Essay

There is a peculiar fate in literature: some books die and some books are killed, not because they weren’t read or weren’t loved, but because they were regarded as unbearable. And some simply refuse to vanish. They exist as whispers, as rumors in footnotes, as echoes in the margins of other people’s stories. Mohamed Mbougar […]

By Tádé Ìpàdéọlá Poets who are also scholars of poetry occupy a peculiar niche in the ineffable enterprise of memorable music and words. They are not rare birds in the West (or the Orient), but here in Africa, the sighting of one such personage is something to cherish. If granted the further pleasure of not […]

On re-visiting history 68-sh, 50-sh years later I Last month, when I said you would hear from me soon, I didn’t know it would be this difficult to keep to the commitment. I knew I would be doing lots of travels, but I didn’t know ‘lots of travels’ would mean stops in about 10 cities […]

On Re-Presenting History 68-sh, 50-sh years later I. Last year, November, I was in Lagos for the onboarding process for my research fellowship at Archivi.ng. This was coming after all the ‘Hello, we’d love to hear more about your project,’ ‘Tell us about yourself/your history of knowledge work production,’ and ‘You will hear from us’ […]

It started with a panic that spread over a bright day and blurred visions. Then an unknown rattling came from behind. They heard the gunshots. Terrified, they sat still, waving the Nigerian flag and chanting. They didn’t know who had fired those gunshots. Some would say they were soldiers. Others would reckon they were police. […]

How Nigerian Charismatic Christianity Became a Thing It takes two hours to get past Third Mainland Bridge when traffic is thick. I am squeezed beside a petite woman in a congested bus. Her head hangs over the phone screen. A young preacher vibrates on the screen, and she mutters along.  Amen. Amen. I look in […]

[Lecture delivered on September 1, 2023 at the Freedom Park, Lagos.] ÌSẸ̀ṢE has come, but not gone. We salute all those – human rights activists, community leaders, affronted citizens, advocates of equity, and all –  but the state governors most especially – who have taken history to task and boldly formalized a level praying ground […]

To do good is one thing. To know what it is that is good to do is another. The former can easily be determined by the value of its consequences while the latter might pose as a palm kernel in a person’s cognitive processes. It is an uneasy epistemic process because of the skepticism that […]

We have published a lot of incredible stories this year spanning different tastes and genres in African literature. As we approach the year’s end, we have compiled a list of our top stories for 2022 strictly for your leisure reading this holiday. At the top of our list is this piece by Mọlárá Wood which […]

If it wasn’t obvious enough that the leading poetic voices on the continent now belong to a new generation of writers bred in the jungles of the internet and raised in the angst of 21st-century dilemmas and preoccupations, the new NLNG prize shortlist has made it clearer. The three writers currently on the shortlist — […]