SHADOWS: Protest Essays on Africa’s Most Consequential Country (1999–2023), Volumes 1 and 2 by Eniola Bello, Cable Books, Lagos, 2026
Overview of Volume 2
The second volume of Shadows completes a project that was halfway completed after 468 pages, and which got rounded up in the 460 pages of the second volume. The front matter of repeats Kukah’s Foreword and the author’s Introduction. This is consistent with the two-volume structure, and also rhymes with the “shadow” metaphor governing the project.
This collection is the more varied of the two books, as it goes beyond the single long “Governance” section of the first volume, to track party intrigue, godfatherism, PDP and APC succession battles, and presidential elections from the late Abacha transition through the 2023 Tinubu victory.
The collection moves from essays on Nigeria’s retired military rulers, religious and ethnic tension, Boko Haram, and the moral character of public life, to a handful of essays from the author’s reporting trips to Japan, China, and a Chicago visit tied to Tinubu at the time. It showcases tribute with an obituary-style and anniversary essays on figures like Abiola, Bola Ige, and Pope John Paul II, before closing with a first-person Epilogue recounting the author’s own encounters inside Nigerian Government Houses across several states.
