Their hearts collided the instant he lifted his veil. At the Eyo masquerade, following custom, Ajadi showed his face only to Eyinju, and in that single moment, nothing would ever be the same. The year is 1914.

Lagos trembles as the British fuse the Northern and Southern Protectorates into a new colony called Nigeria.

What should be a ceremonial welcome for the incoming Governor, Lord Frederick Montague, collapses into chaos when the Owonrin, once idealists, now executioners in black masks, turn their guns on the crowd.

Eyinju, a photographer on a covert assignment to document the Governor, is caught in the slaughter. As she escapes with her wounded friend, Nneka, she is dragged to safety by Ajadi the man hidden beneath the Eyo costume. Their bond is immediate. Dangerous. And forged in a city on the edge of rupture.

Yet the violence reaches deeper than the Owonrin. Architects are indeed the Oloja Egbin, an underground press that has steered Lagos from the shadows for centuries.

Calling themselves “the marketers of dirt,” they weaponize distortion and sacrifice truth to awaken the masses, even if it means letting their own people die under colonial bullets. Eyinju has served them her entire life.

Now she is forced to confront a bitter question: When does resistance rot into cruelty? How long can a fight for freedom last before it begins to resemble the oppression it opposes? And can love endure when sealed by oath, loyalty, and blood? This is the story of a woman documenting imperial violence for a secret press ruled by an unseen elite while navigating betrayal, duty, and a love that threatens to undo her.

It is the story of the Oloja Egbin: journalism transformed into insurgency, battling both British rule and the fragile, imposed unity of a nation born against its will. A novel that reassembles the crime scene of Nigeria’s creation. A reflection on history, truth, and survival.

A love letter to Lagos and a warning about the cost of freedom. Enter 1914. Witness the uprising. Interrogate the birth of a nation and the soul it fractured.