
Cheers to 2025
Every New Year holds promise, as though it is any different from the turn of
The book is titled: “Damaged Goods (2024, Winepress),” and the author is Akin Akingbogun. The author is a successful civil engineer with experience in the downstream oil and gas, and renewable energy sector in Nigeria. His other works include Prisoner of Fate, Waste of Sin, Blood in the Water, and Dreams from Yesterday.
In this novel set in highbrow Lagos, Efe the cleaner is given the task of cleaning the swimming pool area during his night shift at the Henderson Hotel. His hysteric scream causes panic, and the hotel manager and two other staff run to the poolside. They see the cause of Efe’s alarm. An accident has happened. They spot a female figure drowning in the swimming pool. Nnamdi, the hotel manager, retrieves the body, but all efforts to resuscitate her are futile. It is now confirmed that she is a guest. But the incident is already slipping out of control as lodgers are now trooping out of the hotel, even though it is in the middle of the night.
The police arrive and interrogate the husband of Onono. Jerry says he and his wife had checked in to the hotel earlier in the day. He says she went swimming while he slept in the room.
But as it turns out, Efe and Onono had been friends, secondary school mates nine years before. He sees her as she arrives to meet her husband on the fourth floor of the hotel.
In this thriller, a police investigator, DSP Oladimeji, has a handful on his hands. His interrogation assumes a multi-level complexity, as he is torn between Jerry, Onono’s husband, and Efe, her former school mate and cleaner at Henderson Hotel. The hotel’s CCTV cameras are helpful in capturing some of the critical moments. But only some; the moment before Onono’s death and drowning remains a mystery. Jerry is the prime suspect, but the image of Efe looms in the shadows. Yet Oladimeji is confronted with other details – Glory the hotel receptionist and her tryst with her lodger-boyfriend and tangle with Nnamdi. All in one day, and some minutes apart!
The work is predicated on infidelity as one of its key themes. Jerry is sterile but Onono is carrying a pregnancy. This is the crux of the matter, and a strong reason for their heated disagreement upon lodging at the Henderson Hotel. Onono storms out of the room later that day, and she is reported dead afterwards. Soon after we see Jerry and Efe rekindle their almost a decade long hostility. As a Youth Corps member, Jerry had been a teacher in the secondary school in Cross River State, where Efe and Onono had been friends. As it happens, Efe and Jerry meet again, and they engage in a brawl.
The thriller, Damaged Goods, is cast in the prose tradition described as “whodonit” and it is a testament to the author’s dexterity and storytelling prowess. So in this work, the moment DSP Oladimeji thinks he has unlocked the crime, there is another twist in the plot. Now he suspects everyone, but no one in particular.
The work also plays on trust or breach of trust. There is a multi-layered strand of breach of trust between Jerry and Onono, between Nnamdi and Glory and between some of the suspects and the investigating police officer. At every stage, new facts emerge and point in another direction. Now Glory takes the centre of attention. It happens that Nelson, her boyfriend, has a connection with the whole drama. Nelson’s choice of the fourth floor of the hotel seems deliberate. Now Glory holds the clue to closing this murder case.
But will Glory be able to deliver the goods? Where is the place of Nelson in the whole chain of investigation and intrigues in this work?
Who is the real mastermind of Onono’s death and why? These questions and more are intricately weaved into this storytelling masterpiece.
It is a work set out in 12 chapters laced with a large dose of suspense locked into each of the 94 pages of racy narration and Akin Akingbogun’s deep mastery of the English language. This is one for all lovers of thrillers.

Every New Year holds promise, as though it is any different from the turn of

There is a category of question that polite intellectual company tends to avoid: the kind that, if you pull the thread long enough, begins to unravel not just a specific mystery but the entire fabric of what we think we know about human history. The Pyramids of Giza are that thread. They have been standing in the Egyptian desert for roughly 4,500 years.

Let me take you somewhere. Not to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean — at least, not yet. First, to Lagos. Nigeria. Sometime in the late 1980s. A teenager who should probably have been revising for exams is instead sitting cross-legged on the floor of a library, holding a book that is older than most of the furniture around it, reading about a city beneath the sea.

This is my story of discovering a film that challenged everything I thought I knew about the gift of time, every pulsating detail documented to inspire you to leap beyond your limitations and appreciate the beauty of growing old.
This story explores the paradox of immortality and why a movie from 2015 still resonates so deeply with audiences today.
I hope you find it worth your time.

This is my story, every pulsating detail documented to inspire you to question what you know and leap beyond your limitations.
This story is about the audacity of belief, the power of a well-told lie, and the journey to unlearn the things that poisoned my teenage mind.
I hope you find it worth your time.

There is a category of question that polite intellectual company tends to avoid: the kind that, if you pull the thread long enough, begins to unravel not just a specific mystery but the entire fabric of what we think we know about human history. The Pyramids of Giza are that thread. They have been standing in the Egyptian desert for roughly 4,500 years.

There is a peculiar kind of madness that does not arrive with hallucinations or trembling hands. It arrives quietly. At two in the morning. In a small desert town in New Mexico. It sounds like an idling diesel engine somewhere in the distance — except there is no engine. It sounds like a bass note being held by an invisible orchestra — except there is no orchestra.

Let me confess something. Long before LinkedIn articles, podcasts, and leadership keynotes became my world, I was a teenager sneaking to the library

In an era that increasingly demands hyper-specialization, Akin Akingbogun stands out as a refreshing anomaly. He is a man who refuses to be confined to a single box.

There is a particular kind of silence that falls on a man when the phone stops ringing, the proposals go unanswered, and the diary that once groaned under the weight of appointments sits quietly — almost mockingly — open. If you have ever been there, you know it.

Let me tell you something uncomfortable: the most generous person you know — the one who volunteers every weekend, donates quietly, never asks for anything in return — is probably getting something out of it. Not money. Maybe not even recognition. But something.

Adaeze had been awake since 4 a.m.
Not because she was anxious — though she was — but because this trip felt different. After eighteen months of follow-ups, phone calls, and PowerPoint presentations polished to a mirror shine, the deal was finally ready to close. An investor meeting in Abuja. A partnership that would change the trajectory of her small but gutsy consulting firm. She had triple-checked her flight, her documents, her outfit. She had prayed. She was ready.

When he told his father, Dare’s first response was a sigh. Then: “I told you to practice more. I told you months ago. You don’t listen. You never listen.”
There was no “I’m sorry, son.” No pause to let the boy simply feel the loss of the thing he wanted. Just a swift, seamless pivot to what Temi had done wrong — and, by extension, how Temi’s failure was evidence of Temi’s failure to take his father’s wisdom seriously.

I want to tell you something that took me embarrassingly long to learn. Not because the idea is complicated — it is not. But because it cuts against something deeply wired in us, something we are rarely honest enough to admit.
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