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Articles by Ikhide R. Ikheloa
My Seven Black Fathers by Will Jawando Review—Family, Race, & a Nigerian Son's Quest - Open Country Mag
America. Dusk. In this room with its own name, my dog and I sit, staring out the window. My son, watching me, blurts out: “Dad what are you going to do? All you do is stare out the window. I’m worried.” I tell him I’m fine. “No, you are not,” he says. “I’m worried about you.” Many rivers run through us, and our children are beneficiaries or victims of their currents.
#SecureTheTribe: Ikhide wades into squabble between African immigrants and African-Americans
he tensions between indigenous African Americans and immigrant Africans have their roots in history and cultural differences. There is a hilarious passage in Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s autobiography, My Odyssey, where he mistakes the president of Lincoln University for a gardener. Trying to find his way to the president’s house as a new international student, he’d arrogantly asked “the gardener” the direction to the president’s house.
From Africa’s Frying Pan to Europe’s Fire
A Review of Olusegun Adeniyi’s “From Frying Pan to Fire: How African Migrants Risk Everything in Their Futile Search for a Better Life in Europe” By Ikhide R. Ikheloa Friday, June 12, 2020.
[Guest Blog Post - Professor Pius Adesanmi] The Hunt for Francophonism
By Professor Pius Adesanmi Winner, the Penguin Prize for African Writing Author of You’re Not a Country, Africa! (Remarks at the Anglophone-Francophone Cultural Conversations Panel Convened by the African Studies Program and the Department of Comparative Literature, Penn State University, February 27, 2013) First things first. I want to thank the usual suspects for inviting me back home to give a talk.
For Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani: Between her America and her Nigeria
In America, all men are believed to be created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. But Nigerians are brought up to believe that our society consists of higher and lesser beings. Some are born to own and enjoy, while others are born to toil and endure. – Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani The Nigerian writer, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is at it again.
" The Trials Of Maclean Agu" A Story By Hydronium
" The Trials Of Maclean Agu" A Story By Hydronium by Hydronium(m): 5:32pm On Apr 14 Hey guys. This is a story I began a while ago and I'm going to post weekly for your reading pleasure and as a way of propelling myself to complete it. I'd like your comments, suggestions, evaluations and rapt attention. Thank you. (c) Tobi Abraham 2014 All rights reserved.
This writing life: Ranting, cutting, grunting and pasting
For you… “Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.” – Lawrence Kasdan The other day my friend was bemoaning a writing slump. The words were stuck somewhere, refusing all entreaties to come out – and play. My friend is a fairly prolific writer; multitasking on a book, a blog that could use some more tending and an active Twitter and Facebook account.
What Can Buhari Do Differently In His Second Coming? By Ogochukwu Paul
In 2015, there were much high hopes from a lot of Nigerians especially common Nigerians when Muhammadu Buhari for the first time emerged the president of Nigeria. He contested as the presidential flag bearer for the APC – a new opposition party formed on a string of mergers in other to have a strong base to wrestle power from the PDP. The high hopes were as a result of the certainty that his presidency was going to do a lot of great things.
The Trying Triangle of Politics, Economy and Faith: Through the Eyes of the Needle, by Bishop Kukah
Religion is an emotive issue even at the best of times. The diverse ways in which people interpret and contextualise the sacred texts in relation to personal and community life is always bound to create conflict. A few examples of what I am talking about will suffice. Among the disciples of Jesus, there was no agreement as to what his mission was. We might all consider Judas and his betrayal of Jesus as the highest expression of this conflict in perceptions and visions.
FROM AMERICA: Please sell the mask
Let me tell you a story. Eons ago, the white man came to the great Benin Kingdom and plundered the place, making away with several artifacts. These artifacts now enjoy lush air-conditioned exile abroad, where overfed folks with a lot of time on their hands coo over them in places called museums. They are now called art pieces.
The library lives still
For my friend, Uzo Onyemaechi, the Millenium librarian. Biri kwe! The writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has a lovely piece in Guernica magazine, Why Are You here?. It is a sobering commentary on what passes for education in Nigeria. Hear Adichie: “It is not surprising that parents do not want their children to attend university in Nigeria. Many students themselves would leave if they had the opportunity.
Please talk about it or else…
Americans talk about everything at every opportunity. They talk during meals and sex. I once had an apartment below a young American couple who liked to make love and talk at the same time. Loudly. I was miserable whenever I had to leave the apartment to go to work, so entertaining. Nigerians are simple people; the British taught us to keep mum during sex. That is what the missionary position is for.
A blazing sun: The story teller returns
Note: Reproduced here for archival purposes only. First published in 2006. I write this for James Meredith, the distinguished first black student of OLEMISS, and for John Hawkins, the distinguished first black Cheerleader of OLEMISS. Courage counts for something. Yes! My time is no longer mine and I miss my Muse running alongside my railroad tracks urging me to say something, anything.
On Damascus road (1) by Femi Aribisala
Femi Aribisala As he journeyed he came near Damascus, suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice. (Acts 9:3-4). My wife was coming back from a trip to the United States and I went to Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos with my six-year old son to meet her. She had two major pieces of luggage. I put one in the boot and the other in the back seat of the car. It was around seven-thirty in the evening, and we set out for home.
Lost in America - Coming to America!
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!).
Elnathan’s song: Born into a war on a boiling Tuesday
“Let your women study,’ Sheikh said, ‘and let them vote. Let them learn how to read. The wives of Christians read and write and our wives cannot even read the Quran. There is no sin if a man accompanies his wives to go and queue up to register or to vote.” The writer Elnathan John is something of a celebrity renegade in the African literary scene.
Tobore Ovuorie’s story: Fact or fiction?
On January 23, 2014, Premium Times of Nigeria shocked the world with a horrific story under the screaming banner: INVESTIGATION: Inside Nigeria’s Ruthless Human Trafficking Mafia. It is a horrible story and I am saddened but not surprised that the Nigerian authorities are indifferent to any attempts to investigate the serious claims in the story. In a sane country, all sorts of investigations would commence, the nation would be in a turmoil.
Notes from my Middle Passage
The Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has said that she did not realize she was black until she came to America. That is a pretty dramatic way of telling the truth. When I came to Oxford, Mississippi from Nigeria in the early 80’s to attend the University of Mississippi (OLEMISS), I knew I was black—but my notion of blackness was very different from what it meant to be black in America, certainly in OLEMISS.
Barrack Boy
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. – Dante Alighieri, Inferno All thinking Nigerians should watch Channels Television’s video clip of the dilapidation and national embarrassment euphemistically called Ikeja Police Academy or Ikeja Police College. It bears repeating: These images of Nigerian police “trainees” in quarters unfit for hogs should break each of our hearts.
Christopher Okigbo’s Voice
First published in Next newspapers, March 13, 2011. Reproduced for archival purposes only. The late great Christopher Okigbo once said of his poems’ similarities to other people’s works: “It is surprising how many lines of my Limits I am not sure are mine and yet do not know whose lines they were originally. But does it matter?” I think it matters. A while back on Next, the poet Chimalum Nwankwo offered evidence that Okigbo had plagiarized some of his poems.
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