I ran into one of my childhood friends in Ile Ife two years ago. He is now a university professor.
We decided to go and get a drink and as we started drinking, we discussed the pleasures of living together in the same house as children for many years.
We all lived together as one family in that house.
He was the son of Baba Alhaji, the landlord.
If you got up early enough, you would catch Anti Toyosi bathing at the back of the Face-Me-I-Face-You building in which I grew up in Ile Ife. Her husband, a sign-writer, would still be fast asleep.
But Anti Toyosi always got up early to prepare rice that she sold to school students as breakfast before they went to school.
I met Antonia at a wedding party in Akure in 2011.
The wedding party was inside a high-end hotel, where the big politicians and rich people stay when in Akure.
My friend who was a commissioner had given me a room in the hotel, because I was writing an exhibition catalog, and needed a place with good internet service and constant power supply.
For the first time in my life, I traveled out of Nigeria in 1983 to visit London for a solo exhibition of my work at the Africa Center.
Rufus Orisayomi had arranged the exhibition for me.
Tunde Fagbenle and his wife, Ally Bedford, offered to host me at their home.
Ally was writing a Master’s thesis on my work, therefore, it was convenient for her to keep me close by to enable her to have access to me for clarifications when needed.
Do you know this song?
Ẹ fà á nírungbọn tu!
Ẹ fà á nírungbọn tu ò
Àgbàlagbà tí ò lówó lọ́wọ́
Tó ń dá irungbọ̀n sí
Ẹ fà á nírungbọn tu.
I met a young woman living in Nigeria online more than ten years ago.
We became friends and exchanged lots of chats.
She had just graduated with a degree in engineering.
She couldn’t get a job.
I watched her struggle for many years.
A really gorgeous woman transformed into a shell of herself.
Her mother fell ill.
She began to live with her married sister.
She fell ill.
The south needs to cultivate edible urban landscapes.
Nigeria has an ecology that permits the cultivation of food plants throughout the year.
The edible urban landscape means that the cities and town of the south should be cleared of weeds, and every available space must be turned into a vast food-producing landscape, all the way from Ilorin to Port Harcourt.
I looked out through the window. The grass was not yet tall enough to mow. It had rained, and green life was returning to Austin after the long winter, and spring was almost fully here.
But the snowstorm of a month ago in Texas dealt Austin a cruel hand and plant life has not really recovered.
“José,” I said, “The lawn doesn’t need you yet. Maybe in a week, two?”
“I need the money, Mr. Moyo,” José pleaded.
I took a break from social media but returned when someone sent me a video of Sunday Igboho.
I transcribed a clip of the video and wanted to share it here.
If you read the following statement by Sunday Igboho, you will shake your head in disbelief.
Sunday Igboho, the kind of person we refer to as a stark illiterate, is the one leading the entire Yoruba nation, and one of the very few people making any sense in the country called Nigeria.
Is it not clear to us by now that our educational system in Nigeria is just a scam?
We all attended the University of Mumu in Nigeria—under various names.
Officially, I become a senior citizen today.
I turned 65.
From what my daughter said–and she was giving me professional information as a licensed social worker–I have become an ẹ̀rùjẹ̀jẹ̀ in the eye of the law in the US.
I’m like a baby now.
Can you imagine hurting a baby!
Less than 1000 people are holding the entire country of Nigeria to ransom.
And they are all blind and deaf.
They are practically no more than 1000 people destroying the lives of two hundred million people.
These blind and deaf people include governors, senators, national assembly members and other appointed officials who have turned the national treasury into their mothers’ pot of stew.
I woke up during the night and went to the bathroom.
There was no water to wash my hands.
No hot water. No cold water.
What was going on?
I went downstairs.
No running water.