novelists-from-nigeria

"work on every genre of literature from fiction to poetry, non-fiction and drama. I do work more on some than the others. My dominant focus, for instance, is mostly fiction and poetry. Recently though, I compiled a non-fiction anthology called Blessed Body: The Secret Lives of LGBT Nigerians. Of all the genres, I enjoy poetry the most. It gives me a space to condense my words and say a lot in a very limited space. It challenges me to utilize figures of speech, imagery and mood to capture my thought and ideas. I also like non-fiction because there is urgency about it. It almost feels as if I am documenting narratives live, as they happen. At the moment, I am working on a critical paper about how films/documentaries can be used as an effective tool of activism for the African LGBTQ activist. Additionally, I am editing and polishing my second collection of poetry collection entitled Brutal Bliss."

"An award is a landmark for any writer, because it shows that it is a measure of a standard that you have improved in your writing."

"The Nigerian government likes to pretend that we don’t exist, but we’ve been here for hundreds of years, our wooden houses resting proudly on their stilts above Lagos’s charcoal-coloured lagoon. We’ll remain here for some time, no matter how many attempts they make to push us out."

"A person must have many other lives on Makoko in order to eat and sleep."

"Her handwriting, tbh, is like the prints of a hen digging for food, i.e. barely legible."

"The x of the equation is that there’s a blonde here in Kontagora, a platinum blonde if I’ll believe Isaiah."

"..writes as clearly and sweetly as Hillary Clinton."

"White like chalk. So white, unlike Father McMahon, who our evil sun has turned to a red man."

"Marilyn Monroe who has never had mosquitoes sing in her ears and suck her blood, leaving red swellings as they fly away. A Princess Diana who has never woken up at midnight with hunger. A Taylor Swift who has never experienced a blackout."

"Makoko is what the outsiders had originally called our settlement hundreds of years ago, due to its abundance of akoko leaves, and the name stuck for the community on the Lagos coast just across from the Third Mainland Bridge. To strangers, it’s a slum, a metallic and wooden eyesore built over a stinking bed of ever-mounting sewage, spreading out across the smoke-filled horizon. For the government, it’s the impediment between even larger coffers for them and prime waterfront real estate. But to us, who are from here, Makoko is simply home."

"I’m a Homo habilis”; “the pig and ape that I am”; “Is she not afraid I might stain her, my colour jump onto her like in those monster horror films?"

"...Not many of us have done it, yet that hope pulses within us like a beacon."

"...whites are so rich that they can wipe their anuses with money."

"Parents dream of us leaving Makoko and doing better than they did for them- selves, and eventually we dream it too, all the while knowing it to be an elusive fantasy."

"The unfortunate class of homeless Lagosians"

"It was home of the legendary CMS Grammar School, the oldest secondary school in the country, as well as Methodist Boys’ High School. It was also home to some movie stars and music icons like Obesere, Olamide, 9ice and Lil Kesh. Prominent tertiary institutions such as the University of Lagos and the Federal College of Education, Technical were just down the road."

"When a man is looking... happy..., the woman in his life deserve commendation."

"“hellish” to travel to work in the morning and a “nightmare of intractable traffic and bad roads” in the evening"

"When I arrived home... [I] met my mother sitting on the cement slab outside the kitchen door, looking agitated. She said my father had gone out with Ify because Dayo, my immediate elder brother, wanted to make trouble. She said Dayo was categorical in his rejection of Ify because he was Igbo and had threatened to ensure that the marriage never happened... My mother said there was something disturbing about the way he spoke; she said she detected a level of vehemence that was troublesome... Finally, everybody was home and all hell was let loose. Dayo's vituperations astounded me."

"Inter-ethnic marriage [I]s a weapon of peace and harmonious co-existence among the numerous ethnic groups in Nigeria."

"there are only two things that 'qualify' an individual to even nurse a political ambition in our country... They are money and the strong backing of a godfather."

"“‘Oga mi, wole kanle, eleyi gbomo,’” – “My boss, you need to park properly; this passenger has a child with them"

"You are a fresh graduate with little knowledge of the dynamics of your country. The northerners are good people but you've got to be ready to identify with them, demonstrate that you are a part of them, before you can benefit from their kindness[...] You have to claim to be a northerner to get a job in the north."

