By Frank Ofili Two things now define urban Lagos: refuse heaps and bad roads. They are everywhere. They have become the city’s unwanted landmarks. From the highbrow neighbourhoods to the working-class suburbs, mountains of...
By Frank Ofili I was once a typist. A proper typist, mind you. Not these modern keyboard warriors who can delete an entire paragraph with one casual tap and pretend nothing happened. I am...
By Frank Ofili There was a time when America went to war carrying a moral banner. It spoke of democracy. It spoke of freedom. It spoke of human rights and the sanctity of international...
By Frank Ofili Memory is a strange archivist. It discards entire years without apology and then, with astonishing fidelity, preserves a handshake, a voice, a sentence and an old pen. More than four decades...
Frank Ofili In a world that never stops changing, relevance is not inherited. It is earned—again and again, every single day. There was a time when making an international phone call required planning, patience...
Frank Ofili The Night I Came Face-to-Face with Death Earlier today, I read Amadioha Mbaise’s chilling Facebook account of how he survived two encounters with car snatchers at Yaba, Lagos, in 2011. His...
By Frank Ofili In a world that constantly pulls us in different directions, true growth often begins with the quiet decisions we make within ourselves. It starts with the ability to set personal rules...
By Frank Ofili After my last piece on this subject, I am forced to, once again, revisit the recurring outbreaks of xenophobic violence in South Africa, particularly against fellow Africans. The socio-political phenomenon invites...
By Frank Ofili More than two thousand years ago, Plato argued in The Republic that the foremost duty of the state is to create order, justice, and security for its citizens. The guardian class,...
By Frank Ofili As xenophobic tensions once again escalate in South Africa, one painful reality has become impossible to ignore: African countries are not responding equally to the plight of their citizens abroad. While...
