Okey Ndibe

Okey Ndibe teaches fiction and African literature at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. He is the author of the novel, Arrows of Rain and co-editor (with Chenjerai Hove) of Writers, Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa. After studying business management at the Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu (Nigeria), Ndibe earned an MFA and PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Ndibe was the founding editor of African Commentary, a magazine published in the U.S. by novelist Chinua Achebe, author of the classic novel, Things Fall Apart. His lively, witty and intellectually stimulating style has made him a highly sought after speaker on African and African American literature and politics. Ndibe is finishing his second novel titled Foreign Gods, Incorporated and also working on a memoir of his life in the US. His website. Twitter: @ OkeyNdibe

The Art Of Loathing The “Outside” Messenger

My recent column, entitled “Bishop Kukah’s Grave Misreading,” generated a high volume of emails, many of them remarkable for their insight. I was so struck by one email, written by a UK-based Nigerian, that I wrote back to ask its writer for permission to share his thoughts with others...

Bishop Kukah’s Grave Misreading

Bishop Kukah’s lecture was also remarkable for a more dubious reason, one that pertains to me. In a bizarre turn in his talk, the bishop singled me out for furious verbal attack...

The Wonder Known As Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka turned 80 at the very beginning of this week. For many, that milestone must seem incredible. He looks scandalously young and vibrant, his physique trim, his mind ever engaged with some of the major literary and political issues of our time...

Towards an Ethnicity of Values

For me, one of the most disconcerting facts about public discourse in Nigeria—including intellectual exchanges—is the rampant, if not default, deployment of ethnic or religious sentiments...

Nigeria and Biafra’s Wasted Memory

A contemptible, uncreative elite, its obsession with conspicuous consumption matched by its inability to produce anything of value, has overseen Nigeria’s obscene, record-setting squandermania...

Biafra, the Ostrich Mentality and Nigeria’s Tragedy

There is a sense in which the name of the malaise afflicting Nigeria is Biafra. I have argued before—and I must do so again—that Nigeria’s refusal to confront and address the sore of the Biafran War is the chief reason no nation has been able to materialize out of the space called Nigeria...

A State At War

To achieve its stated goal, Boko Haram is willing to bomb public motor parks, to slaughter sleeping school children in their beds, to bring carnage to people worshiping in churches, to ambush and kill soldiers and police officers, to abduct schoolgirls and forcibly convert them to Islam, and to carve out a widening space in Nigeria’s northeast where sheer anarchy reigns...

Uncle Sam Is In, But Let’s Not Pack It In

Now that the United States, Britain, and some European countries may be stepping in to help rescue the Chibok girls, I hope that Nigerians won’t fold up, reach for their beers and pepper soup—and go into snooze mode...

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Call Me Tony: A Parable of Corporate Nigeria

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