Author Archives: Baroka

What We Are Reading: Prose In Different Area Codes

PROSE: Salman Rushdie brings heavy guns against George Orwell and Hol­ly­wood in Out­side the Whale. Chris Abani’s book is pulled off Florida’s sum­mer read­ing list because of racy con­tent. Read excerpts from Mark Twain’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, as well as Abdul Adan’s review of African Roar. Then Binya­vanga Wain­naina writes a sequel to his famous viral piece, “How To Write About

A Lunch in Jos

It didn’t take me long to locate him at Ray­field where he teaches in a pri­vate school. Once upon a time, he was in Riyom, a local gov­ern­ment that has now made a name for itself in the spots of unrest around the state. On my way there, there were at least ten mil­i­tary check­points

The Beginning Revolution in Nigeria

It’s been a long time com­ing, but I know a change is gonna come”- Sam Cooke One of the great­est demon­stra­tions of free­dom took place in Nige­ria on Tues­day the 16th. It was a youth rally that had over a thou­sand young pro­fes­sion­als storm the Eagle’s Square and the National Assemby com­plex (the Niger­ian Sen­ate build­ing)

Jos, Nigeria!

Cross-posted at KTravula.com When I served the coun­try Nige­ria in the manda­tory one-year National Youth Ser­vice in a lit­tle vil­lage close to the city of Jos in 2005, the state still had as its motto “The Home of Peace and Tourism” even though there was always a shadow of vio­lence loom­ing in the cor­ner and

Twurai Undercover

There is much to cope with when you are the wife of a sick and/or dying pres­i­dent. There is even more to cope with if said hus­band has now been evicted from a bet­ter work­ing hos­pi­tal in Saudi Ara­bia and is now back in the gov­ern­ment house, caus­ing com­mo­tion and/or being some sort of nui­sance

Politically Correct?

Cross-posted here And so today after a lot of soul search­ing and repen­tance of past sins of unpa­tri­o­tism, I am back with a new list of bumper stick­ers. This time, they will be nice and polit­i­cally cor­rect, for those who like to see the good and the pos­i­tive. Now you have no more excuses for

Politically Incorrect

I was not too sur­prised when I checked out the Face­book group cre­ated to denounce the Niger­ian Ter­ror­ist today and found that from a mea­gre 700 mem­bers on Fri­day when I first blogged about it, there are now over 56,o00 mem­bers on the group. This is very nice, right?. Very impres­sive. It shows that we

On The Nigerian Guy

Cross-posted here. Umar Farouk Abdul­mu­tal­lab is a 23 year old man from a com­fort­able home in North­ern Nige­ria who attends a uni­ver­sity in the United King­dom. He’s now noto­ri­ous for try­ing to deno­tate an explo­sive device on a plane. I have tried not to talk about him before now, but who am I kid­ding? It’s

We Write!

Today I want to take you into the lit­er­ary land­scape of Nige­ria, and not just the reg­u­lar. In the past few years, it seems that our out­put in lit­er­a­ture has grown in leaps and bounds even in the face of poverty and other hin­drances. A Niger­ian has now won the Booker — Ben Okri, the