"I took a firm decision also not to share my misery with any of my mates because I knew what advice most of then would proffer. They would tell me I had no option but to succumb. They would give me a thousand and one names of students, past and present, who had succumbed; that I should be 'realistic'. And so I kept the matter to myself. I was suffering internally; I was going through agony trying to think of a way out. Nonetheless, I managed to maintain a calm exterior as I went about my other academic activities."

"You showed up claiming to be somebody we know. We all see you as a man who has lost his identity—in fact, a man who has lost his mind…"

"Studying the handwriting on the envelope, his eyes lit up in recognition. But then a frown crept across his face and he wondered how a letter simply marked TADUNO—no last name, no address, just Taduno—managed to reach him in a nameless foreign town."

"What's the difference between a Yanmirin and an animal? Can the offspring of a hen be a duck?"

"He always smiled at their jokes. But, that morning, he was not smiling. His face, made fierce by war paint, glistened with sweat and odium as he raised his machete and brought it down. Bright, red blood, warm and sticky, splashed across Faiza’s face and dotted, in a fine spray, the shell-pink nightdress that her father had bought her."

"She stared at her reflection in the huge mirror… she hated the sight that greeted her – the large landscape of a forehead, the flared nostrils that were begging for a surgeon’s knife, the puffy lips, the spaced out eyes and the gap between the two incisors, which could clearly accommodate another tooth. She was a monstrosity to look at without make-up."

"The ocean refused to be still; it took more, claimed more, and retreated less but paradoxically the hungry sea left behind more of its unwanted children, its vomit littering Scorpion’s little patch of beach-front: a seagull’s skull, uncapped beer bottles, horse scat, empty packets of cigarettes, the left foot of a size twelve shoe, a dead army of used condoms, and an old deflated football."

"A conglomeration of roguishly built shanty homes, it flanked the Sambo creek, a torrid expanse of water twisting like loins to the sea."

"Binta fiddled with her fingers. ‘My husband, God rest his soul, was killed by some Christian boys he employed. They were people he called by their birth names and did business with. My sister’s husband and her son were hacked to death by their Christian neighbours because a woman urged them to.”"

"Once you set foot in Underground City, you felt its touch and its breath on you."

"That yellow house wey get green-white-green for doormat and opposite am you go see Mama Sikirat beer parlour or when you reach the end of the street, you go see one plank like bridge wey dey near Holy Ghost Church, cross am and in front you go see the house wey get tap for de front.”"

"Outside, a bird chirruped short piercing cries, like mocking laughter."

"I can take care of myself."

"Build a life elsewhere."

"Did you have to sneak home like a thief in the night?"

"Our father and our God, are ask that you cure Anjola of her Yoruba stubbornness! Our merciful father, we know that Yoruba Stubbornness is a serious disease; it is a disease that is difficult to cure but we trust in your supreme power, oh God, because you are the God of Possibilities."

"Don't look at your travails as a north-west problem. It's a national problem. The country needs help."

"Is it true that Igbo people in Imo are better than those in Anambra? That they are more hospitable, better organised and generally more elevated?"

"The Anambra Igbos are not just good, they are far better than the Imo Igbos.The Anambra people are the genuine and authentic Igbos. Besides, look around you, nearly every great Igbo person in this country is from Anambra - Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chinua Achebe, Odumegwu Ojukwu, Emeka Anyoku; the list is long. You have spent close to one year in Anambra and you have tasted their hospitality. What further proof do you need?"

"Until the rotten tooth is pulled out, the mouth must chew with caution."

"The horns cannot be too heavy for the head of the cow that must bear them."

"When the frog in front falls in pit, others behind take caution."

"To get fully cured one needs patience. The moon moves slowly but by daybreak it crosses the sky."

"I feel a free that I didn't feel in long time. And when I smile, it climb from inside my stomach and spread itself on my teeth."

"By trying often, the monkey learns to jump from tree to tree without falling."

"You do me great wrong, therefore to think that, like a rock in the middle of a lake, forever cooled by flowing waters, I do not know, and cannot know the sun's hotness that burns and dries up the open land."

"When the rain falls on the leopard, does it wash off its spots? Has the richness of kingly life washed off the love of our King for his people?"