Nigeria, Sept. 8 -- In the foreword to Colours of My Mind, Professor Godini G. Darah places Austin Emaduku within a distinguished lineage of Nigerian public intellectuals, from Nnamdi Azikiwe and Anthony Enahoro to Dele Giwa and Tunji Dare, who used the written word to interrogate power and hold public authority to account.

It is an ambitious comparison for this collection of 69 commentaries. But the ambition is not entirely misplaced.

Colours of My Mind is something perhaps more modest, but in some respects more interesting: a record of how an engaged Nigerian citizen thought through his country in real time, from the particular vantage point of the Niger Delta. Its value lies less in the comprehensiveness of its political analysis tha...