A Lament for a People and the Futures They Were Denied — “Tomorrow Died Yesterday” Book Review
Chimeka Garricks paints a piercing portrait of friendship and survival in the oil-slicked Niger Delta.
After reading Chimeka Garricks’ beautifully crafted short story collection, A Broken People’s Playlist, last month, I knew for a fact that I wanted to spend more time inside his head.
The last time I had this kind of feeling was when I finished the very dark, very gloomy coming-of-age novel The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma. But where my attempt to follow up with Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities proved too large a pill to swallow, Garricks’ Tomorrow Died Yesterday was the exact opposite: a pleasant, welcoming surprise.
It was a very easy read to get through, even with the looming, almost suffocating shadow of the Niger Delta’s devastation hanging over its pages.
Chimeka Garricks has a special gift for fleshing out characters and giving them real, lived-in qualities that make them feel like people you might know or have once been. If that wasn’t already evident when I read his short stories, Tomorrow Died Yesterday drives home the point even harder. Kaniye, Tubo, Amaibi, and Doye are at the forefront of this narrative, each offering their perspective in distinct point-of-view chapters that will see you thinking about that popular Yoruba proverb: 20 children cannot play together for 20 years. With a front row seat to see how these four’s relationship blossomed from childhood, only to fizzle out in early adulthood because of the impact of forces far greater than them, that gloomy picture the proverb paints is forever etched in. And in the times when the story gets darker, it is the way Garricks writes them that grounds them in memory and makes them hard to forget. Even the B-list characters — like Deola and Dise — leave a memorable mark, their quirks and flaws so vividly drawn they feel alarmingly familiar. C-list ones like Wali and his classic mispronunciation of “P” and “F,” provide a good source of dark comic relief when the character’s actions aren’t so nauseating. Garricks ensures that no character, no matter how fleeting, fades into the background.
I’m sure it’s now clear that I was fully invested in this book from start to finish, and now, let’s break down some of the things that truly stood out while flipping through its pages.
⚠️ Warning: This review contains spoilers. No vex in advance.
A routine kidnapping along the Niger Delta creeks spirals into chaos when Doughboy (Doye), a militant leader, takes a white oil worker, Manning, hostage. When Amaibi — a lecturer, activist, and Doughboy’s childhood friend — is called upon to help deliver the ransom but returns with Manning’s corpse instead, the fragile balance shatters. Amaibi is arrested, and Kaniye, another childhood friend turned restaurateur and reluctant lawyer, is forced to dust off his law degree and fight to save Amaibi from the full weight of a system rigged against them.
Tomorrow Died Yesterday is at once a story of fractured friendship and a searing indictment of a region sacrificed on the altar of oil. Beneath the courtroom drama and militant politics is a deeply human tale, one that asks what loyalty means in the face of survival, and who gets to profit when a people’s future is burned for fuel.
One of the first things that struck me about Tomorrow Died Yesterday is how seamlessly Garricks weaves political commentary into deeply human stories. The novel begins and ends in the same place — literally and thematically — the oil-rich, conflict-heavy Niger Delta. The setting doesn’t just serve as a backdrop; it becomes a living, breathing entity in the narrative, shaping and distorting the lives caught within its grasp. Garricks brings us in close, forcing us to feel the weight of this devastation, to see how it corrupts dreams, erodes convictions, and breaks apart communities.
The structure of the novel — moving through time and memory — enhances this connection.
At its heart is a tale of brotherhood:
- Kaniye, the bastard son of a wealthy chief, whose wit hides a deep ache for belonging and his desire to form a deeper connection with Deola. He’s the closest thing to a protagonist this book has.
- Tubo, born to a sex worker and an unknown white father, is the community’s child — but also its outsider. Now working for Imperial Oil, the oil company destroying his homeland, he justifies his choices as survival. But beneath the bravado is a man torn between ambition and guilt.
- Amaibi, the nerdy son of a catechist, is reserved and contemplative, carrying silent burdens heavier than his quiet demeanour suggests.
- Doye (aka Doughboy), the hardened son of an alcoholic fisherman, whose path twists the sharpest when pain and anger give way to radicalisation.
The friendships between these four men (once innocent and carefree) become strained and complicated as adulthood forces them to confront the very real horrors surrounding them. Their diverging views on how to respond to the Niger Delta crisis become a microcosm of larger national conflicts:
- Kaniye urges caution, wary of violence but burdened by deep-seated thoughts that a peaceful approach might truly not bring the desired change.
- Tubo works for the enemy — Imperial Oil — and is mostly concerned with lining his own pockets.
- Amaibi wrestles silently, too shaken by the events of 1997 to fully condemn Doye, yet too reserved to actively support him.
- Doye, having lived through every betrayal and brutality firsthand, transforms into “Doughboy,” a militant leading what he believes is a righteous war, though it comes at great personal and moral cost.
Their ideological clashes are inevitable and heartbreaking. Loyalty, survival, betrayal, and resistance intersect in messy, painful ways that feel entirely too real. Garricks refuses to let any character become a one-dimensional hero or villain. Each man is flawed, wounded, and navigating a world that offers no easy answers.
