Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa, famously known as Ken Saro-Wiwa, would have been 82 today, October 10. My lionised friend packed too many lifetimes into one life. His hanging by the General Sani Abacha regime on November 10, 1995 was a universal cause célèbre. It can be all too easy for many to give Ogoni activism the Read More…
Maxim Uzoatu
An Airport for Achebe
There is a Chinua Achebe International Airport in Anambra State. It was a spectacular masterstroke from Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo when he renamed the Anambra Airport at Umueri after Chinua Achebe. The ovation that Soludo got when he made the announcement in his speech at the 63rd Nigerian Independence Anniversary, which took place at Dr Read More…
The Federal Republic of Fiction @ 63
Nigeria is fiction. The country’s Constitution has been transferred to a new shelf in the library: the shelf containing fictional works. The latter-day patriots of Nigeria can cry all they want against me, but in this instance, I only choose to stand solidly in solidarity with the words that Samuel Johnson uttered on the evening Read More…
The Legend of Ikebe
Any idea, no matter how small or banal, can lead to great wealth. Ordinarily, the word “ass”, “buttock” or “bottom” would be scoffed at. But one inspired man took that word in its old Bendel lingo version known as “Ikebe” and made great and enduring wealth out of it. Wale Adenuga, the son of a Read More…
How JP Clark Led Achebe and Soyinka To IBB
Writing is fighting. That is the dictum of the fiery African-American writer Ishmael Reed who wrote a book entitled Writing is Fighting. Whether taken literally or otherwise writers fire bullets with words, and in some instances actually take up guns to go shooting. A landmark example was Nigeria’s most influential poet, Christopher Okigbo, who died Read More…
President Tinubu Discovers Ice In Macondo
Let the whole wide world join me in universal celebration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who has just repeated the immortal feat of discovering ice. The first time ice was ever discovered in human history was in the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. According to the opening sentence of One Read More…
Who Wrote Things Fall Apart?
It all started at the local secondary school in Ndiorumbe when the literature teacher, Holy Nwankpi, asked his students: “Who wrote Things Fall Apart?” The first student pleaded his innocence thusly: “I didn’t write it-o!” Another student pointed an accusing finger at the denying student and screamed: “He is a liar. I know he wrote Read More…
LIMCAF 2023: Celebrating Anambra’s Young Art Talents at Awka Museum
Zik’s Avenue is arguably the most hurly-burly road in Awka, the capital city of Anambra State, but tucked inside Number 261 is seminal serenity. Here is the home of Awka Museum Foundation facilitated by the irrepressible art connoisseur Barrister Arthur Harris-Eze. It’s noonday on Saturday, July 22, 2023, and art enthusiasts are gathered here for Read More…
The Writer in Kole Omotoso Never Dies
The news that came from Johannesburg, South Africa on July 19 was heartrending: Kole Omotoso is dead! The lionized writer, Kole Omotoso, was my teacher at the then University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, for four years of my study there in the Dramatic Arts Department with Professor Wole Soyinka as Head of Department. Read More…
Re-Reading the Sacred Suicide of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman
In picture above: The author with Folake and Kongi (Wole Soyinka) Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka is an acknowledged classic of world theatre. It has been staged across the continents to wide acclaim. The drama has in the course of time garnered critical and popular plaudits from the literati and the general Read More…