by Cheta Nwanze

I want to begin this review by telling a story.

On June 8, 1998, I was a young student in the University of Benin. Illegally listening to the BBC early that morning, I was told that Nigeria’s maximum ruler, Sani Abacha had died overnight. Then I went for my lectures.

In school, a lot of people had clearly heard that something had happened, but people were too frightened to talk about it, until it was officially confirmed by Radio Nigeria during their evening bulletin.

The spontaneous outpouring of joy is something I had not witnessed up until that time, and something I have not witnessed since. How could one man be so hated?

Nnaziri Ihejirika’s A Rainy Season is focused on that period of Nigeria’s history, looking at it through the eyes of eight people who by virtue of sharing the same compound in Lagos at the time, were all interconnected.

Reading the book at times, I felt it was a personal story, especially as I identified very closely with Elechi. Heck, he would have been just a few years younger than I was at the time, so our experiences would have been broadly the same. Jude, I could also identify with since I know a few “egbons” of my own that fit into his persona. Then there is Nonye…

I want to be a little evil here and point out that Muhammad Yusuf never addressed a lecture in Sokoto, but Mr. Ihejirika does a decent enough job of telling the story of how, any came to be misled, by sheer societal disconnect, by movements such as Boko Haram.

In all, A Rainy Season is a good collection of personal stories from a critical point in the history of my country, giving an ear to what happened at the time. My only grouse with the book is at the end, Mr. Ihejirika fell into the trap of trying to forge a mostly happy ending. Our history has shown that it may not always be like that.