Old Nollywood 2.0
Nigeria’s biggest filmmakers are ditching cinemas and streamers for YouTube. But what looks like a new era is really a return to an old one.
Nigeria
The political economy of romance
eLDee’s latest single reignited an old debate about women, money, and dating in Nigeria. But no one really chooses these gendered arrangements shaped by economic insecurity and unequal access to opportunity.
Too big to regulate
Dangote’s refinery ended Nigeria’s dependence on imported fuel and became Africa’s most important energy asset overnight when Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz. But it also became the country’s most powerful monopoly.
Who started Nollywood?
Kenneth Nnebue made 27 Yoruba-language films before Living in Bondage. Why does Nigeria still only remember the one he made in Igbo?
The prosecutions that never happen
Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency secures thousands of convictions every year, but when it comes to politically-connected elites, it’s a different story.
Sovereign rot
From Eko Atlantic to the Niger Delta, elite enclaves have become the defining spatial expression of Nigeria’s political order.
No president will save Nigeria
Nigeria’s democracy has become dangerously fixated on capturing the presidency. Reviving regional politics may be the country’s best hope for rebuilding democratic accountability.
The shadow of the fatherland
Akinola Davies Jr’s feature-length debut traces how Nigeria’s military rule collapsed the boundary between political crisis and intimate life, leaving families to bear the cost of authoritarian power.
The music is not yours
On the latest AIAC podcast, the gang from the Nigerian Scam explores how Afrobeats got globalized, who captured the value, and why the party may be ending.
Being right at the wrong time
Prominent cleric Sheikh Ahmad Gumi’s calls for negotiation reflect practices already in use, but in Nigeria’s polarized digital space, nuance is punished.
Trumpism in Nigeria
Why does the anti-Black racism of the US president have defenders in Africa’s largest Black nation?
Who owns the memory of struggle?
An exhibition in Ibadan recovers Nigeria’s buried history of activism, raising urgent questions about access, erasure, and whether archives can inspire new political action.
A life in struggle
From the Nigerian Civil War to decades of Marxist organizing and scholarship, Biodun Jeyifo’s life traced a tradition of commitment — one that now passes to a new generation.
David Hundeyin may not be a false prophet
In Nigeria’s media landscape, anti-imperialist commentary captures popular anger without transforming it, turning dissent into spectacle rather than power.
A sick health system
The suspension of three doctors following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son has renewed scrutiny of a health-care system plagued by impunity, underfunding, and a mass exodus of medical professionals.
Afrobeats after Fela
Wizkid’s dispute with Seun Kuti and the release of his latest EP with Asake highlight the widening gap between Afrobeats’ commercial triumph and Fela Kuti’s political inheritance
There is no vernacular
The architecture of southeastern Nigeria unsettles the neat binary between “indigenous” and “foreign.”
Betraying Abuja’s green soul
The Federal Capital Territory’s green belts were designed as flood buffers and cooling lungs. But under its current leadership, they are becoming patronage spoils.
Securing Nigeria
Nigeria’s insecurity cannot be solved by foreign airstrikes or a failing state, but by rebuilding democratic, community-rooted systems of collective self-defense.
When charity poses for a Grammy
Burna Boy’s highly publicized Lagos prison visit looked like generosity, but it also looked like content. Who was it really for?