10 powerful books we would recommend to President Buhari and other African leaders

In honor of fuel scarcity, PHCN failure, and the extraordinary dollar to Naira rise, here are 11 books of hard-hitting nonfiction and heartrending novels that we think everyone should read, including our leaders.

1. The Trouble with Nigeria by Chinua Achebe

Let's be honest, the only trouble with Nigeria and Africa as a whole is the failure of leadership. In this book, Achebe argues that with good leaders Nigeria could resolve its inherent problems such as tribalism; lack of patriotism; social injustice and the cult of mediocrity; indiscipline; and corruption.

2. Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment by Samir Amin.

This book examines the origin and evolution of underdevelopment in the context of relations between countries and their populations.

Using Africa and the Middle East as an example, Amin attempts to demonstrate how accumulation and corruption at the center can prevent development.

3. Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

Beautifully rendered in lush poetic language, Salih’s story of a man returning to his Sudanese village from England is a bleak meditation on cross-cultural misunderstandings, as well as the confusions and contradictions within the human heart.

4. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

One of my best book for 2015, Ta-Nehisi Coates reflects on a series of revelatory experiences that helped him to understand America’s racial history, its current inequalities, and his visions for the future.

Written in the form of a powerful letter to his son, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

5. This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein

This is an essential text on the future of our planet and the future of the global economy. Naomi Klein argues that climate change can be an opportunity to radically transform our broken economic and cultural priorities.

6. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

This beautiful, Pulitzer Prize–winning novel set during World War Two follows a blind French girl and a young German boy attending a brutal academy for Hitler Youth. At its heart, this is a story about what it means to be human, to have empathy, and to be brave in the face of the most difficult choices.

7. Emerging Africa: How the Global Economy’s ‘Last Frontier’ Can Prosper and Matter by Kingsley Moghalu

This is one of the more outstanding books by an African author on how Africa can beat the hype and achieve a lasting economic take-off.

Kingsley Moghalu, a former Nigeria central bank deputy governor sets this book on a strong foundation, with a focus on how good policies, strong institutions and political will can help Africa create and craft a sustainable growth.

8. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during World War II.

This is a fantastic memoir on what the gruesome experience of war taught him about the primary purpose of life and the quest for meaning.

9. Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice.

Cry, the Beloved Country is a social protest against the structures of the society.

10. Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflofd

Captioned A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, there is an immediate suggestion of action throughout; an activeness not just to change a system but the very way we think. It’s a beautifully written and well-researched book that will be influential in challenging poverty for many years to come and one that will definitely inspire you to take action.

11. Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism by Mahmood Mamdani

I saved the best for the last. This book made me realise although we may have a new ruling party in power, politics is a field of dilemmas, and transformation is tenuous and partial even in the best of circumstances.

In this provocative analysis of the obstacles to democratization in post-independence Africa, Citizen and Subject is a call for the reform of the study of African politics, and how contemporary failures of democratization stem from the inability of most governments to reform the colonial mode of indirect rule via "customary" tribal authorities that prevails in rural Africa.

Did I miss any great book? Please do recommend.

READ: 10 awesome books by Black writers you should read in April