Tuesday, October 14, 2025

A Country in a Fist

A Country in a Fist by Kingsley Alumona

We were members of the Lagos Ghetto Women’s Association, and we were at the police station demanding the release of one of us, Fatima, and her child, who had been arrested the day before. She was accused of abusing a popular businesswoman on the radio who had maltreated one of us for stealing her money. […]

Suffering Misunderstoods

Suffering Misunderstoods by Eduek Moses

The old man at the lotto shop greeted Ofonime with a smile whenever he returned. This smile often seduced him away from the dusty path that led home. He usually veered off the street onto the gravelled ground that led to the small structure at the side, a narrow caricature of cinder blocks and concrete […]

Sludge

Sludge by Chiemeziem Everest Udochukwu

When Ifechukwu arrived in a matching ash crop top and leggings, Ngọọ berated her for “camera dressing” and for returning home thirteen days after the lecturers’ warning strike began. A few weeks later, Ifechukwu’s body inched towards paleness and lethargy. She took drugs and didn’t improve, and her voracious appetite for eggy spaghetti and Telemundo […]

What’s the Essence of Beauty

What’s the Essence of Beauty by Gerald Onyebuchi Ewa

Obiora arrives at the T-junction, not sure which way to take. It has been more than a decade since he left Kogi State. Except for the many checkpoints guarded by soldiers, which weren’t prevalent in his childhood, not much has changed since he left. From the few crammed streets he has whizzed past, he noticed […]

The Cane Cutters

The Cane Cutters by Sunday Okoh

Suddenly, there was a groaning sound, as if coming from a colossal bull with distorted nostrils. I was startled. Then, the gate to the factory burst open. A sea of men in greasy work clothes, like colonies of ants on a hunting mission, thundered out. It wasn’t easy to spot anyone in particular in the […]

Gethsemane

Gethsemane by Daniel Echezonachi Maxwell

It had rained heavily, and the stomach-turning smell of earth hung in the air, wafting from the windows into our sitting room on that Tuesday morning that my sister came home with the news that she had been awarded a scholarship. I hadn’t been so concerned about her scholarship, but knew it was to a […]

Remain Dead

Remain Dead by Chikosoro Chiziterem Mefor

The year my father died must have been the most painful year for my mother. I wasn’t sure. I never asked her. She had lost three of the most important people in her life within nine months, all while battling an unexplainable illness. I hated that my father was one of the reasons for her […]

Fractured Constellations

Is it not a common saying among your people that, “Yanga dey sleep, trouble wake am up?” Yes, I was on my own, minding my business, when you decided to invoke my wrath. What insolence! What rash audacity! What deer would dare to arouse a lioness from her sleep if not one already bored with […]

Why I Killed My Husband

Within the depths of love’s embrace lies the power to conquer even the darkest of secrets. … Omolade Today is my husband’s funeral, and I’m seated at the front pew in church, eyes wet and wiping down my tears every two seconds, a front I had to keep up with because nobody must know I […]

The Scent of Madness

Baba is prancing about in Okene market, stark naked, walking in circles, and guffawing like a wounded hyena. Market women are staring confusedly at his testes, which look like bloated garden eggs. Some shake their heads while others murmur and laugh. It would be difficult to convince them of Baba’s abhorrence of madness when he […]