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Politics scholar and author of ‘How to Write about Boko Haram’, Sa’eed Husaini, thinks it’s important to know how to write a ‘shit draft’. ‘Finish the full writing task first,’ he says, ‘no matter how unpleasant the initial output may seem, and then return to tidy up the mess.’
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This story features in our print issue, '#EndSARS and the Makings of a Historical Movement'.
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About the Author
is a Nigerian political sociologist, researcher, and educator who holds a DPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford. As a research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) in Abuja, he studies ideology, democratization, political parties and governance. He was selected as a 2025 Open Society fellow to support his work comparing right-wing social movements in Nigeria and the US.
Nigerian novelist, poet and author of Graceland, Chris Abani, does not believe ‘Nigerian literature’ exists as a category: ‘It is a common misconception that there is a fixed category that can be read as essentially “Nigerian literature”. Nigeria has 500 nations, 500 languages and about 2,000 dialects. While culture and language can overlap, the level of diversity is such that Nigerian literature cannot be easily narrowed down.’
For the co-founder and publishing director, of Cassava Republic Press, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, it is telling that African literature is often pronounced dead in recent years, when more women and queer voices are becoming more prominent: ‘The loudest obituary writers about African literature tend to be men. These elegies seem to come from a tacit sense of personal or generational displacement rather than from the actual state of the field.’
Nigerian poet, novelist and author of Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken-Hearted, Ben Okri, argues that Nigerian literature doesn’t always have to be about Nigeria: ‘Nigerian literature limits itself to Nigeria and then limits even the ways in which the country can be written about. What we want is a vast literature, a great literature…that speaks to all humanity.’
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