Essential, in-depth stories contextualizing African literature, Nigerian film, and culture. Publisher of @folionigeria. Founder: @otosirieze.
Joined May 2020
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How Wole Soyinka Inherited the Drama of the Gods — and Shadowed the Nigerian Tragedy
Since the 1950s, the Nobel laureate has worked in rebellion, carving out a complex, fecund torque of an oeuvre. But as his plays of mythic vigor and Yoruba impulse revitalized Anglophone theatre, raising an art form to ritualistic heights, his force of personality kept him in the political arena, a close witness of an African affliction. Few artists have lived like him. Yet at 91, carrying the mantle of “greatest living writer,” he has one more great battle on his hands — with generations who once deified him.
opencountrymag.com/wole-soyi…
One of the many viral stories was by a young woman named Obianuju Iloanya. She detailed how, in 2012, when she was 17, her brother, Chijioke, was arrested by SARS; their family traveled to the SARS base in Awkuzu where they saw him but were not allowed to reach him; when they returned, the head officer told them, “I have killed your son and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
The SARS officer who made this comment, Obianuju said, was called James Nwafor. The moment she named him as her brother’s killer, many more people began to share their stories of the man, reputed to be reckless with human lives, a Chief Superintendent of Police said to have overseen the dumping of dead bodies in Ezu River in 2013, bodies believed to be victims of Awkuzu SARS. CSP James Nwafor became one of the faces of the murders of unarmed young Nigerians.
End SARS ended on a fatal note, on October 20, 2020, with the Lekki Massacre, where the Nigerian military opened fire on unarmed protesters, and later denied it, despite video evidence. The government, meanwhile, made a show of listening, convening panels across the country to hear survivors of SARS and families of victims, and to recommend terms of justice. Out of the estimated over 100 hearings at the Anambra State panel, a reported 90 indicted CSP Nwafor, but, as the man had told the families beforehand, nothing happened to him.
The stories of the families of four young men murdered by SARS officials form the core of Awaiting Trail, a new documentary by the media entrepreneur and journalist Chude Jideonwo.
#ENDSARS #October20
opencountrymag.com/families-…
OPEN COUNTRY MAG retweeted
“@OpenCountryMag’s work carries a symbolic and practical significance. It shows what is possible when African publications commit to longform storytelling: that the continent’s cultural figures can be chronicled with nuance, rigour, and ambition. . .
readcommunique.com/p/open-co…
OPEN COUNTRY MAG retweeted
Always love seeing good writers get a bigger platform, finna check Saraba out
In this role, Tolu Daniel (@iamToluDaniel) will help shape Saraba’s (@Sarabamag) nonfiction publishing, working with writers and commissioning work across the breadth of the form – from essays and criticism to memoir, cultural writing and more experimental approaches to nonfiction.
His appointment comes as Saraba Magazine continues to build on its long history of publishing ambitious writing from Africa and its diasporas. Since its founding in 2009, the magazine has been a space for emerging and established writers to experiment, take risks and produce work attentive to both literary craft and the world around us.
As Editor-at-Large, Tolu Daniel will bring his editorial perspective to Saraba’s nonfiction while contributing more broadly to the magazine’s evolving editorial vision.
Read more: opencountrymag.com/tolu-dani…
OPEN COUNTRY MAG retweeted
yes, the news is out. i am excited to begin work in my new role with @Sarabamag, we have so many projects in the works already, digging through the treasure troves of our archives & curating new ones. many thanks to the team for the trust!
In this role, Tolu Daniel (@iamToluDaniel) will help shape Saraba’s (@Sarabamag) nonfiction publishing, working with writers and commissioning work across the breadth of the form – from essays and criticism to memoir, cultural writing and more experimental approaches to nonfiction.
His appointment comes as Saraba Magazine continues to build on its long history of publishing ambitious writing from Africa and its diasporas. Since its founding in 2009, the magazine has been a space for emerging and established writers to experiment, take risks and produce work attentive to both literary craft and the world around us.
As Editor-at-Large, Tolu Daniel will bring his editorial perspective to Saraba’s nonfiction while contributing more broadly to the magazine’s evolving editorial vision.
