The Sokoto Book and Arts Festival (SOBAFest) has officially announced the dates, theme and curators for its highly anticipated 2025 edition. The festival, a cornerstone event for literary and artistic engagement in Northern Nigeria, will run from August 22 to 24, 2025, in Sokoto.
Organised by the Book O’Clock Literary Foundation in partnership with Poetry Club UDUS, this fifth iteration of SOBAFest will delve into the theme of “Intersections”. Co-curating this year’s festival are writer and cultural curator Zainab Abdulrazaq and award-winning poet Ridwan Fasasi. They are set to bring together diverse literary and artistic perspectives, all rooted in contemporary African expression.
The annual theme at SOBAFest serves as a narrative chapter, carefully building upon the historical and cultural memory of Northern Nigeria while remaining open to broader intellectual and creative dialogues. “Intersections” is presented as the natural progression in this unfolding narrative. It represents a dynamic space where tradition and innovation, local and global perspectives, and memory and vision converge. SOBAFest 2025 posits that the African postmodern artist is inherently an intersectional entity.
This year’s theme follows a compelling sequence of past editions: “Changing the Narrative” in 2021 challenged inherited stories, “A Returning” in 2022 explored remembrance, “Root & Route” in 2023 traced journeys of origin and movement, and “Ascension” in 2024 marked a moment of emergence.
Festival Director Uchenna Emelife articulated the significance of the theme, stating, “‘Intersections’ isn’t just a theme – it’s a reflection of the African artist who navigates multiple selves, a metaphor for how we live and create in a world of shifting meanings and layered histories”. Emelife added that this edition aims to explore these overlaps with clarity, depth, and celebration.
The festival programme promises a wide array of activities designed to foster dialogue, provoke thought, and celebrate creative intersections. Audiences can look forward to poetry performances, insightful panel discussions, engaging book chats, captivating art exhibitions, vibrant dance performances, diverse music, and interactive workshops.
SOBAFest, launched in 2021, is dedicated to reshaping narratives, honouring cultural memory, and amplifying voices through multidisciplinary engagement. Since its inception, it has drawn over 500 art enthusiasts to Sokoto, immersing them in cultural and artistic conversations, activities, and performances. The festival is a project of Book O’Clock, a Sokoto-based literary organisation, in collaboration with community partners like Poetry Club UDUS.
Zainab Abdulrasaq is a graduate of Linguistics and served as the curator for SOBAFest’24. She is the manager of Bookclockstore and the founder of TheLexiconlounge. A versatile arts lover, she is also a designer, photographer, and scriptwriter who graduated from the TAFTA Academy. Abdulrasaq was a content creator for TEDxSSU’23 and a bookstagrammer who blogs on Medium as @blackbookishgirl. She finds solace in reading, capturing nature’s beauty, and curating outreaches that promote literature, art, and language.
Ridwan Fasasi is an award-winning Nigerian poet whose work often explores themes of graves, gardens, death, and the fragility of life. He is a member of the Swan Collective and has had his works published in both local and international magazines. Fasasi is currently a finalist at Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto, where he studies agriculture, and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Poetry Club UDUS. He can be found on Twitter (now X) @Ibn_Yushau44 when he’s not writing or reading.
