a time-driven advocacy for true nationhood. It is honest about what it set out to achieve and should be so acknowledged. 

• Cont’d next week