QuickRead presents The New Governor’s Wife

16 Aug QuickRead presents The New Governor’s Wife

After the well-received serialization of Ghosts of the Niger Delta, QuickRead, your fast-growing online paper, which focuses on relevant news for decision-making, presents “The New Governor’s Wife,” also by Bisi Daniels.

With historic fire outbreaks, rainfall, floods and drought in some countries, many parts of the world are suffering from extreme climate change.

Who would have imagined flooded London streets or a year’s rain falling in 3 days in China?

In some parts of Nigeria, the problem is manifested in prolonged drought, as the desert keeps crawling southwards.

However, an attempt to fight climate change in Banaka State is caught up in a web of corruption, sex and killing.

Corruption has so become commonplace in the state that not even Peter Abel, Nigeria’s top investigative reporter, finds it a big deal.

However, his journalistic instincts are unusually piqued when he gets an SOS from Dr. Idi Camp, Agriculture Commissioner of Banaka State for help to uncover government corruption and to save his life.

Idi should have gone to the Police or the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC),  so why he chooses to call a reporter makes Abel’s investigative-reporter instincts take over.

Camp’s own hometown of Limi is being encroached upon by the desert, after years of poor rainfall, suspected to have been caused by global warming.

Banaka’s treasury at one time had enough money to drill deep irrigation/drinking wells to save the people, their livestock and  crops. But the money has been siphoned off by corrupt leaders. It must be exposed and stopped!

But sorting undercover through the treachery in Banaka, to find out who is responsible for the missing money and laundering of state funds to Europe is a suicidal exercise: Is it Gorem Huud, the corrupt Banaka governor? Timo Tiko, Millie’s husband and head of the ruling party? Or is it Rika, the governor’s drunken, nymphomaniac wife?

Peter has the same problem as the EFCC. Under the Nigerian constitution, State governors have immunity against prosecution, so he focuses on the Governor’s wife, who turns out to be master-mind of all the money laundering.

When Idi Camp’s wife and two children are killed in a car wreck made to look like an accident, Peter recognises immediately that it is murder, and probably a case of mistaken identity. The target was Camp himself. Now Abel is in a fight for both their lives.
All through the assignment, Abel is in a battle with death: He is abducted by the village’s high priest to become a human sacrifice; he is attacked, shackled hand and foot, spread-eagled naked in the desert sand to die.

Abel is near death when he is found and is flown to a London hospital for treatment. As he grows stronger he meets with Clarke, an investigator from the Metropolitan Police department’s anti-corruption squad. Clarke had little interest in working on Nigerian problems. He had plenty of his own. But when Abel tells him how criminals in Banaka are laundering money provided by Western Nations, in the UK, Clarke agrees to listen.

Over several meetings, they come to trust one another, forming a mutual-aid pact. Clarke could help Abel get a great story and bring down a corrupt government, and Abel could help Clarke identify and arrest criminals in the UK who were laundering stolen money from Nigeria.

When Abel suspects that Millie, another of Tiko’s wives, saved him from the desert they became friends. Tiko finds that out and an assassin is sent after her in London. The killer shoots and wounds Millie, but the police put out word that she died, for her own protection.

Meanwhile, Huud has become despondent over the murder of Camp’s family, his role in the looting, the refusal of Camp’s assistant, whom he loves to leave the country with him, and the fear of Abel’s ability to expose him. The Governor empties his bank accounts and leaves alone, delighting in the notion that he is leaving nothing for Rika.

From various sources, including Tiko, Abel has enough information to expose the official corruption in Banaka State. His stories blow the lid off Banaka State, and the police move in to arrest Tiko and Rika. In the fire fight, Tiko is killed and Rika takes Peter hostage. She knows she is going to die and intends to take him with her.

Huud, who has escaped to an unknown country, writes to tell Camp where the missing money is, with instructions that it goes to the Federal Government and be used to drill deep water wells in Banaka.

• Serialisation of the novel begins next week! Happy reading.