The sentinel protocol

In 1914, as Lord Lugard amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria, he realized that the legal framework of a new nation would be insufficient to protect it from the predatory greed of the Lagosian political elite and rising capitalists. To safeguard the "National Soul," he established a clandestine paramilitary organization known as the WATCHMEN. Operating from a hidden limestone fortress in Lagos, these operatives were the invisible arbiters of Nigerian stability for decades. However, by the 1970s, the organization began to suffer from the very rot it was designed to prevent. The novel follows the fracturing of this brotherhood across three pivotal eras. It begins with the 1976 assassination of General Murtala Muhammed, a man who shared Lugard’s vision of a "just but brutal" oversight and sought to move the capital to Abuja to shield the WATCHMEN from Lagosian corruption. His death at the hands of Dimka was the first tremor of an internal schism. By the 1993 June 12 crisis, the organization officially split into two warring factions: the Original Watchmen, who remained committed to their founding, lethal morality, and the Nigeria State Defense Intelligence (NSDI), a sprawling, bureaucratic wing that traded justice for political leverage. When an insider leaks the "Lugard Files" during the Abacha regime, the Original Watchmen realize the balance of power has shifted too far. The story culminates in a high-stakes assassination plot involving a legendary untraceable poison, delivered via a handshake, as the watchers of the nation decide to execute their own ultimate authority to prevent a total collapse of the Nigerian state.