By late afternoon on Saturday, September 12, the crowd at Roving Heights Bookstore, Oniru, had the particular hush of a room that knows it is about to be asked to confess something.
This was the final act of The Lagos Review’s inaugural Writing Weekend, three days of masterclasses on writing music, book, and movie reviews, as well as essays, facilitated by Dr. Eghosa Imasuen, Adewale Maja-Pearce, Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, Akumbu Uche and Toni Kan.
The full cohort of 15 young reviewers and essayists drawn from across Nigeria featured: Charity Ezeja (Abuja), Deborah Iyalagha (Yenagoa), Hubaidat Ishola (Lagos), Joseph Jonathan (Abuja), Keyukemi Usani (Iperu), Lateefat Balogun (Lagos), Mariam Abdullahi (Abuja) and Azubuike Obi (Awka).
Others are: Ahmad Mubarak Tanimu (Kano), Adewande Oreshade (Abeokuta), Yusuf Zay (Lagos), Sima Essien (Uyo), Shalom Tewobola (Lagos), Seyi Lasisi (Lagos) and Peter Adeyemo (Ibadan).
The programme folded into a single public evening of readings and conversation. What was promised as “a public reading” delivered something closer to a reckoning.
The opening readings set the tone unannounced. Eghosa Imasuen read from The Challengers, his account of Nigerian entrepreneurs building billion-naira companies against structural constraints, a fitting overture for an evening fixated on what gets built, and by whom, when infrastructure fails.
Then came the cohort: Charity read, Azubuike read, and others followed. Those present purely for the literary programme later admitted they missed expecting what followed: a run of raw readings that someone half-in-jest labelled a “day of confessions.”
The centrepiece featured Toni Kan in conversation with Toyin Akinosho, centred on Kan’s Riding the Storm: The Untold Story of Africa’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
* Initiative over Talent: Toni Kan argued public service failure in Africa is a shortage of initiative, not capability; competence stays idle until ordered. Drawing on his pandemic-era work with one of Nigeria’s Ministers, running a UNDP hunger/SDG round table straight off arrival, he described daily urgency (televised noon briefings, improvised testing, non-pharmaceutical interventions, and a host of other activities).
* Continental Trust: When Cairo-headquartered African Export-Import Bank pooled capital, member states queued to contribute because the improvised mechanism was trusted.
* The Burning Roof Metaphor: Akinosho asked why crisis competence never built lasting health infrastructure. Kan likened Ebola to a burning roof that forces action, after which “anyhowness” returns. High-performing Ebola responders got international postings while local systems reverted to neglect.
* Epidemiological & Geopolitical Reality: Toni Kan discussed Ebola’s actual epidemiology (misattributed symptoms, WHO/MSF deployments to the Tri-border area in March, cluster tracing to funerals, and samples sent to Institut Pasteur in France rather than tested locally).
On vaccine diplomacy, Toni Kan slammed wealthier nations (naming France, for instance,) for stockpiling near-expiry doses despite willingness to pay; Akinosho pushed back, arguing Africa’s real failure is organising native capability (“we are quite capable of messing up on our own”).
* Origin Story & Infrastructure: Akinosho noted the book’s core insight, COVID-19 in Africa was logistical/financial, primed by flashbacks to 2014–16 Ebola and 1980s commodity crises shaping Afreximbank. Ad hoc continental vaccine-payment platforms (sized initially by population until smaller states objected to parity with Nigeria) evolved longer institutional life.
Turning to the room of 15 writing weekend participants with a mix of book enthusiasts, the practical question arose: is reviewing/long-form creative non-fiction economically viable given thin markets and weak IP enforcement?
* The Publishing Lottery: Toni Kan noted the social cost (giving instance of a poet boyfriend evaluated by army rank) and the reality that publishing a novel in Nigeria is a lottery.
The Lagos Review, he noted, was built to pay, modestly, yes, but ensuring writers get paid for review labour like British counterparts writing for The Guardian or Telegraph.
* Career Pathways: Toni Kan shared leaving a salaried job at 39, ghostwriting a comedian’s memoir that stretched from six months to years, opening doors to biography. Imasuen described a similar ghostwriting start and Narrative Landscape Press’s strategic commission of biographies for reluctant subjects.
Adewale Maja-Pearce, introduced as the doyen of 1990s writing (insisting on “writing” over “90s fiction”), recounted 10 years in litigation over his J.P. Clark biography.
* Archive and Rupture: Access to J.P. Clark’s personal archive revealed unintended correspondence, leading to a manuscript fallout fought across four reluctant High Court judges.
* Legal Shield & Mortality: Saved only by an initial two-page contract, Maja-Pearce answered discomforted queries about whether the book hastened Clark’s death by noting he wrote in praise, all subjects are mortal, and he wouldn’t want anyone else writing his story.
* The Authorised Consensus: Toni Kan and Akinosho closed this thread on Nigeria’s discomfort with vulnerability and strict defamation/cyberstalking laws, rendering true unflattering biography risky and driving biographers toward “authorised,” co-sourced or ghost-attributed books.
The evening reinforced a shared thesis from two veteran narrative non-fiction writers: unglamorous recurring work, reviews, essays, ghostwritten commissions, isn’t a lesser cousin to the novel, but the financial engine keeping a writing life solvent.