The only thing unappealing about Ayanna's appearance is the frown of discountenance that places itself right across her forehead when she looks at me. My kindness towards her can never eliminate the silent wrath she harbours for my being, and hence, I often find myself trying to capture her in moments when she is unaware of my presence. For only then can I be the lucky witness of such incomparable resplendence...

His forebears believed in reincarnation so much they named their newborns after deceased relatives.  But certainly this mysterious girl could not be the reincarnation of his mother, he thought. She might have been born probably around the period of his mother’s death but did that mean anything? How did she come about intimate details about him – things only his mother had known?

Neighbour X had attempted yet again to kill their new mother. This time he had come with a creaking wooden barrow, a sugarcane machete and a gunny sack. He had shouted his intention to chop her into cabbage-sized chunks of flesh then wheel the remains in the plastic gunny sack to the new village police post to report his crime of revenge...

I am spending a little time in my home country. That is what we like to do, us Africans, spend the holiday with family. It looks a little as though we want to be sure we know where and how the families are doing. The ones that stay away do indeed stay away. But we are all here, most of us from last year. I do not want this to become a ritual. Christmas with efo riro is a better option than this yellow fried rice with strange peas. It is hot in here and I have missed the thermostat...

While my grandmother’s creases fiddle with my hair, my eyes stay fixed on the roughness of her bedroom wall. Grandmother’s walls are different from the ones I grew up within. Stories live inside her walls. Your grandpapa, me, we lived here many long long agos. She adds extra longs as if they help chronicle time...

Of course I knew who Murtala Mohammed was. He was that ominous head on the twenty naira note. The airport in Lagos was named after him. The long bridge in Lokoja also bore his name. I knew his middle name was Ramat. As a child, my school once went on an excursion to the museum in Lagos and we had been shown the Peugeot car he was being driven in on the day the bullet of a lone shooter took life out of him. I knew that the name of this shooter was Dimka. I knew that after his death, Obasanjo took over power. I knew he took the first step towards moving the Federal Capital to Abuja. I knew he died in 1976. All the options before me bore 1976. But I did not know the exact day he died...

Bobo wonders how they kidnapped him. He usually had a convoy of six or seven cars. Bulletproof jeeps screamed blue-and-red as their sirens cleared traffic for The Future to pass unopposed. He made sure he had armed aides to escort him because Nigeria was too unpredictable and people were all too ready to waste you without much provocation...

The house was fully awake. Mama Peter was shouting at Peter to finish shitting quickly. He was sitting on a potty. Ado was also sitting on a potty in front of their room, one of his small legs stretched, the other bent at the knee. His head rested on his left palm and he seemed to be dozing. I saw Rekiya, dressed in tattered pyjamas, playing with her new doll. Mama Bulus sat in front of her room, her fat legs stretched out. Turaki, her youngest child, sucked her large breast while standing. Mama Bayo had lit her stove beside her door, warming something that looked like leftover food. Her daughter, Julie, squatted beside her. The stove exuded dark smoke. I saw Ramatu, the daughter of Baba Rafatu’s first wife, tugging at her mother’s wrapper, whining...

Bright Okocha watched as his student, Anita, buttoned her blouse and adjusted the straps of her skirts. He looked at the mirror in the hotel room to ensure he was well dressed. Then he picked the brown envelopes that contained the wad of notes that Anita had given him...

He had been missing for four days. In that time we had gone to the police station and checked to see if they were holding him, then we’d been to the hospital to check if any unidentified accident victim had been brought in, and finally to the morgue where we’d pored through the unidentified bodies. We’d come up empty...

I was locked in a dark and dank cell, and I was given thirty minutes to feel the pulse of a man locked in the same cell I was in and write about it. They said his name was Iran! Are you freaking kidding me? Since when did human beings start bearing the names of a Country/Place?

Quickly, I drape across my left shoulder a leopard skin, then finish off with a pat of some white powder on my face and some amulets around my ankles, wrists and waist.  I pull the old drum between my stretched legs and start hitting it angrily, chanting incoherently...

The promise of a career in television taught me to consider the shape of a girl as a metaphor. Beautiful girls become depressive women – they are the most unfortunate because they never grow up. Mean girls become miserable women. Silly girls become affected, hysterical and emotional women and sometimes intelligent women cause more harm than good...

I have now realised the power that people who write have over those who do not. My history, even my future, has been defined by foreigners. I am writing a book to tell my own side of the story. It will be called The Hate That Hate Produced...

Abui’s smile was terrible. “You sound like a starving frog.” He cautiously stood up, his eyes and gun trained on his ex-friend. “You crossed a desperate thing, Sule. Power is a woman you fought and killed for. You don’t give up such conquest easily...”

Thanks for sending me the pictures of your Mr. Right as email attachments. When I saw them, I couldn’t restrain myself from celebrating aloud at the cyber café.  I guess my neighbours who stopped momentarily to look at me must be wondering what had got into this girl. You don’t have to blame me. I was simply beside myself with joy. If I couldn’t do it, my friend has done it for me...