'Abimbola Lagunju (born in 1960 in Ibadan) is a Nigerian writer. He studied medicine in St Petersburg, Russia from 1979 to 1987. He returned to Nigeria in the middle of the economic crisis engendered by the World Bank/IMF Structural Adjustment Program imposed on Nigeria. It was a Nigeria quite different from what he had left in 1979. The Middle Class to which he now belonged was destitute. He later wrote in The Children of Signatures ():
The socio-economic melt-down of his country prompted his interest to shift from ideological idealisms to questioning the harsh political economy experiments visited on developing countries, particularly fragile sub-Saharan African countries by the Bretton Woods Institutions. The relationship between these institutions and African countries would later become a regular subject in his writings.
He left Nigeria for Portugal with his family in 1993, and after a brief stint of working and studying in Lisbon, he found a job as a Development Aid worker. This experience exposed him to the arduous and seemingly unending plight of extreme poverty of rural African peoples. He has written extensively on the relationship between African leaders and their citizens. In his novel, Days of Illusions, he blames the local politicians who are directly responsible for the precarious existence of their citizens, and also the poor people for allowing themselves to be manipulated by the local politicians.
In addition to numerous articles in Nigeria’s online media, his works span four literary genres: poetry, political essays, political satires and short stories.
Abimbola Lagunju has authored fourteen books.
Books by Abimbola Lagunju include:
Cyclones of the Human Heart
The Shadow of Rainbow
The Children of Signatures
The African in the Mirror
The Days of Illusions
In the Embrace of Fear
Fouta Celebrates Life
The Pelting March of the Storm
Gaddafi’s Gaffes
Verses from Under the Sands
Gombii and Other Short stories
When Civilization Kicked Us in the Face On the African Bus
This is Not Yet My Story
A Civil Society of One (Selected Published Articles)
Cyclones of the Human Heart
Abimbola Lagunju, drawing upon timeless African memories, has provided us with a poetry of images, a notebook of observations and a portfolio of perceptive musings. We are swept along upon a mystery tour of his imagination, stopping only to consider grand themes, simple human tableaux and personal revelations...Whether we are navigating through the macrocosm or investigating the microcosm, we find that he has been there before us......This is a fine collection of poems that covers the full range of human experience from love and awe, to injustice and betrayal......
The Shadow of Rainbow
The Shadow of Rainbow is a collection of poems inspired by the author’s view of current day Africa and its place in the world today vis-à-vis the developed world. The collection covers diverse topics, including African politics, relationships between states, love, friendship and war. It is a glimpse of the world seen from the point of view of an African passionate about inspiring the creation by Africans of a more just future for Africa......
The Children of Signatures
The Children of Signatures embodies mixed feelings of love and disappointment. While it expresses profound love for Africa, it also portrays the problems facing the continent as self-induced. With flashback into history, it draws parallels with the present state of the continent and challenges Africa to view its problems from a moral mirror. Simple in language, rich in depth and imagery, the collection also touches on other aspects of life..........
The African in the Mirror
The African in the Mirror takes us through the predicament of Black Africa from slavery times till the present day. It seeks to establish the cause of vulnerability of the African in his relationship with the outside world and his historical predisposition to self-inflicted catastrophes. The book analyses different diagnoses and solutions that have been proffered to African economic and political problems and proves the futility of these solutions. It propounds the theory of societal relational energy dynamics and seeks to explain the problems that Africa faces through its choice of distribution of this energy. It challenges black Africa to rise up to its historical responsibility to redeem itself and the black race.