In October 1986, Nigeria's military government asked its own police force a question it could not answer: Where is Anini?
Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini was an armed robber. That much the historical record proves beyond doubt. But by the time police finally caught him - his leg shattered by their own bullets - he had become something the government feared far more: proof that its own officers might be protecting the men they were supposed to be hunting.
Drawing on contemporary newspaper archives, peer-reviewed scholarship, tribunal records, and a rigorous evidence-tiering system built specifically for this book, Anini: The Law That Broke the Law reconstructs the 1986 Benin City manhunt that became a national crisis - the killings, the roadblocks, the letter Anini wrote from hiding, and the police officer whose own trial turned suspicion into fact.
This is not the legend. Nigeria already has one of those - a Robin Hood myth built on repetition rather than evidence. This book does something different: it separates what the historical record actually establishes from what folklore has added to it since, and it is honest, chapter by chapter, about exactly where that record runs out.
Some questions in this case were answered in a Benin City courtroom in 1987.
Others were not - and, as this book argues, may never be.
What you'll find inside:
- A full, sourced reconstruction of the 1986-87 manhunt and trial
- The George Iyamu case - the police officer whose conviction proved the corruption was real
- An evidence-graded appendix separating fact from unverified rumour
- Honest treatment of every place the historical record is disputed or incomplete
For readers of serious, sourced true crime - not the sensationalised version, the documented one.
