I don’t know why I came to America. The year was 1982. Nigeria was a world super power, our embassies all over the world routinely denied white people visas to come to Nigeria (yes, we did!). Sisi Clara at the embassy in DC would take one withering look at the oyinbo, stamp DENIED! on his passport: “Gerraway jor! Olosi! Your father will not see Nigeria, your mother will not see Nigeria! You will not see the yansh of Nigeria! Olosi! Olori buruku! Moose from Alaska!”

Nigeria is on my mind. It is sad that thanks to Mr. Muhammadu Buhari's epic cluelessness, Mr. Goodluck Jonathan is being held as a model of good governance and statesmanship in many quarters. With all due respect, Buhari's cluelessness does not excuse Jonathan's cluelessness. Jonathan was awful, and was unfit to be president of Nigeria, no ifs, no buts about it. The only compelling reason to have kept him as president of our nation was Buhari. I maintained strenuously that Buhari was an inappropriate substitute for Jonathan. I was right. Tragically.

David, you call @elrufai’s well-documented enabling of and culpability in genocide “bad news on social media”? Why are you people like this? Where’s your soul? If the white man had done one tenth of the evil that that monster has done would you be saying this? Where is @dadiyata?

https://twitter.com/davidfatunmbi/status/1434441901999108098

Apart from his well-documented acts of corruption which he himself admitted to @elrufai and his government supervised the mass burial of hundreds of Shiites, many of them buried alive. No one has held him accountable. Kaduna state is a vast crime scene and you are here mumbling!

It’s complicated. From Kindergarten to 12th grade no American kid would dare call a teacher by first name, none. Their sports coaches and priests are revered for life and would not be referred to by first name. At age of majority (18+) and college most of those rules are relaxed.

https://twitter.com/davidfatunmbi/status/1434804883144708100

In neighborhoods where folks know each other and in family gatherings, it would be unusual for young kids to refer to adults by first name. Our neighbors’ kids refer to me and my wife as Mr. and Mrs. when they come from college, are they mad? LOL! We’ve known them since birth!🥴

Music thrives because visionaries rebuilt the packaging strategy organically and unmoored their vision from halcyon days of the CD. The publishing industry must wean itself of the book for marketing reading. Think: For most young people, social media is the new (affordable) book. Africa’s authentic narrative is hiding in plain site, in the warm folds of social media. What the West calls “African writing” is mostly MFA writing written to the test of the West’s taste and anxieties. African readers are on social media happily overdosing on awesome narrative.

Memories: Tolu Ogunlesi on my mind. We were colleagues. Molara Wood was the arts editor who recruited me into NEXT newspaper, the brainy, short-lived brainchild of Dele Olojede. In the early 2000's we had become friends online as members of the literary mailing list Krazitivity. If you were not on Krazitivity you were really not taken seriously as a writer. The founding members included folks like Adichie, Chris Abani, Helon Habila, Chika Unigwe, Molara, Amatoritsero Ede, Obiwu Iwuanyanwu, Nnọrọm Azụonye, etc. (too many people to mention jor).

The 1985 murder of 26-year old Bernard Ogedengbe by Buhari haunts me. It’s as if I let him down by failing to convince Nigerians that Buhari’s evil and should not be rewarded with the highest office of the land. I cannot get over what happened in 2015. Soyinka’s words haunt me. When Soyinka describes the pain of Ogedengbe’s extrajudicial murder and the hell-days of 1984-1985 under Buhari, his prose rises to a painful decibel that you can taste. Buhari is evil, he has committed crimes against humanity. To forgive his crimes is to taunt our humanity.

Memories. 1979. I got my NYSC call-up papers. Kaduna State. The Nigerian government flew me all expenses paid into Kaduna from Benin City. Until then, I think I'd traveled by air only once in my life. From the airport we were taken by bus to Malali Village for one month of Orientation. Had a great time, a lot of drinking and socializing. I was in the drama club and the Palm Wine Drinkards' Club. I was popular with the girls, I think that they loved my clowning around on stage.

I love words. I am not sure I know the difference between poetry and prose anymore. To arrange words on a canvas, to make ordinary words roar at the senses with life, what does it matter, the labels? If it sings to me, if it makes my soul dance, that is poetry... I remember my first book. I was about four years old. It was a picture book of animals. You poked the animal and it emitted a sound. I loved that book. My favorite animal was the elephant. I loved her sound.

I would like to say something about what really bothers me about how many Nigerians, especially those at home view African Americans, especially in the context of the Black Lives Movement. There is a lot of condescension - which both amuses and enrages me because Nigerians have not earned the right to look down on African Americans. Their struggle for true emancipation in America should inspire Nigerians to do the same for themselves. Nigerians could use the help.

I respectfully disagree with this take. Yvonne Orji is doing a great job of mining her life as a Nigerian American. As a Nigerian who came to the US in the 80s, and as a dad of four millennials, I totally see my children in her, and me in her parents. Many rivers run through us.

https://twitter.com/damioyedele/status/1278671340644507648

Yvonne Orji improves upon our story. I think of Trevor Noah. She goes to Nigeria and joshes around respectfully on the streets and with her parents, she talks about our drive for excellence. Her accent and interpretations are a product of her lived experience since birth.

African literature is outward facing, relentlessly fixated on satisfying the demands of western readers. It has close to zero impact on the lives of those who live inside Africa. Her authors are mostly uninterested in the social, political and economic welfare of their subjects. In the absence of a robust publishing industry, African writers have been forced to flood the West with their manuscripts. The West deserves credit for sustaining much of African literature with funding, and eager, paying readers. It has come at a cost.

jaladaafrica.org/2015/09/15/of-…

A few days ago, based on a survey of banks folks preferred to use online, my wife and I settled on @gtbank. They came highly recommended and we went to a branch in Ipaja with high hopes for a great partnership. I have been disappointed. I would not recommend @gtbank to anyone. First of all, @gtbank staff didn’t seem really interested in signing us up. Laconic would be the word that comes to mind when I remember their customer service. We were given forms to fill that were clearly precolonial with data fields that reeked of colonialism and patriarchy.

My first romantic crush was my primary school teacher. In the 60’s! Kai, I loved her, I loved her. I happily fetched firewood for her, did whatever she asked me to do. Happily. I lived for every afternoon when she would let me carry her iPad and accompany her to her house. Chei! I remember when she gave me a glass of Tree Top orange squash. How many of you remember that? It was as much as I remember, an orange drink concentrate. My mother could make an entire swimming pool of orange drink from one bottle of Tree Top, yes.

I have lived in the Diaspora for almost four decades. I should never have come to America; exile is a kind of death. However, I am glad my kids were born here. If you have kids, it makes sense to give them an education that Nigeria will deny them. That kind of death is worth it.

Visiting South Africa left me confused. I expected a lovely place, enjoying the fruits of freedom from apartheid. Instead, I saw in the eyes of the poor, despair, and I wondered if they knew the difference between the past and the present - or if there indeed was any difference. At our conference, poor blacks served the participants with a certain deference and trepidation that stayed with me all through. The Black and White conference participants seemed fine with it.

I am not a writer but I write because you don't need a license to write. You write and gbam! you are a writer. I hate to brag; The Washington Post published me once. 100 words. It was less, after they'd edited my fantastic tale. I was over the moon. Literally. And figuratively. In those days, the Post would invite the reader to write something personal. If it suits the Post's fancy, it would be published on a Sunday along with a picture (yes, a Post photographer actually comes to you, takes a billion pictures, and the one you hate the most is used).🤣