Walahi.com: Nigeria's No.1 Online Bookstore

Based on the real life situation in Nigeria's Niger Delta, Fuelling the Delta Fires is an expose and action adventure novel revealing why there is turmoil in the world's sixth largest crude oil exporter. Chief Tom-George is a corrupt local politician and the governor of Western Ijaw State. To "spread his message" across the state, the Ijaw chief buys the services of Mene Bene, the leader of the largest youth militant group the Niger Delta Liberation Movement (NDLM). In exchange for cash, Bene ensures that Chief Tom-George's opponents are harassed and threatens communities that refuse to back his man's National Umbrella Party. However, once he was sworn in as governor, Chief Tom-George no longer needed Bene and the NDLM, so they have a problem. Later, the NDLM resorts to kidnapping as a means of raising funds to sustain its operations. What started off as a little bit of mischief, soon grows into a multi-million dollar industry as oil companies are willing to pay handsome sums for the return of their expatriate workers. This book also gives a real live account of the experience of Alan Ward, a kidnapped British oil worker. Alan is held on the isolated and desolate delta island of Epeleama.

Fuelling the Delta Fires ends with Chief Tom-George's ambitions to run for the presidency of Nigeria in tatters. He is the front runner until at the last minute, the rug is pulled from under his feet when a litany of his corrupt deals are read out to him a day before the ruling party selects its presidential candidate. Faced with the threat of standing down or being indicted, he does the former and watches on helplessly as the prize slips from his grasp.

Reviews

�This novel will make a mark as a political novel that very successfully captures the political Nigeria of the twenty first century. Based on the unending story of the Nigeria delta region's misery, staring poverty, disease, social neglect, total depredation of life and property, environmental destruction by local and international oil barons, and in the face of violence by government and resistance by the so-called militants, this writer craftily presents the flesh and blood of the continued political turmoil.

The language is sharp and sophisticated, many times untypical of the trademark of post-colonial African novel of traditional anecdotes and oral performative metaphors and images but clearly adequate of the new Nigerian lowness in lack of regard for its people and its high-rate cultural and traditional humanistic values.

This novel exposes the true cause of the ongoing Delta violence and the continued political turmoil in Nigeria."

- Damola Ifaturoti, editorial co-ordinator, Africa World Press/The Red Sea Press

About the Author

Ayo Akinfe, born in Salford, Manchester, is a London-based journalist who has worked as a magazine and newspaper editor for the last 20 years. Ayo attended Federal Government College Kaduna and obtained his first degree in history from the University of Ibadan. He returned to the UK in 1990 and did his post-graduate studies in journalism at the University of Westminster in London.

Ayo spent his key formative years in Nigeria where he saw the kind of horrors poverty, an unfair trading environment, under-development, corruption and mismanagement visits on African countries. While at the University of Ibadan, Ayo was an official of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) . After working in journalism for 19 years, Ayo decided to switch to book writing after realising that there is simply too little out there on African history. Fuelling the Delta Fires is one of a series of novels aimed at highlighting Africa�s sorry plight and the misleading image peddled about her.

Ayo is also an avid football fan who writes regularly for Nigerian publications such as The Guardian, Vanguard and The Nation. Apart from politics and socio-economic matters, his other great passion is the Super Eagles. He has a Nigerian Village Square column where most of his articles are actually about the Super Eagles.

A big Wilbur Smith fan, Ayo plans to make his series about West Africa similar to what Wilbur has done in southern Africa. Ayo has read all of Wilbur�s 33 novels and believes what has been done there can be replicated in the West African sub-region.