They have known each other since they were boys, running around Asiama town with mischief and wonder, calling gas flares “hellfire pits” and telling exaggerated stories about Thunder Balogun’s supposed exploits. But time, tragedy, and choices changed everything. The devastating events of 1997 — the secret at the heart of their story — hover like a dark cloud for most of the novel. Garricks teases it expertly, building tension until the reveal finally lands.
When the truth comes, it is heavier and darker than I ever anticipated, a tragedy that shakes not just the friends, but the entire community of Asiama and me, the reader, to the core.
Tomorrow Died Yesterday might be fictional, but it is still very real. The characters, the incidents, the maltreatment, pillaging, and rape of a people’s ancestral home are real things that have happened in many communities in the Niger Delta and are still happening to this day. Garricks captures this brutal truth in scenes that leave a sting long after you’ve read them.
One such moment is a conversation between Doye and his elder brother Soboye, where the sickening irony of the region’s plight is laid bare:
‘Let me understand this. These people, the Generals and the Hausas, their lands do not have oil, right?’ Soboye nodded, and sucked his igbo hungrily.
‘With the permission of the government, they steal oil which was drilled from places like Asiama?’ Soboye nodded again and blew smoke in my direction.
‘Stop saying steal. The word is ‘bunker’.’ I nodded slowly as I stared him down.
‘And they prevent people like you, people from Asiama, from taking the oil that comes from your own land, without their permission. Is that it, Soboye?’
With sudden, violent movements, Soboye stubbed out his igbo. He stood up, opened the door and walked, shoulders stiff, into the pelting rain. He didn’t say a word.”
The heavy silence that follows Soboye’s departure speaks louder than any words ever could. It is the silence of a people long stripped of their dignity, their rights, and their futures. And it is in these haunting quiet moments that Garricks’ novel finds some of its most devastating power.
This rage and disillusionment are what birth figures like Doughboy, who, having seen the rot firsthand, morph into militants fighting what they believe is a righteous war, even as their former friends, like Kaniye, Amaibi, and Tubo, grapple with the moral cost of either joining him or turning away.
The characters’ experiences mirror the actual suffering endured by many communities in the Niger Delta: the pillaging of ancestral lands, the violent suppression of dissent, and the silencing of voices that dare to resist. Families are uprooted, villages are burned, livelihoods are destroyed, all in the name of profit for a few wealthy elites, both local and foreign.
When a man like Doye rises up to become the persona Doughboy, scarred but unbroken, and chooses militancy as his answer, the system’s response follows a familiar playbook:
- First, they try to bribe him into silence.
- If that fails, they intimidate.
- And if intimidation doesn’t work, they eliminate.
The state and multinational corporations form an unholy alliance, a cartel with no interest in justice, only in protecting profits.
It is my understanding that with Tomorrow Died Yesterday, Chimeka Garricks did not seek to simply cuddle the reader to proselytize for change. He knows that might not do so much good, yet the story needs to be told. He just paints the gleam picture as it is. He does not moralise or paint Doughboy as a simple freedom fighter. He shows the compromises, the small corruptions, the internal rot that can sometimes taint even noble causes. Yet, he demands we understand why Doughboy — and others like him — might see no other way.
It is also not difficult to see that he wrote Tomorrow Died Yesterday partly as a way of shedding light on the injustices of his homeland, but also, perhaps, as a form of personal catharsis. A way to grieve and stay sane in a world that often demands silence in the face of injustice. In that sense, Kaniye’s use of sarcasm to cope becomes a mirror for Garricks himself — using storytelling as both sword and shield.
Tomorrow Died Yesterday’s prose is rich and evocative, charged with emotion, tension, and an acute sense of place. Garricks knows exactly how to push his characters to their breaking points, and how to make readers feel every crack along the way.
Thanks to the point-of-view chapters, we get to sit inside the characters’ minds during their quietest and most vulnerable moments:
- The sorrows of children forced to grow up too quickly
- The resignation of a man who realises he has compromised too much
- The bitterness of an idealist turned cynic, realising dreams don’t survive reality without bruises
Garricks handles these emotional beats and more with tenderness and brutal honesty. There are no easy redemptions, no fairytale endings here (even though it is alluded that Kaniye and Deola got together in the end). Just the messy, complicated humanity of people doing the best they can with what life has handed them.
Tomorrow Died Yesterday is literature as resistance, as mourning, and as memory. And in Garricks’ hands, it’s a quiet battle cry for a people still waiting to be heard. It comes highly recommended and lingers long after the final page.
For my next books, I am considering reading Fine Boys by Eghosa Imasuen. I have heard so much about that book, and a timely tweet I came across just brought it back into top-most consideration. Let me know in the comments what you think of this pick and of the other books in my to-be-read list. I’ll see you in the next review.
List of books I currently have under consideration for the rest of 2025
- The Vegetarian
- Gaslight
- Purple Hibiscus
- Dream Count
- Nearly All The Men in Lagos Are Mad
- Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow
- Half of a Yellow Sun (reading again)
- Children of Blood and Bone (reading again)
- Be(com)ing Nigerian (reading again)
- The Thing Around Your Neck (reading again)
