AFRICA

increasing abductions on the Abuja-Kaduna expressway

Romeo Oriogun has always regarded his life as some form of “protest”, and in many ways, he’s not far from the truth.

I am more familiar with the poetry of Fred D’Aguiar than his prose, so I was thrilled when I discovered his debut novel at the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (LOATAD) in Accra where I was a writer-in-residence in April earlier this year.

In 1997, a young Ike Nnaebue, along with free of his friends, left Lagos, Nigeria for a journey across West Africa, hoping to get into Europe by road (and ultimately) by sea, but a fortuitous encounter at Mali’s capital city caused him to make a detour, one that would change the trajectory of his life forever.

a new way to keep the lights on

I love my country. But America Courts me — the man with everything.

The writer-director, author of Burma Boy, Biyi Bandélé, has passed.

Ifeakandu, in his debut, reveals the mundane and daring lives of gay men in Nigeria, conveying their everyday experiences with compassion.

They will ask me when I know, I’ll sigh and say not so long ago. It happened in fragments—piece by piece you came and filled up the empty space—and in a matter of time, you became my world.

But striking profs have an extremely valid point

I come from the country / Of the Happiest People on earth, / Where death sells at ten for one kobo / And the Living envy the peace

A young police officer is standing with a woman I assume to be his mother. She is praying for him loudly, at a major junction on the streets of a Lagos suburb; speaking in tongues unashamedly while passers-by stare, some in admiration, others, not so much.

In Nigerian popular culture, ‘double wahala’ is a Pidgin English phrase that was made popular by ace Afrobeat musician and activist, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.