Nigeria

It is no longer news that the Nigerian political class does not care about Nigerians. For one, it became one of the world’s poverty capitals while its politicians remain among the richest in the world. In Nigeria, rigging is routinized and normalized as part of the political process. With the 2027 Nigerian elections approaching, it is […]

Tares Oburumu is a Nigerian poet born in the creeks of Bayelsa and raised amid the socio-economic and cultural tensions of the Niger Delta region. His poetry is marked by formal and structural elegance; through it, he affirms his humanity and interrogates the illusions of post-independence Nigeria. His work has appeared in international journals that […]

On the second day of September 2026, the U.S. Mission in Nigeria, through their official X (formerly Twitter) handle, published a hashtag-led tribute to a historical signpost in US-Nigeria relations. For archival accuracy, the post in part:  “#ThisWeekinUSNigeriaHistory in 1983, America’s Billboard 200 welcomed a groundbreaking sound from Nigeria: King Sunny Adé’s Jùjú Music spent […]

It is midnight in 2025. On my study desk are books strewn over: Binyanvanga Wainaina’s How To Write About Africa; Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things; James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time; Richard Powers’ Overstory; Damon Galgut’s The Promise. My lamp pours its incandescent yellow over these books, over my pencil holder stuffed with […]

In 2024, Asake released Active, one of the standout tracks from Lungu Boy. For many listeners, it was another demonstration of the sonic confidence that has come to define his music: log drums colliding with layered percussion, clipped chants giving way to melodic refrains, and a vocal performance that oscillates between swagger and supplication. Yet […]

Opobo, Notebook IslandIn the beginning was the rafting, too, before the empty ships made of conquest arrived at the shore where Pepple was the king, where the world was one world, as soft as silk moving the air. We, the sea-dwellerswere capable of love in the way the waters flow endlessly on their own axis. […]

You can’t afford to miss Jomo by 7am. In a school where Mrs. Nwokejiegebe was more feared than the Headmistress, you’re better off missing school for the day than turning up late. We lived in the suburbs. But if you made it to the bus stop early enough to catch Jomo, it was a one-way […]

Photography by Gabriel Whenayọn Louis If you grew up around Badagry, you likely learned to read the coastline like a timeline chronicled in familiar plants—along, of course, with its rich aquatic life. And if you are familiar enough with its affairs, you would perhaps agree that the vegetation of this historic port has witnessed several […]

​“The Alase can’t bow down to the king as others bow to the king,” the current Alase, Mr. Taiwo said as we walked through the Ajina community, a vibrant marketplace square in Ikorodu, Lagos State. We were heading to meet with two chiefs of the Osugbo, and I was accompanied by a friend to this […]

Somewhere in BornoIit lingers, the sorrow, like a mist as men sit on benches with tumblers of ginin hands, smoke from bummed cigars drifting aboutthe atmosphere—the only mechanismmy countrymen have invented to disembody ache.IIa foreigner once asked why the children herewear old faces: i told him to wear his caution perfectly well. the bullets don’t […]