Read more: opencountrymag.com/tolu-dani…
Cultural organization Unchained Vibes Africa (UVA) (@UvAfrica) will host its flagship two-part civic-creative event, the 4th Freedom Vibes Summit and Freedom Vibes 10.0 Concert, on Saturday, 14 November 2026, at Freedom Park, Lagos Island. Operating under the central theme, "The Vibes and the Ballot: Art, Power and the 2027 Choice," the initiative will bring together artists, skit makers, content creators, legal experts, media executives, civil society leaders, traditional rulers, government officials and state regulatory authorities to protect artistic integrity, promote creative freedom and peaceful civic participation ahead of Nigeria's 2027 general elections.
The 4th Freedom Vibes Summit will be convened from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM (WAT) at Kongi's Harvest Gallery in a hybrid format, accommodating in-person delegates alongside virtual participants. Structured to move beyond conventional discourse, the summit brings together key creative industry bodies, alongside statutory regulators.
In this role, Tolu Daniel (@iamToluDaniel) will help shape Saraba’s (@Sarabamag) nonfiction publishing, working with writers and commissioning work across the breadth of the form – from essays and criticism to memoir, cultural writing and more experimental approaches to nonfiction.
His appointment comes as Saraba Magazine continues to build on its long history of publishing ambitious writing from Africa and its diasporas. Since its founding in 2009, the magazine has been a space for emerging and established writers to experiment, take risks and produce work attentive to both literary craft and the world around us.
As Editor-at-Large, Tolu Daniel will bring his editorial perspective to Saraba’s nonfiction while contributing more broadly to the magazine’s evolving editorial vision.
Read more: opencountrymag.com/tolu-dani…
Off the page, different concerns plague our livelihood. Sometimes, they present as ordinary and inconsequential, and other times, as global and moral. All of these are nonetheless existential. They shape our being, the way we navigate and make meaning of the world. Writers go to the page to tell the troubled stories that animate their ways into their lives, countries, and continents. These poets in 20.35 Africa (@20_35Africa) Volume IX show the range of the existential crises faced in the world they live in, and they paint all the filth, beauty, and joy of it.
This anthology is concerned with the body, the land, the harm and damage done to their soft expressions of life. In a time when the machine and industrial complex numb our relationship to the body and the earth, how do we as writers respond to the spiritual disconnection that ensues?
20.35 Africa Volume IX, guest-edited by Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie and Antony Fangary, is published online by 20.35 Africa.
opencountrymag.com/introduct…
As the crisis in Sudan continues, millions of Sudanese people remain in urgent need of food, healthcare, shelter, and protection.
Watch. Share. Speak up. And if you’re able, donate.
Trusted ways to support:
Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA): sapa-usa.org
International Rescue Committee: rescue.org/country/sudan
UN World Food Programme: wfp.org/emergencies/sudan-em…
🎥: @MuzlimsPostingW
OPEN COUNTRY MAG retweeted
My good friends, here’s the official reveal of the Nigerian edition of Many Ways to Die! I can’t wait to share this work with you all!
"Many Ways to Die" is a collection of eight short stories that explores the theme of death and the various ways of dying. Other themes explored in this collection include poverty, religious fanaticism, suicide, human emotions, relationships, and mysteries of life.
In "It Is Finished," Erima clubs her father to death after he succumbs to an abominable lust. Her experience is similar to Ozichi’s in "Fly," whose father gave her out to a man who ran a prostitution agency in exchange for capital to get back on his feet. In "When Flesh Summons," a dead man is summoned back to life to take revenge on his killers. In "Water Takes All of Me," a young boy narrates the tragic tale of how he lost his entire family during a flooding experience. In Paradise, a jobless first-class graduate, desperate for the good life, finds himself caught between partaking in an inhumane act and keeping his values.
In "Magic Child," Nsote loses her baby after breaching the terms of a magical pact. In "This is Not a Way to Die," a young man watches his father die after heeding the words of a pastor and declining a life-saving surgery. In Leaving, a brilliant woman struggles with miscarriages and finds her marriage slipping away from her grip.
Throughout the collection, the idea of death as not just the loss of one’s body, but of their sanity, emotions, aspirations, is observed in the stories.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Famous Chukwuemeka (@famous_dewriter) is a Nigerian writer whose debut novel, "We Will Live Again," was published in 2023 by Griots Lounge Publishing and was listed as one of Top 60 Notable African Books of 2023 by Open Country Mag. He is a 2024 Ebedi Fellow, an alumnus of the 2024 Creative Writing Workshop organized by Nigeria Academy of Letters, a nominee for the 2022 Young Writers and Creatives Award, and was one of 12 authors of the collaborative novel, Poles Apart, published in 2024 in Bulgaria. His works have been published in several anthologies and journals and have been longlisted for the 2020 Quramo Writers Prize and shortlisted for the 2023 Sevhage Prize for Short Fiction. His collection of short stories, "Many Ways to Die," was a finalist in the 2024 Moon City Short Fiction Award, and was first published in the UK by The Roaring Lion Newcastle in 2026. Endorsed by the Arts Council England, he currently lives in England where he is working on his second novel.
