Chief the Honorable M.A. Nanga, M.P. visits a grammar school in the village of Ananta in Africa, to give a speech. A young man named Odili works there as a teacher, and attends Chief Nanga's speech. Sixteen years ago, Mr. Nanga had been Odili’s teacher there. He returns now as a Minister after gaining a position of greater power during a period of political unrest where he was very aggressive in pinning his opponents as treasonous and anti-national. Odili has an unfavorable view of him now because of his actions during this time. However, when they reunite, the minister embraces him with warmth and encourages him to take a job in politics with him in the capital, Bori. Odili mentions wanting to go back to school for further education. Before the Minister leaves, he has Odili write down his residential address in Bori.  
Odili takes the minister up on his offer, but only because he already had plans to visit the capital and meet up with an old lover from school, a young woman named Elsie. In the time of his stay before meeting up with Elsie, he meets many government officials. At a meeting with the Minister of Overseas Training to discuss a scholarship for his further European education, Odili watches the Minister mistakenly believe he has been poisoned by his chef. He overhears a phone call between Nanga and the Minister of Construction where they discuss preferring to work with Europeans over local Africans. At a dinner party, he is introduced to several American politicians and business owners, and discusses colonization with them. These encounters in the capital give Odilli insight into the inner workings of the government, and he begins to realize it is more complex and corrupt than he had even imagined.
After several days pass and these illuminating political encounters unfold, Odili and Chief Nanga go to the hospital where Elsie works to pick her and a friend up to bring back to the minister’s house for a two day stay. They first go to a conference where Chief Nanga gives a speech, and Odili whispers to Elsie the entire time. They return back to the minister's home for dinner, and Odili finds out that Nanga, has bribed a journalist to only say certain things in the press in favor of his politics and to print his speech on the front page– an act Odili views as entirely unethical. After dinner Nanga tells Elsie that she will be staying in his wife’s bedroom, adjacent to his own. At first, Odili expects this to be a common courtesy on the minister’s part, not wanting to be presumptuous and room the two together. However, after waiting up for over an hour for Nanga to go to sleep so he can retrieve Elsie and bring her to his room to sleep with her, Odili realizes that Nanga is still up, and has gone into Elsie’s room. Later, he hears them having sex, and packs his bag, storming out the next morning in a flurry of insults toward Nanga. 
He instead stays at a friend’s house, a lawyer he went to school with named Max, who takes him to a political meeting called the Common People’s Convention. While at Max’s, Odili decides to sleep with Edna, the woman who the minister is soon to wed as a second “parlor” wife, in order to get revenge on him. He returns home to his village, and rides his bike to the neighboring village where Edna lives with her father. When he arrives, he meets with her bitter, greedy father and talks with him. Odili attempts to seduce Edna in her home village of Anata, but finds himself nervous and unable to, so he goes back to Chief Nanga’s house for Christmas, when Edna will be there as well. He makes another failed attempt. He goes back home after Christmas and decides to contest Chief Nanga’s political seat and runs against him funded by the political group Max introduced him to, CPC. He reasons that taking away Nanga’s political seat would be a better revenge than sleeping with Edna ever could have been. Around the same time, the media reveals corruption in the government, and Max has Odili return to the Bori to launch CPC as a political party at the weak moment for the status quo government. He returns with money and a car funded by CPC and launches his campaign against Nanga. The people of the village reject and hold Odili in contempt, and verbally and physically terrorize him. He goes to Edna’s house to try to convince her father to vote for him, and upon leaving realizes that he genuinely wants to be with Edna, not for revenge but for her own sake. However, all of his motivations, political, personal revenge, and romance, are so integrated he cannot be certain what he truly wants. He continues to run, despite the abuse and a bribe from Chief Nanga for him to end his campaign. The political drama escalates throughout the country and a message is broadcasted via radio telling the people that they will vote for Nanga. It is not posed as a question or an option. Odili is still committed to running for election and decides to go to a speech Nanga is giving. When he arrives in the crowd, he is quickly identified and beaten so badly he remains unconscious and in the hospital until after the election has ended. He wakes up from his unconscious state to learn that the entire government has collapsed in a coupe by the military where Nanga was overthrown. In the midst of the chaos, Max was killed, but now as the new regime claims power, he has been uplifted posthumously as a hero. With no political agenda now that the entire system has fallen apart, Odili finally accomplishes his original goal of winning over Edna, and marries her with her father’s blessing.