A poem rescued him. He could not recall which poem it was. But he remembers how it happened. He lumbered into the bathroom and locked himself in, pen and paper in hand. Then the poem came, not as a torturer but a redeemer. Thereafter, some kind of creative sensation came […]
By Johnbosco Omokulele The Soyinka Festival takes off today, the beginning of the Soyinka Week, with the Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange (WSICE) kicking off with the theme: I AM because YOU ARE There will be online conversations, online live drama, online film shows, online exhibitions, running every day until Tuesday (July 12 to July 14). […]
Jadeas Trust Limited emerged the reserved bidder in the event of the 2006 concessioning round for the National Theatre. It became the Preferred bidder after the winner left. It contested the validity of the 2013 bid process in court because it did not take cognizance of the 2013 process. Yet it has stuck around. After […]
By Toyin Akinosho Lai Mohammed, the Nigerian Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, will today, hand over the National Theatre and its sprawling surrounds, to the Bankers Committee and the Central Bank of Nigeria. It’s a transaction in which the Nigerian government will not receive a penny, but has agreed to, on the strength of […]
Very early in this brief journal-based memoir, Colleen Higgs writes: “My whole life has felt like a long deeply unsatisfying love affair with my mother. She is the beloved who doesn’t love back.” How hard it must be, to assume the care of a person who is not really interested in you, but demands a […]
“The Disappeared: People who have been secretly abducted and imprisoned or killed by a government or military, often for political reasons, and who have neither been found, nor their bodies recovered. Where is Dadiyata, the Nigerian lecturer and social media voice also known as Abubakar Idris? Is he still alive following his 2nd August 2019 abduction from his home in Kaduna? Can he breathe? Were his […]
I If you want to know the sex of lagoons, jump jump into their wombs You will suffer The swollen silence of rebirth Never ask me why Never ask why the mad poet of beer parlours goes on the rampage He drags his deities into […]
By Toyin Akinosho It’s extremely odd that Fola Osibo Street is the most prominent commercial avenue in Lekki Phase 1, after Admiralty Way. The two streets couldn’t be more different: Fola Osibo is a narrow, two laned road, permanently flooded on the eastern end and looking plain shabby on the western end. It’s designed and […]
There is the wrong notion that Fela as Godfather of social commentary-and-protest lyrics/music in Nigeria, literarily covered all the bases! Yes, he did a huge bit, but on meticulous examination they were mostly about settling personal grudges against his kinsmen; Abiola and Obasanjo in particular and, reactions to military/army raids […]
1 The news came with more than two bangs. Netflix, the digital platform for motion picture distribution, has signed a production deal with Mo Abudu’s EbonyLife TV for a film adaptation of Death and the King’s Horseman, the most venerated of the scores of dramas by Wọlé Ṣóyínká, the literature […]
