What Nelson Mandela Might Say To Nigerian Leaders Today

 By Ebuka Uko

I arrived in the United States in the fall of 2021 to start postgraduate studies, only to find myself engaged in conversations about Blackness in ways I had never experienced in over 30 years of life in Africa.

*Mandela 

Suddenly, I constantly faced questions that never really came up for me before. What does it mean to be Black? What does it mean to belong? I have always been a global majority, and that’s all I knew.

In that wrestle, I stumbled on something James Baldwin said in 1961: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage, almost all of the time.” Reading those words, I felt exposed. It also gave me a new understanding of Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom.

Let’s Bring Back The Short Story

By Banji Ojewale

Art is a lie which makes us see the truth—Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish artist

To prepare for this short essay on the short story, I have had to rescue from my home library two old local magazines that, in an earlier generation, sought to offer vibrant voice to this literary genre. First pushed out as a monthly in March 1985, one of the publications was simply called Mc.Quick Short Stories, with a cover price of N2. If you were willing to part with that ‘pittance’ for that product, you were guaranteed an animating literary excursions with some of the greats in the industry.

So, I have in front of me Vol. 1 No. 1 1985 edition of Mc.Quick Short Stories. Wale Adeniran is the Publisher. Kole Omotoso is the Editor-in-Chief, and Femi Omowumi, Odia Ofeimun, Seun Ige and Labo Yari, in tow as Associate Editors. Graphic arts and illustrations are handled by Abiodun Araba, Victor Olusa and Akin Adejuwon. As you close-up on Mc.Quick, you run into the inner world of some of the eminent short story exponents of the age. Leban Erapu, the Ugandan intellectual, has an entry he calls, Guns and Books. He looks at Africa’s political scene, and intrigued by its internal rumblings, wonders why the problems they mischievously engineer remain unresolved.