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What Britain Did to Nigeria: A Short History of Conquest and Rule – by Max Siollun
₦3,000Most accounts of Nigeria’s colonisation were written by British officials, presenting it as a noble civilising mission to rid Africans of barbaric superstition and corrupt tribal leadership. Thanks to this skewed writing of history, many Nigerians today still have Empire nostalgia and view the
colonial period through rose-tinted glasses.Max Siollun offers a bold rethink: an unromanticised history, arguing compellingly that colonialism had few benevolent intentions, but many unjust outcomes. It may have ended slavery and human sacrifice, but it was accompanied by extreme violence; ethnic and religious identity were cynically
exploited to maintain control, while the forceful remoulding of longstanding legal and social practices permanently altered the culture and internal politics of indigenous communities. The aftershocks of this colonial meddling are still being felt decades after independence. Popular narratives often
suggest that the economic and political turmoil are homegrown, but the reality is that Britain created many of Nigeria’s crises, and has left them behind for Nigerians to resolve.This is a definitive, head-on confrontation with Nigeria’s experience under British rule, showing how it forever changed the country–perhaps cataclysmically.
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Ibrahim Babangida: The Military, Power and Politics Paperback – by Dan Agbese
₦3,500To borrow a hackneyed phrase, Nigeria has had a chequered political history before and since independence from British colonial rule on October 1, 1960. Two sets of actors – the civilian politicians and the military politicians – have been on the national political stage since January 15, 1966. General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida was one of them. In his eight years in power as president, or perhaps more correctly as military president, he affected the course of Nigeria’s events, for better or for worse, in a way that few, if any, before him did. It is not possible to tell Nigeria’s story without Babangida’s part in it. The book is the story of IBB, the little orphan from Minna, Niger State and his meticulous rise to the top of his profession and the leadership of his country. Perhaps, more importantly, it is the story of Nigeria, its post-independence politics and power, told from the perspective of the actions and decisions of one of the main actors on the country’s political stage. The events that shaped the Babangida era did not begin on August 27, 1985, the day he staged a palace coup against General Muhammadu Buhari. They began long before that. This book is the definitive story of the military, politics and power in Nigeria.
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The Concubine Paperback- by Elechi Amadi
₦1,700Amadi’s masterpiece of African literature captures village life and practices not yet touched by the white man. The novel’s beautiful, hardworking protagonist, Ihouma, is admired by all in her village. Yet those who express their love for her meet with mysterious tragedy, leaving her devastated. This enticing odyssey, where exemplary attributes go unrewarded and the boundaries between myth and reality are muted, outwits readers with unexpected twists that make them want to keep turning the page.
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The Smart Money Tribe: An African Woman’s Guide to Making Bank (paperback) – Arese Ugwu
₦3,000The Smart Money Tribe is back! Zuri, Tami, Lara, Adesuwa, and Ladun are faced with new challenges in this season of their lives. From the hustle and bustle of Lagos to cosmopolitan London, and the glamour of Cape Town, through their individual stories we see how effective the collaborative power of women can be in building wealth.
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The Boko Haram Doctrine
₦5,000The Boko Haram Doctrine offers an unprecedented collection of essential texts, documents, videos, audio, and nashids (martial hymns), translated into English from Hausa, Arabic and Kanuri, tracing the group’s origins, history, and evolution. Its editors, two Nigerian scholars, reveal how Boko Haram’s leaders manipulate Islamic theology for the legitimisation, radicalisation, indoctrination and dissemination of their ideas across West Africa.
Mandatory reading for anyone wishing to grasp the underpinnings of Boko Haram’s insurgency, particularly how the group strives to delegitimise its rivals and establish its beliefs as a dominant strand of Islamic thought in West Africa’s religious marketplace.
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An Abundance of Scorpions by Hadiza Isma El-Rufai
₦4,000Following a horrific tragedy, Tambay leaves Kano for Accra to live with her brother, Aminu. Sadly, her dream of a new beginning is dashed when she can no longer endure the indignity she suffers at the hands of her brother’s new wife.
Tambaya returns to northern Nigeria and soon finds work as a matron in an orphanage, under the watchful eye of the ruthless Miss Scholastica. Just when she begins to settle into her new life, an unexpected visit threatens to destroy everything she has worked so hard to build. -
Girls at War and Other Stories by Chinua Achebe
₦1,000Girls at War and Other Stories reveals the essence of life in Nigeria and traces twenty years in the literary career of one of this century’s most acclaimed writers. In this collection of stories, Chinua Achebe takes us inside the heart and soul of a people whose pride and ideals must compete with the simple struggle to survive. Hailed by critics everywhere, Chinua Achebe’s fiction re-creates with energy and authenticity the major issues of daily life in Africa.
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A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe
₦1,500As Minister for Culture, former school teacher M. A. Nanga is a man of the people, as cynical as he is charming, and a roguish opportunist. When Odili, an idealistic young teacher, visits his former instructor at the ministry, the division between them is vast. But in the eat-and-let-eat atmosphere, Odili’s idealism soon collides with his lusts–and the two men’s personal and political tauntings threaten to send their country into chaos. When Odili launches a vicious campaign against his former mentor for the same seat in an election, their mutual animosity drives the country to revolution.
Published, prophetically, just days before Nigeria’s first attempted coup in 1966, A Man of the People is an essential part of Achebe’s body of work.
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There Was a Country by Chinua Achebe
₦2,500For more than forty years, Chinua Achebe maintained a considered silence on the events of the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Decades in the making, There Was a Country is a towering account of one of modern Africa’s most disastrous events, from a writer whose words and courage left an enduring stamp on world literature. A marriage of history and memoir, vivid firsthand observation and decades of research and reflection, There Was a Country is a work whose wisdom and compassion remind us of Chinua Achebe’s place as one of the great literary and moral voices of our age.
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Pretending to Dance By Diane Chamberlain
₦30,000Molly Arnette is very good at keeping secrets. She lives in San Diego with a husband she adores, and they are trying to adopt a baby because they can’t have a child on their own.
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Snap By Belinda Bauer
₦28,000Three years later, mum-to-be Catherine wakes to find a knife beside her bed, and a note that says: I could have killed you.