Still in the Shadow of Death

The book is an interesting, easy-read, true story about the writer, starting in 1966 when the pogrom that precipitated the Nigerian civil war began, up to the end of 2011 when Boko Haram handed a Christmas present of bombs to churches in three northern Nigerian states. It gives a simple, very compelling narrative of the child's war time experiences - personal loss, dreadful air raids, the emotive period of his older brother's conscription into the struggling, ill-equipped Biafran army, and the wider community at the time. The story ends with post-war national reconciliation, economic boom and international clout, economic burst and national decline, and the role played by bad governance. The book makes a case that the lessons of the civil war seem not to have been learnt, and argues that the campaign of carnage by the Boko Haram in Nigeria potentially threatens to be the final piece to complete the nasty circle that started in 1966/67 with the massacre of the Igbos in northern Nigeria.