Month: January 2026

The first woman Lemi Ghariokwu fell in love with – Peju Akande and Toni Kan

“My story is quite reminiscent of Fela’s in that regard. There is an abiku story to Fela’s life,” Lemi Ghariokwu says, growing animated as the subject moves to metaphysics.  “There was a child that was born and was given a Dutch name in Fela’s family but he died and the mother went to see a native doctor who told her the child was not happy to be burdened with an English name. She got pregnant again and had Fela.”

A testament and cautionary tale: Chiazor-Enenmor’s ‘See Morocco See Spain’ – Akumbu Uche

As the story unfolds, Chiazor-Enenmor dispenses with the multi-perspective approach, and Nosakhere emerges as the main protagonist of this tale. Unfortunately, even after overcoming multiple hardships and setbacks to reach his destination, a happily-ever-after ending remains elusive as his problems continue to compound. Presented with limited options and with very little time to philosophize over them, he blunders his way through decisions that take him further away from ever integrating into respectable European society, and deeper into its underclass.

Skirting the thin line between fact and fiction in Arundhati Roy’s “Mother Mary Comes To Me” – Olukorede S Yishau 

The political violence was pervasive as Marxists railed especially against Maoists. Roy recalled a particular incident where Maoists, who were far-left, radical insurgents and who had broken away from the Marxists whom they saw as bourgeois beheaded one of them and hung his head on a pike. These believers in armed revolution were also known as Naxalites. It was the poor versus the rich with the poor and their supporters believing that the rich deserved to be wiped out for them to inherit the earth.