Essays
Collected here. Most first appeared on Medium.
Why It Is Overly Simplistic to Call the Non-Linear War in the Middle Belt Region of Nigeria a 'Farmer-Herder' Conflict
The Middle Belt's violence is misnamed. An argument that 'farmer-herder conflict' is a convenient label for something closer to a non-linear war fought behind ethnic and religious cover.
How to Count Your Blessings
Gratitude is hard because pride resists it. On introspection, humility, and perspective — with Mandela, Washington, and Oprah — as the three ways to actually count your blessings.
What I Wish I Knew About Grace
My father, a razor blade, and the servant who forgave him before handing it over — the story that taught him, and later me, what grace actually is.
Where Conscience Goes to Die
A driver refuses a bribe at a northern checkpoint and has a rifle pointed at our windscreen. It was the man beside me who unsettled me more.
Change: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
From the first gun fired to EndSARS to the UK's borders, an argument that change is neither good nor bad in itself — only in what we choose to make of it.
This Rosey, Flowery Thing Called Love
Sitting with a widower's love story, a search for what love actually is — not feeling or romance but being truly known, which begins with knowing yourself.
You Cannot Summarize a Revolution
From the Arab Spring to EndSARS to the 2023 election, political change follows a pattern the establishment never sees coming — until it is too late.
How To Give Up
A straight-faced, mock-instructional guide to quitting — despondency, doomsday, the ethics of it — that teaches you the method over two thousand words and then declines to use it.
The EndSARS Protest: Lessons on Effective Governance, Active Citizen Participation and Nation-Building
The lessons EndSARS left behind: the chasm between the governed and their government, the young women who ran what the state claimed it couldn't, and the making of martyrs.
Practicing Dying for the Final Showdown
At my father's hospital bedside — where the dying man comforted his visitors — a meditation on death, the fear of the unknown, and the smaller deaths we rehearse every day.
The Accident of Our Justice System
A road accident I did not cause lands me on the floor of a police cell with nine boys held for a week without charge — and a hard look at Nigerian justice.
The Small Guys in Business Deserve Our Admiration
A letter to the small business owner — on consistency, self-motivation, and the quiet heroism of surviving Nigeria's three-year odds without funding or fanfare.
We the People
From Venezuela to Hong Kong to EndSARS — on the phrase 'we the people,' and how governments everywhere have come to read it as something other than the promise it was.
Who Is Corrupt?
My father, a theologian, defined corruption as missing the mark a thing was made for. By that measure, the question isn't who is corrupt — it's who isn't.
Trumpism Is an Interruption to America's Greatness
Written in July 2020: a foreign admirer of the American ideal — Wilson, Hoover, JFK, Obama — on why Trump reads as an interruption to it, not a restoration.
I Would Pick Consistency Over Talent Any Day
A 0–5 schoolboy football defeat taught me the lesson: talent seduces, but consistency wins. Why the disciplined, unremarkable grinder beats the gifted almost every time.
Writing Is Art — Here Is a Reason You Should Keep at It
On falling in love with books, then fearing the blank page — and the reason to keep writing anyway: writers are the unsung witnesses who carry a civilization's stories forward.
What It Means to Be a Graduate in a Third World Country
Graduation is euphoric, then the labor market is not. On what a degree actually means in a third world country — and the system built against the young people who earn one.
Why America Needs More Tolerance to End Racial Conflicts, Not More Love
After George Floyd: an argument that love, however potent, cannot end racial conflict at scale — and that tolerance, which asks less and delivers more, is the skill America actually needs.
The Thing About Being a Man
Becoming a man isn't decided by age. Against the cult of the tough, unfeeling exterior, an argument that real strength includes vulnerability, empathy, and the courage to feel.
Bridging Racial Gaps Through Food, One Bite at a Time
A Nigerian who will eat anything asks a simple question: how do you enjoy a people's food and still hate the people? On food as an unlikely bridge across race.