The Arts-Muse Fair

As I was making a mental note of the places to visit this Sallah holiday, it suddenly occurred to me, with a pang of guilt, that I had not visited the National Museum despite its proximity to my residence. So I planned to visit today, which I did. Having bought my N300 ticket at the reception, on whose walls were warnings to visitors that said no photographs are allowed within the gallery, I was ushered in in time to meet a guide taking the first group of visitors through the various sections of the stuffy, poorly lit gallery. You guessed right: there was no power. The guide, a middle aged, dark skinned man with bloodshot eyes that suggested a lack of adequate sleep for several days, hurriedly explained what each object meant and where it originated from. He explained with the speed of one who had done that for years to the point of cramming the details. But that was too fast for my liking. I felt it was a way of saying, “Bros, no be only N300 you pay? No waste my time

Leaving home for school, and the other way round, was always dreadful when it meant having to sit for hours on end in ridiculously tiny Hiace buses that mostly plied the saddening South-West federal roads that connected the lip-sealing deadly ones up North. If you were travelling from Lagos to Zaria, you had to spend an entire day on those roads, sandwiched between other passengers, most times, the space meant for the movement of your feet, compromised by loads, so that your knees were practically up in the air, as though they were yearning for a catch-up with your chest. If you didn't control them- because buses like that never had enough space between a row of seats and another- the passenger in the seat in front of you had a bone to pick with you, half as much as you had one to pick with the one behind you. It was always a long-ass journey with a heavy dose of non-stop grumbling and fight for comfort. No one ever won, we only got "gifts", like the kil

A VISIT TO THE BADAGRY SLAVE MUSEUM BY HABEEB ADAM Only a few feelings can rival the joy of having your Special One by your side as you go on a cruise into the past, teleporting from one century to the other. In our own case, it wasn’t a joyous journey entirely. It was rather a mixed feeling of exoticness, intense pity and rage to varying degrees. The trip to the coastal town of Badagry commenced on a somewhat disappointing note. What shouldn’t take more than 2 hours at most lasted more than 5, all thanks to the omnipresent traffic jams and the potholes-ridden Lagos-Badagry Expressway. And as we set out, sardine-packed with a few dozen other passengers in a rickety Molue, we couldn’t help but note the irony of visiting the slave museum 14 decades after the abolishment of slavery, yet in a pitiable condition not too different from the way the slaves were shipped to the Americas – stacked like a pack of frozen fish underneath the ships. Rejoicing with the freed slav

The MIT Innovation and Entrepreneurship Bootcamp brings together innovators, entrepreneurs, business executives and students from various parts of the world. Bootcampers sleep only 4 hours a day and work for 20 hours; learning team work, primary market research, innovation, product development, pitching and other things which adds up to be the most rigorous experience of their lives. Each team was tasked with developing an idea into an innovative business within 5 days. My team had a Neuro Scientist, two Data Analytics professionals, an Economist, Microbiologist and a Computer Engineer. If you’re hoping to enroll for the MIT bootcamp, prepare to reach your elastic limit, break, and remake again. The unique experience of the bootcamp can hardly be replicated anywhere else in the world. The academic materials, the quality of mentors and lecturers and the superior arrangement and coordination of the whole exercise is exceptional. It is a sharp deviation from the narrative of business sc

According to estimates, Ghana’s population is 'just' 29.4 million. Ghana is therefore small, compared to Nigeria, but she is able to do big things that positively impact not only on her neighbours or the West African sub-regional space but up to the continental level. Her hosting of the headquarters of the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA), with it a diplomatic status to boot, readily comes to mind. A fruit shed in Aburi. Photo:  Aminu S Muhammad No town in Ghana probably holds enough significance and nostalgia for Nigerians like Aburi, located in the Eastern Region of Ghana. This beautiful hillside town, with arguably the best weather in Ghana owing to its altitude, was in February 1967, the host of a last ditc hed effort by Ghana and other countries to save Nigeria from an imminent civil war that sadly went on to cause the loss of over a million lives. Gowon and late Ojukwu, the two men who led Nigeria to a civil war. Photo: informationng.com Although t

The night before the trip I didn't sleep a wink, perhaps I found a stranger in me and he wasn't feminine. I couldn't close my eyes, not because I didn't want to, but thoughts of morning's arrival kept my eyes bereft of sleep. I prayed and when I get tired of praying, I would gingerly go outside peeping through the window, my mind in awe of how I made it among the eighty four finalists from all over Nigeria who would breath for four days in Lagos and in the Abeokuta home of Nigeria's only Noble Laureate as participants of the 2018 Wole Soyinka’s International Cultural Exchange programme held annually to marks his birthday. As the night steadily opened into morning, I saw how owls made night a solace for their songs and how everything died for a new birth. Although I'm used to staying late at night before going to bed, this was the first time I vainly stayed awake for the whole night, waiting for morning, because when it was morning, dream would come