The Past and Future(s) of the Postcolonial University In Femi Kayode’s thriller Lightseekers (2021) the protagonist Philip Taiwo investigates the brutal murder of three students in the fictional university town of Okriki in the Niger Delta. Woven into the plot are aspects that shape the everyday life of many universities in Africa’s most populous country: strikes, corruption, underfunding, and political, religious, and ethnic conflicts between and within different status groups. Nigerian and African universities have been afflicted by crisis since the late 1970s.