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

Lagos Deportations and Crisis of Citizenship

The debate over Lagos State’s deportation of some Igbo elements to Anambra State has done two things at once. One, it has underlined the shakiness of the idea of one Nigeria. Then, two, in focusing too narrowly on an ethnic explanation, the debate has obfuscated what is a much broader, and fundamental, issue...

A Case For Canceling The 2015 Elections

Once again, Nigeria has entered an awful, familiar season. The country’s air is rent with talk of power. Not electric power, no; we’re talking raw political power! And the general elections of 2015 seem to have concentrated the mind of every politician in Nigeria...

Which gods must be appeased?

British colonialism built roads, established networks of communications, and established bureaucratic jobs that encouraged – or forced – people to wander outside their immediate natal addresses. Yet, wherever they went within Nigeria, the compass for these half-hearted Nigerians remained pointed towards that home...

From “Village” Ethics To A Moral No-Man’s Land

Part of Okonkwo’s curse is to lack the mental wherewithal to realize how the white man, though outnumbered, has nevertheless radically transformed Umuofia. Achebe’s tragic hero goes to his death without understanding how thoroughly the white man has redrawn Umuofia’s – nay Africa’s – map. Okonkwo has no inkling that his nine villages had become, in effect, the tiniest dot on a much larger map...

Naturalizing Nigeria: A Strategy for Fighting Corruption

Achebe damningly portrays Okonkwo as a man incapable of thought, a man who reposes too much faith in his physical prowess but puts no store by wisdom. Yet, there are numerous opportunities when the community forces Okonkwo to reckon with the fact that they – to say nothing of their ancestors and gods – are, in the end, more powerful than he...

Ngala Eight-Eight

I’ve lived in America for more than twenty years. It’s a society that automatically views the caning of children as a form of abuse, bordering on torture. Make no mistake: I thoroughly enjoyed my youthful indiscretions, but didn’t find it funny when it came time to pay the price by being caned...

Bona Ezeudu: Using Art To Contain Tragedy

Bona’s current work is a testament to an artist’s insistence that art can serve as an idiom of rebirth. In the current works, Bona celebrates life and offers the ultimate honor to a son whose star was abbreviated far too soon...

Chinua Achebe: A Legend and Master Storyteller

I had the rare honor and luck of being close to the revered Achebe for some thirty years. In that time, he was an inspiration, model, beacon of moral clarity and intellectual integrity as well as my teacher in the best, broadest sense of that word...

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