Arts/Culture

     By merely looking at the cover of the book Nigerians… in Theory by Joe Abah and Yemi Adesanya, one might immediately place it within a certain tradition of Nigerian long-form commentary. For one, its sub-title ‘Our Quirks, Habits & Idiosyncrasies’. For another, its choice for cover art: cartoon characters illustrating the familiar scenario of […]

Let us start with a confession — mine, at least: I don’t know where the poets are. Or I don’t read them because I hardly hear their names and haven’t seen their books, because no one is reviewing them in magazines or talking about them, not even at a gathering of writers drinking beer. Or […]

by Tade Ipadeola When news broke late on 22nd April 2022, that Ọba Ọláyíwọlá Adéyẹmí III, the Aláàfin of Ọ̀yọ́, had joined his ancestors at the ripe old age of 83, there was a sense in the entire Yorùbá speaking world that a truly regnant king had departed the realm.  Ọba Adéyẹmí was born on […]

Uwem Akpan is not an unfamiliar name in the annals of African literature. His debut collection of short stories – Say You’re One of Them – made the New York Times bestseller list, won the 2009 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the 2009 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Book, Africa Region, 2009 Beyond Margins Award and […]

In the process of organising one of the biggest virtual literary readings in Africa in the first quarter of 2022, my priority was to bring together the big names in the industry; publishers, critics, renowned poets, artists and academics, all in one single virtual space. But the central priority — the priority of all priorities […]

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined. – Toni Morrison What does it mean to bring a city to life? To show its shapes and contours without yielding to the oft-tendency to romanticise? Eloghosa Osunde’s riveting debut, Vagabonds!, answers through a set of interlinked stories which can be read as a whole or independently, […]

Nigeria’s movie industry, Nollywood can no longer be regarded as a nascent industry, even though theorists and film historians are now defining the current age as the age of ‘New Nollywood’ because of advances in storytelling and cinematography. Still, the industry finds it difficult to move away from weak high society stories and romantic comedies. […]

People who have followed me on Twitter may have come across occasional posts of mine with nothing more than the photo of a book and the #Mood hashtag. It had been my own way of sharing the discovery of particular books that have sentimental value to me, to the culture, or books that could, at […]

NIGERIAN SUBSIDY AND THE REAL  SUBSIDISERS Here, in plain, unsubsidized language      Are the basic facts   About the fabled Nigerian “subsidy”      Whose endless lies have besieged our ears We the Nigerian people subsidize      The rampant CORRUPTION of our rulers We the Nigerian people subsidize      Their fatal incompetence and prodigal greed We the Nigerian people subsidize      Those […]

Secrets. Every family has them. For filmmaker Jide Tom Akinleminu, it would seem that his not-quite-blended family is nursing more than their fair share.  As the mixed-race son of a Nigerian father and a Danish mother, Jide Tom Akinleminu spent his life straddling both often extreme worlds. His parents met and fell in love while […]