By Kassim Sekinat Christiana Akanbi? Aisha Oguntowo? Joshua Adeleke? Ahh anh! Hannah Ojo? Hanna Ojo?! Hmmm… Nigeria, we hail thee! We hail thee, protectors of the people! A source of comfort; your words truly have been As we learn to sleep without our children, As we […]
By Kassim Sekinat You saw my skin and called it dirty I saw yours and clung onto a bottle of whitening cream Rubbing vigorously Hoping it looks like yours. Someday… You saw my hair and made it out to be a clown’s wig I saw yours and dashed to […]
They came to me and sat with the devil
sharing a cuisine
and a hot bath and wine.
So I smirked
The gospel of politics according to my countrymen
My neighbours gather to pray for our nation, their prayers evaporating like water in familiar puddles our leaders couldn’t fix. One thing is sure: God is not deaf, but men are. Deaf men who laugh from ear to ear, watching their nation defrost like ice, staring cluelessly at the science […]
for Kunle Adepeju ii. Honour the dead beyond flickering candle light, beyond a minute silence, beyond the soft melodies of your dirge, beyond the thumps of your marching feet, beyond the dark shades, black wears, & the witty inscriptions, beyond the scented flowers placed by their graves, embalm their memories […]
For Kunle Adepeju (01-02-1971) i. Dear Countrymen, there is nothing stray about a bullet fired into the misty air to find solace in the soft flesh of unarmed citizens. There is nothing inadvertent when protectors of lives wear the garbs of hunters, cracking down on human games, silencing “demonic” voices […]
“Where do politicians go when they die?,” he asks with a teenage curiosity, locking eyes with his father’s. Son, their bodies & souls are raptured to heaven — they seat close to God, fellowship with His angels & the twenty four elders, listen to soft hymns, dance to heavenly […]
Let us pretend. Let us pretend that our leaders are palliating our suffering, that they are mollifying every sadness that grows in us. Let us pretend. Let us pretend that our stomachs aren’t empty, that the worms in our bellies aren’t feeding on our flesh, that cataract of […]
It’s almost a year now since that night, when darkness crawled in like an innocent child, when the giant city trembled, quaking the ground across the seven hills of Ìbàdàn— Bódìjà sang a dirge to the ears of all; the neighbourhood chorused the grief in response. At that point, stories […]