RELEASE DATE: January 15, 2027
PRE-ORDER LINK: witsprouts.com/product/many-…
OPEN COUNTRY MAG retweeted
@OpenCountryMag’s Iheoma Uzomba wrote an emotional profile. The language, the time that went into this? Grateful, grateful.
opencountrymag.com/what-aded…
OPEN COUNTRY MAG retweeted
Worked on this with @nelsoncj3. Can’t wait for you all to read it
Cover Reveal Exclusive:
@elekerepress today unveils the cover of “Mismemories: Contemporary Writing from Queer West African Voices,” a new anthology edited by @nelsoncj3 and Edwin Okolo and forthcoming on 28 November 2026.
It features original artwork by the Sierra Leonean artist @NgadiSmart, who draws on an object familiar from many West African childhoods: decorative figurines kept in family living rooms, treasured by parents and placed beyond the reach of children.
🔥
opencountrymag.com/cover-rev…
"Many Ways to Die" is a collection of eight short stories that explores the theme of death and the various ways of dying. Other themes explored in this collection include poverty, religious fanaticism, suicide, human emotions, relationships, and mysteries of life.
In "It Is Finished," Erima clubs her father to death after he succumbs to an abominable lust. Her experience is similar to Ozichi’s in "Fly," whose father gave her out to a man who ran a prostitution agency in exchange for capital to get back on his feet. In "When Flesh Summons," a dead man is summoned back to life to take revenge on his killers. In "Water Takes All of Me," a young boy narrates the tragic tale of how he lost his entire family during a flooding experience. In Paradise, a jobless first-class graduate, desperate for the good life, finds himself caught between partaking in an inhumane act and keeping his values.
In "Magic Child," Nsote loses her baby after breaching the terms of a magical pact. In "This is Not a Way to Die," a young man watches his father die after heeding the words of a pastor and declining a life-saving surgery. In Leaving, a brilliant woman struggles with miscarriages and finds her marriage slipping away from her grip.
Throughout the collection, the idea of death as not just the loss of one’s body, but of their sanity, emotions, aspirations, is observed in the stories.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Famous Chukwuemeka (@famous_dewriter) is a Nigerian writer whose debut novel, "We Will Live Again," was published in 2023 by Griots Lounge Publishing and was listed as one of Top 60 Notable African Books of 2023 by Open Country Mag. He is a 2024 Ebedi Fellow, an alumnus of the 2024 Creative Writing Workshop organized by Nigeria Academy of Letters, a nominee for the 2022 Young Writers and Creatives Award, and was one of 12 authors of the collaborative novel, Poles Apart, published in 2024 in Bulgaria. His works have been published in several anthologies and journals and have been longlisted for the 2020 Quramo Writers Prize and shortlisted for the 2023 Sevhage Prize for Short Fiction. His collection of short stories, "Many Ways to Die," was a finalist in the 2024 Moon City Short Fiction Award, and was first published in the UK by The Roaring Lion Newcastle in 2026. Endorsed by the Arts Council England, he currently lives in England where he is working on his second novel.
RELEASE DATE: January 15, 2027
PRE-ORDER LINK: witsprouts.com/product/many-…
OPEN COUNTRY MAG retweeted
‘If realist fiction must be done, it must be done in the face of despair. But there is no metaphysical provocation in the imagination of most Nigerian writers … they sleep in our Garden of Gethsemane, while others travail over the rebirth of the world.’
opencountrymag.com/can-conte…
OPEN COUNTRY MAG retweeted
When you understand what African literature is up against from home and abroad, your eyes will open.
Our work at @OpenCountryMag is to ensure that, when push comes to shove, nobody will say: “They produced nothing relevant in a global context.”
And push will come to shove.
