Who Gave the Order by Anuonye, Chibueze Darlington

Who Gave the Order is a powerful reckoning with state-sanctioned violence and the ghosts of a nation’s broken promises. Born from the trauma of the October 2020 #EndSARS protests, this anthology captures the voices of Nigerians who lived through and were changed by one of the darkest chapters in the country’s recent history. With stories that span pain, defiance, memory, and mourning, the collection is a bold literary monument to those who raised their voices and those whose voices were silenced.

From the raw intimacy of Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo’s Fences, which lays bare how brutality reshapes love and youth, to Nnamdi Oguike’s The Police Within Us, a reflective meditation on fear, identity, and exile, the anthology thrums with urgency and conviction. Zenas Ubere’s What You Saw captures the fleeting joy and sudden devastation of revolution, while Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s This Was Supposed to be Different delivers a sobering historical sweep of Nigeria’s cyclical betrayals, where hope is often punished by bullets. In the quieter but no less radical corners, Mazpa Ejikem and Ola W. Halim confront the protest’s own prejudices, asking what justice means when it excludes the queer.

At once a memorial, an indictment, and a cry for a different future, Who Gave the Order reminds us that to tell the truth is an act of resistance and, sometimes, survival. These writers bear witness not just to what happened, but to what it means to live, remember, and demand more in a country that too often chooses silence over justice.