Politics

Two weeks before I met Judith, I had a relationship with an older lady in my dream. We worked the relationship all the way to marriage, even though she told me several times I could go for someone younger if she wasn’t the right fit. I assured her she was. She asked if my family […]

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 […]

A poet and his nation in flight. First, the poet’s country, Uganda – an ill-fated Icarus – flew with delirium, overreached itself mid-flight, and plunged into the abyss of postcolonial chaos. The other, the poet – a reclaimed Icarus–is pulled into exile by the instinct for survival and escape from state victimhood. This is the […]

Idi Amin once promised to “make Uganda move once again.” The slogan never caught on like today’s political catchphrases, but the ambition feels familiar. In a moment when strongman politics is resurgent around the world, historian Derek Peterson asks a simple but unsettling question: why did so many ordinary Ugandans believe in Amin – and […]

When Oris Aigbokhaevbolo declared Nigerian literature dead, he did not do so casually. He was not lamenting a temporary lull or the disappearance of a few magazines. He was naming what he saw as a fundamental failure of formation. There was, in his account, no stable literary life to grow into. Writing appeared intensely, briefly, […]

On re-modelling history 68-sh, 50-sh years later I When budgets get tight, the first thing that gets cut is the arts. People look at a literary journal or a poetry prize or some experimental performance thing happening in a hall and think, “This is cute, but is it really necessary?” Every time I hear that, […]

ASANTEKumasi, your name, a tree with millions of golden branches, a border of origin from which your mother was missing until she flickered on the ghostly lane, & again in the city under Oboase.Your children, named after historical wars of a stranger who intruded yourterritory. In their manhood might have met a man inscribed as […]

Two trepidations knotted a cord in my heart when I arrived at the Kotoka International Airport, Accra that Easter Monday. One: this would be my first time travelling under a completely new identity, a new name. Two: this was my first time travelling without a proper passport. What I had with me was an ECOWAS […]

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 […]

Ganaja sits at the mouth of the river. As some arrived on one boat, other people prepared to begin their journey across the river on another. A few unoccupied boats sat side by side at the river bank. It was on a Friday afternoon. The place bustled like a typical motor park in any part […]