Ikhide R. Ikheloa

If Ikhide Ikheloa has a philosophy for blunt criticism, it is that power must answer to the people. His social commentary focused on three notions: power, truth, and justice. When he runs amok on the Internet, it is those three filters applying themselves and probing: Who does the story serve? What worldview does it promote? Who gets hurt by it? He says what many writers are thinking but wouldn’t voice for fear of losing career opportunities. Two years after his boycott of the Kaduna Festival, one of then governor El Rufai’s most vocal critics, a writer and activist named Dadiyata, disappeared. The next month, writers and intellectuals attended the festival again. When he lambasted them for their silence, he was voicing what many saw as a betrayal. opencountrymag.com/ikhide-ik… #opencountrymag #ikhideikheloa #books #controversies

Fox: "Why are you here this morning?" Trump rally attendee: "Well, in the late 70s, I was a little too young to go to South America for the Jonestown Massacre. But this is as close as I'll ever get, so that's why I'm here. There's nothing like seeing a cult right up front." Listen, if you don't understand this joke, then you will understand why studying history is critical. 🤐

"Under King Leopold II, 15 million Congolese people died as a result of physical abuse and outright murder and mutilation due to exploitation for slave labor and resources, starvation, and disease. Cecil Rhodes is responsible for millions of deaths of African people, as result of his greed for diamonds, which caused him to take over entire areas of "Rhodesia" (now Zimbabwe), bringing in military forces to enforce his power, all the better so he could get rich. His DeBeers mining company caused the violence which dispossessed millions from their homelands, and laid the groundwork for blatantly racist policies like apartheid. Winston Churchill was a vehement racist and imperialist whose actions caused 4 million Bengal people to starve to death. He even made openly racist remarks once saying, out loud and recorded for posterity, "I hate Indians. They're a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits". He felt that power should be arranged in a "tiered" form with white people at the top, because white people were the "superior race". His policies in that area were brutal and unapologetic. The point is, if we are going to talk about powerful, greedy men who are historically responsible for the deaths, injuries, displacements, and other horrible crimes against human beings, we need to understand that the worst of these were not committed against white people. They were committed against Black people, and other people of color, by white men. Period point blank, end of discussion!! Now that we can access and research the actual histories, let's get our facts straight. It might also be a very good time to stop being lazy and depending on memes. Click around a little, and learn some things before the stinky orange pile of shit in the torn up house previously known as the White House and his greedy and ignorant rich fascist friends remove the entirety of the truth from our sources for information. If you do add information to the memes you post, you also have less of a chance of having your post dropped into the news feeds of trump supporting white trash, who will run run run to drop their laughing emojis and their irrelevant hateful opinions based on nothing but their obsessive, jealousy-based hatred of a former president who is Black." - Christine Swinler 0ctober 29, 2026 #DaughterOfAmadiOha

"This is one of the most unpatriotic statements I have ever heard in my life. If you understand what this man said here, then you will understand how disturbing it is to have people with this type of mindset run our government. What he said outrightly here is that they at ACN (now APC) knew that Jonathan's government was doing well. They knew that the policy he was trying to implement was very good for Nigeria and Nigerians but because they didn't want him to succeed they lied to Nigerians about the policy. We knew that Jonathan was right but because we wanted to take power, we found a way to condemn what he was doing and even deceived Nigerians to come out and protest against it. Simply put, what this man is saying here is that they knew Nigeria was heading to a good direction but they disrupted it for their own selfish reasons. What it means is that these guys don't mind putting Nigeria in a bad condition just so they can get power. This is so serious and so disturbing. He is actually saying that all the protests they organised against Jonathan were fake and NEVER about the interest of Nigeria or Nigerians but just for them to grab power. Now I understand why Peter Obi would always say, that he won't be in any coalition just for the sake of grabbing power. This statement from this man shows you that the people in power right now don't give a damn about Nigerians. Now you understand why they implement these harsh policies since 2015. Now you understand why they live in plenty while Nigerians are becoming poorer by the day. Now you understand why APC has thrown over hundred million Nigerians into poverty. It's simple. They don't care. Everything is politics for them. They play politics with people's lives. Very dangerous and very pathetic. God forbid. Dear Nigerians, this man has told us plainly that APC is not in power for you but for themselves. We must do something about it in 2027." - @governance_101 10-26-2025

What Twitter has shown me: All my life I've been conned into reading many books and essays that should have ended at exactly 280 characters.🚶🏿‍♂️

The dictionary, mean gatekeeper, deprived the English language of lovely words from beautiful brown nations. Google changed that. New world. Ogbono. Google it. 😊

What if the hundreds of millions of dollars given to Nigerian NGOs were simply dumped on Makoko and IDP camps from airplanes instead?💪🏾🙌🏾🎉 Just wondering: How were hundreds of millions of USAID funds spent in Nigeria?

In the age of the internet and social media, I would only say, these days, it helps to be paranoid. Watch what you say, who you are with, and where you are. It's not only their eyes that are watching you. This world is now a vast glass bowl!

Some bridges need to be burnt to smithereens. Completely burnt down. Many relationships break you if you do not have the gumption and the privilege to burn them down.

"A Ream of Paper" by Jane Hirshfield, from her 2020 book Ledger. It's beautiful. But then, many Nigerian poets have attended MFA mills where they are taught to write like this. It's beautiful, it's personal, do not compare this poetry to the poetry of previous generations before globalization - or you'll be mightily frustrated. This generation of Nigerian poets is like no generation before it. The reader has to merely adjust his expectations and the edge will wear off. Or should it? It is well. - October 29, 2025

Transportation in Nigeria is expensive sha. Fly to four places round trip, one million Naira don drop! Road trips are gas guzzlers. I don't know how people survive there! Glad to be back here in the US where my only stress is yelling at Donald Trump!

Abdul El-Sayed on the dolt in the White House. He nails it. He nails him.👏🏽💪🏾👍🏾

"Creativity, Resistance and Social Change" International Conference 27-28 February 2027 St Anne's College Onliversity of Oxford & organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research Across history and cultures, creativity has played a central role in resisting injustice, challenging dominant narratives and imagining alternative social futures. From storytelling, music and visual art to literature, performance, digital media and everyday creative practices, acts of creation often emerge in response to exclusion, oppression or crisis. Creativity can unite communities, give voice to marginalised experiences and sustain collective struggles for dignity, justice and transformation. This conference invites interdisciplinary reflections on how creative practices function as forms of resistance and catalysts for social change. We welcome contributions that explore creativity both as an expressive response to power and as an active force shaping social, political and cultural transformations. Possible themes Include (but are not limited to): • Creativity as resistance and dissent • Storytelling, memory and counter-narratives •Oral traditions, folklore and cultural transmission •Literature, poetry and narrative activism •Music, performance and protest cultures •Visual arts, street art and public space •Digital creativity, social media and online resistance •Youth cultures, creativity and social movements •Gender, sexuality and creative resistance •Indigenous, postcolonial and decolonial creative practices •Creativity, migration, displacement and belonging •Art, trauma, healing and social repair •Creative economies, labour and social justice •Education, pedagogy and creativity for social change We welcome submissions from across the humanities and social sciences, including but not limited to literature, anthropology, sociology, history, cultural studies, media and communication, psychology, education, political science and the arts. Proposals may take the form of: Individual papers Panel or roundtable proposals Practice-based or creative presentations Community-engaged or participatory research Paper proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 15 December 2026 to: [email protected]. creative-voices.lcir.co.uk/