A DREAM. I am dreaming. I am standing in front of stones, huge stones arranged in a straight vertical line. These stones are fresh, neat, smooth; the kind of stones you find under the sea, precious stones. There is this guy beside me. He is a black guy with a white face. I know he […]
An Apology and A New Story.
There are some things we do, or feel obliged to do, not because people ask or because if we don’t do these things we’d be crucified. But we feel as though it is a duty and sometimes if we don’t do these things, we feel bad, or ashmed, or apologetic. Of course most of these […]
Fiction or Nonfiction
FAILURE. I have forgotten the taste of failure. I have forgotten how the cold the hands can be at the touch of failure, of not succeeding. I have survived a long time without failure I do not even know that the enemy still exists. My lack of failure however does not mean I have always […]
This Is Why English Is Our Official Language
Another annoying thing is the issue of people asking useless whys. Why do we have to use English as our official language? Why not Yoruba? Why not Hausa? Why not even Pidgin? There are many reasons why this is not advisable and why I don’t pray it ever works out.
One. We need to understand Nigeria. Perhaps a little bit of history will help us understand this issue. I will do my best to break these things down. One is that Nigeria is not a nation
On Gender Equality.
Yesterday, I was on my departmental WhatsApp group when a sensitive issue arose. We were to have a party and the gate fee was N300 for both boys and girls. Now, before I go on, I think you need to have an idea of how things work in my school. Whenever there is a party, only guys get to pay. It’s always free for girls. And really no one has ever complained, at least not loudly. And no one saw anything wrong with this annoying idea. Until recently.
Poor.
I am writing for you, Jordan.For the first time in the nineteen years you’ve spent on earth, you opened your huge Collins dictionary and checked the meaning ofthe word poor. You never knew it would come to this. For more than a week, your bank account has had nothing but N500 in it and […]
The Collector.
“Writing is Telepathy.” – Stephen King. ONE. This is how you will know you like books. On a cold Thursday morning, when the birds are somewhere shivering and you can’t see past ten feets before you – thanks to the mist – you will set out with N5000 to buy a pair of shoes for […]
The Distance Between Us (Part 2)
Three years ago, I was a different person. Five years ago, I was different from the person I was three years ago. Five years ago, I was a notorious boy who thought the world was in his pocket. I had friends with whom I lived a vain life. I was in junior secondary school then […]
The Distance Between Us (Part 1)
ONE. Pwesh mangoes! Pwesh mangoes!! Pwesh mangoes were never fresh. Anyway, it mattered not. I don’t buy mangoes. I eat mangoes but I don’t buy them. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s the mangoes, I don’t know. I just can’t bring myself to bring out my wallet from my pocket, count a few notes and give […]
On Novel Buying.
First thing: Thank you Enwongo Cleopas and Oladejo Oluwatosin. You both are forever in my heart. Last week Wednesday, before I started that joke about my hair, I put up a post on Facebook about my plan to spend my last kobo on novels. Here is what I posted: “Dear friends, pray for me. Tomorrow, […]