I had been reading The Sibyl in Her Grave by Sarah Caudwell. You’d agree with me that some novels, out of no fault of the writer, get one bored at some point. The Sibyl was such a story. Though beautifully written in mesmerising English ethos and nuances, the book was…

On the last day of work before the August vacation, a lady friend visited his office. The lady was to travel abroad in few days for a literary course. She didn’t come all the way to the Island to bid him goodbye — they weren’t as close. She only came…

Ajah Chronicles A young man in Lagos is buying a car. A night before, he cannot sleep. He tosses from one end to the other on his bed from anxiousness. …

Whenever I arrived home late in the night I went to a small glassed window belonging to the gatekeeper and knocked. Sometimes once, sometimes twice, most times not more than thrice before I got a response on the other side. The other side was the gatekeeper’s tiny room, whose wall…

“When did it occur to him to carry the world on his back? At what point did he make the resolution to owe us all the responsibility of making the globe go round? …

Ajah can easily make you a passenger in a G-Wagon — don’t even raise an eyebrow; being lifted from a roadside in such an exotic car wouldn’t be a thing here. Although I haven’t enjoyed such luxury yet, it wouldn’t take me aback if a G- Wagon pulled over and…

Hustling in Ajah has a certain peculiarity to it: it’s a quite humane but nonetheless vicious attempt at survival in a society offering not too many choices at an economic headway. To be seen a hustler in Ajah — and its environs — is to be caught with your pants…

In the poem cum song Strange Fruit, made famous by Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and many other arrays of important and prominent United States of American artists, the lines sing of black bodies hanging from trees; a widespread lynching of African Americans by white supremacists in the USA at the…

For quite a while I have been searching for some information on an estranged African custom. Unfortunately, I’m gradually arriving at the fact that the age-old practice might have been long lost to history. Circa 1999, I saw on Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) a documentary of an African traditional practice…