Nganga is the name of dance group ringing bells in the United Kingdom. The magnetizing dancing steps almost always hold the audiences spellbound. Nganga is a group of four exceptionally talented artistes, namely Ifemelumma Nweri, Sandra Nwaizigbo, Chigozie Oguejiofor, and Chinedu Chimodo poised to give the Igbo dance a global reach. Nganga has been quite Read More…
The man fondly called Zik of Africa deserves his day. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s foremost nationalist and first president, deserves his birthday, November 16, to be slated as a national holiday. It is a deserving honour for the pivotal leader who led the charge for Nigeria’s independence on October 1, 1960. As a result of Read More…
The talk of oil thieves across the waters of the Niger Delta has made me to remember the journeys I undertook through the seas and waters once upon a dangerous assignment in my journalism doings. It was a journey of immense wonder and danger sailing on the waters of Niger Delta, where I travelled in Read More…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
