“I was censored from reading my debut novel, City of Memories, at Ibadan months back, by one of these cliquey-minded collectives on account of a statement my friend Ahmed Maiwada made on Facebook. That Richard Ali is not Maiwada, that Maiwada is an intelligent, rational and competent human being and writer—this didn’t matter to these guys, they censored me, I mean. In Ibadan o, in the very city where Soyinka and Clark and Achebe and Okigbo loved and haunted and wrote, these heritors of a sterling legacy made these named Great Men their fathers turn away sadly in shame.”
I wish to state publicly now that the Censorship I spoke of concerns the LAIPO Reading, coordinated by Ayodele Olofintuade, an NLNG Shortlisted writer, in Ibadan in the run up to the Reading held on the 2nd of June, 2012. I am also stating the following facts…