Nigerian writer Eghosa Imasuen’s nonfiction book The Challengers: The Disruptive Entrepreneurs at the VFD Group Creating a Billion Naira Company has been acquired for publication by Lagos-based independent publisher Narrative Landscape Press.

The Challengers explores a personal dimension of the 2008 financial crisis in Nigeria by following the stories of Nonso Okpala, Adeniyi Adenubi, Mobolaji Adewumi, Gbenga Omolokun, the entrepreneurs who formed the VFD Group. The VFD Group, an investment company, is developing into an important contender in the Nigerian economy. Imasuen’s timely book explores the founding of this company to understand what makes it different from the businesses that came before it.

This book marks a turn for Eghosa Imasuen, who has thus far been known primarily as a novelist and short story writer. Imasuen is the author of To Saint Patrick, an alternate history murder mystery about Nigeria’s civil war, and Fine Boys, a story chronicling the voices of Nigeria’s post-Biafra generation. He also has a medical degree from the University of Benin and currently lives in Lagos with his wife and their twin sons.

You can read a full synopsis of the book from the publisher below:

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, a group of young Nigerian entrepreneurs came together to form The VFD Group, a company that is poised to become a major player in Nigeria’s financial sector. The founders of this company, Nonso Okpala, Adeniyi Adenubi, Mobolaji Adewumi, Gbenga Omolokun, and others, recognised the need for a new kind of financial institution in Nigeria, one that was nimble, innovative, and responsive to the needs of a rapidly changing market. But that was not their only innovation: they decided to build this firm together.

The Challengers is about the personal stories of these founders. What makes their story different from that of the businesspeople of just a generation prior? How did this company not only survive having so many “owners” but thrive because of it? This, in an environment as individualistic as the Nigerian business space, was a previously-unheard-of occurrence. Eghosa Imasuen, author of Fine Boys, presents this tour de force of narrative nonfiction in a style uniquely his own.

Congratulations to Eghosa!