Introduction to 20.35 Africa (@20_35Africa) Volume IX: “Sit with Their Grief . . . Reconcile with the Devastation”
The poems in 20.35 Africa Volume IX, guest-edited by Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie and Antony Fangary, “remind us that the suffering in the world is inflicted by us, on us,” but also “that the thick layered air of exhaustion has not rid us of our . . . dreams.”
opencountrymag.com/introduct…
Before his award-winning work in big dramas “Oloibiri,” “Shanty Town,” “The Milkmaid,” and “Jagun Jagun,” Hakeem “Effects” Onilogbo, the most decorated makeup artist in the industry, wanted to be an actor. Two decades later, he expresses his craft with the ambition of one.
opencountrymag.com/hakeem-ef…
OPEN COUNTRY MAG retweeted
This!
Reminded me of an era of Facebook writers. I recall two from my school back in the day; Osula Daniel and Jindu Enugbe.
They inadvertently encouraged me to pick up my lost and forgotten art of writing. I'd jettisoned the idea of writing for many years until I started reading Jindu and Osula.
I had three other people I admired. They were women - Ese Esiso, she was my classmate and coursemate from the university, Stephanie Orlando and Adaba Mary Rita.
They all co-existed in that era of Facebook writers, and they all inspired me in one way or the other.
Only Jindu I know still writes to this day - he has authored some great works of literature, majorly poetry and short stories - KHAKI IN THE SUN, SEVEN BALLS, and STREET OT.
It was quite an era.
Adedayo Agarau’s (@adedayoagarau) appetite for language began to bolster in a rather strange place: a 2go chatroom. “To be honest, 2go was where we went to talk to babes,” he said. Then he had found himself in a chatroom called Poetry, where a handful of young Nigerians, unironically speaking Victorian English, held nightly salon sessions. He read their chats, marveled by their contortion of language. One evening, he arrived in time to find Rasak Malik and Chisom Okafor, two poets whose lyrical and metaphorical ranges still make him swear under his breath, typing poetic lines into the room.
Through Malik, he gained entry to Words, Rhymes, & Rhythms (WRR), the Facebook literary community hosted by Samson. Agarau revisited their old chats recently. “My grammar was terrible back in 2012,” he told me, amused, “even though I thought I spoke good English.” What mattered was that he reached out to Samson for mentorship and Samson said yes: “I told him, ‘I need you to be my mentor.’ He asked how far I was willing to go. I said, ‘As far as you take me.’” From there, Agarau churned out work alongside other writers like James Ademuyiwa, Gabriel Ayomide Festus, Ridwan Adelaja, Vica Dex, and Adetimilehin. “Every day we showed up. Every day we wrote. And there was no world telling us we were poets. We just were.”
Read more here: opencountrymag.com/what-aded…
Adedayo Agarau’s (@adedayoagarau) appetite for language began to bolster in a rather strange place: a 2go chatroom. “To be honest, 2go was where we went to talk to babes,” he said. Then he had found himself in a chatroom called Poetry, where a handful of young Nigerians, unironically speaking Victorian English, held nightly salon sessions. He read their chats, marveled by their contortion of language. One evening, he arrived in time to find Rasak Malik and Chisom Okafor, two poets whose lyrical and metaphorical ranges still make him swear under his breath, typing poetic lines into the room.
Through Malik, he gained entry to Words, Rhymes, & Rhythms (WRR), the Facebook literary community hosted by Samson. Agarau revisited their old chats recently. “My grammar was terrible back in 2012,” he told me, amused, “even though I thought I spoke good English.” What mattered was that he reached out to Samson for mentorship and Samson said yes: “I told him, ‘I need you to be my mentor.’ He asked how far I was willing to go. I said, ‘As far as you take me.’” From there, Agarau churned out work alongside other writers like James Ademuyiwa, Gabriel Ayomide Festus, Ridwan Adelaja, Vica Dex, and Adetimilehin. “Every day we showed up. Every day we wrote. And there was no world telling us we were poets. We just were.”
Read more here: opencountrymag.com/what-aded…
OPEN COUNTRY MAG retweeted
Two well-deserved news this year from @OpenCountryMag staff and friends:
- @IheomaUzomba, poet, performer, and writer of intelligent Profiles on poets, won the Evaristo Prize (the Brunel Prize)
- Maaza Mengiste, our second cover star, won a MacArthur “Genius” Grant
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
OPEN COUNTRY MAG retweeted
Former @OpenCountryMag Cover Star Maaza Mengiste Awarded 2026 MacArthur “Genius” Grant
Mengiste is now the third African writer and second Ethiopian to receive the grant, after Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Dinaw Mengestu. She gets $800,000.
opencountrymag.com/maaza-men…
