Adichie Hosts Lupita Nyong'o in Lagos

(By Otosirieze Obi-Young) - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Hosted Lupita Nyong’o in Lagos: How It Happened + Photos & Video

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie hosted Lupita Nyong’o in a private dinner in Lagos, attended by notable personalities in Nigerian entertainment. The event was part of Lupita’s second visit to Nigeria in preparation for the Americanah TV series adaptation, in which she will star as Ifemelu. The series, which has been ordered by HBO Max with Danai Gurira as showrunner and Chinonye Chukwu as director for the first two episodes, will also star Uzo Aduba as Aunty Uju, Zachary Momoh as Obinze, and Corey Hawkins as Blaine.

Chimamanda and Lupita wore near-matching outfits by the Lagos-based womenswear designer Imad Eduso: Lupita in purple, with silver shoes and braids by Zubi, and Chimamanda in shiny green, with blue sandals by TNL designs.

Among the guests were the Nollywood actors Richard Mofe-Damijo, Olu Jacobs, Joke Silva, Nse Ikpe Etim, Omoni Oboli, and Dakore Egbuson; the musicians Femi Kuti, D’banj, Flavour, Omawumi, Waje, and Seun Kuti; the writers and publishers Lola Shoneyin and Eghosa Imasuen; the media entrepreneur Chude Jideonwo; the comedians Chigurl and Bovi; and the actress and singer Onyeka Onwenu, who was given a shoutout in Americanah and played Mama in the Half of a Yellow Sun film. They were all gifted with Narrative Landscape Press’ ankara-bound copies of Americanah.

Nigerian-Americans Celebrate Dual Heritage with Family Photos

(By Tolu Oye as told to Claudia Owusu and Kanyinsola Oye) - The Nigerian-American Siblings Using Traditional Family Portraiture to Celebrate Their Heritage

Photographs have always been a way for my family to hold on to our past—no matter how far we moved, or how complicated the idea of “home” became for us. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, I keenly remember my mother dragging me and my siblings every year to the JCPenney Portraits studio for our family picture. What made the ritual so uncomfortable was that we were not dressed like other Midwestern families at the mall. My mother had us all in matching golden-brown-and-beige traditional ankara, an African wax-print fabric with vibrant patterns.

This Lagos: Carnivorous and Voracious

(By Toni Kan) - "Lagos is a beast with bared fangs and a voracious appetite for human flesh. Walk through its neighbourhoods, from the gated communities of Ikoyi and Victoria Island to Lekki and beyond, to the riotous warrens of streets and alleyways on the mainland, and you can tell that this is a carnivorous city. Life is not just brutish - it is short.
          In Lagos, one is sometimes struck by the scary fact that some crazed evil genius may have invented a million quick, sad ways for people to die: fall off a molue, fall prey to ritual killers, be pushed out of a moving danfo by one-chance robbers, fall into an open gutter in the rain, be electrocuted in your shop, be killed by your domestic staff, jump off the Third Mainland Bridge, get shot by armed robbers, get hit by a stray bullet from a policeman extorting motorists, get rammed by a vehicle that veers off the road into the pedestrian's walkway, die in a fire, get crushed in a collapsing building. You could count the ways and there would still be many others.
          Yet, like crazed moths disdaining the rage of the flame, we keep gravitating towards Lagos, compelled by some centrifugal force that defies reason and willpower. We come, take our chances, hoping that we will be luckier than the next man, willing ourselves to believe that while our fortune lies here, the myriad evils that traverse the streets of Lagos will never meet us with bared fangs.
          Abel and Santos were in Mushin when Lagos bared its fangs. There are no quiet streets in Mushin. It crackles with electric intensity and ripples with animosity. It is as if everyone, from shifty-eyed men to paranoid women, feels you are out to get them.

Lagos: A City Still Becoming

(By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) - Still Becoming: At Home In Lagos With Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The novelist has lived in Lagos on and off for a decade. Here, in an essay for Esquire's new Travel & Adventure issue, she reflects on life in Nigeria's biggest city

          Lagos will not court you. It is a city that is what it is. I have lived part-time in Lagos for 10 years and I complain about it each time I return from my home in the US — its allergy to order, its stultifying traffic, its power cuts. I like, though, that nothing about Lagos was crafted for the tourist, nothing done to appeal to the visitor. Tourism has its uses, but it can mangle a city, especially a developing city, and flatten it into a permanent shape of service: the city’s default becomes a simpering bow, and its people turn the greyest parts of themselves into colourful props. In this sense, Lagos has a certain authenticity because it is indifferent to ingratiating itself; it will treat your love with an embrace, and your hate with a shrug. What you see in Lagos is what Lagos truly is. 

          And what do you see? A city in a state of shifting impermanence. A place still becoming. In newer Lagos, houses sprout up on land reclaimed from the sea, and in older Lagos, buildings are knocked down so that ambitious new ones might live. A street last seen six months ago is different today, sometimes imperceptibly so — a tiny store has appeared at a corner — and sometimes baldly so, with a structure gone, or shuttered, or expanded. Shops come and go. Today, a boutique’s slender mannequin in a tightly pinned dress; tomorrow, a home accessories shop with gilt-edged furniture on display.

How to Become an Invisible Woman in Lagos

(By Sisi Lucia) - Do you want to become an invisible woman? I have found the perfect vanishing cream, immediately you slather in on your body, fiam, you just vanish.

So I live in an estate, every morning or evening I pass by the only gate in the estate. Depending on my mood, I either smile and greet, or just wave at security men at the gate. On Fridays or during any celebration say Christmas or Easter, they razzle me for ‘something for the boys’ and also depending on my mood, I give them ‘something’ or not. So you would think they know me, yes?

Well, they know me until they see me with a man and that’s it, the vanishing cream. Men are the vanishing cream. The presence of a man makes women invisible. The other day I took a cab home, they greeted the cab driver and totally ignored me. I wasn’t even expecting the greeting because I knew the presence of the cab driver has already made me evaporate. The cab driver had to ask me “did you just move here? Abi na new security?” I just smiled. It was not the first time. If my male friends are visiting, they do it and it is not as if the greeting adds any naira to my account, so shrug, right?

Sexism, Diapers, and Making it Work in Lagos

Adibeli Nduka-Agwu

(By Adibeli Nduka-Agwu) - Sexism, Diapers and Making it Work in Lagos 

It was my first week in Lagos, squeezing in a workout at the hotel gym, when a pudgy business man I had met earlier entered and started staring. Somewhat irritated I asked: “Sorry, can I help you?” He leaned closer and beamed: “It’s ok… I just enjoy watching you sweat.” My workout was over, my work life had begun.

I left the West three years ago to work across Lagos, Johannesburg and Nairobi expanding iROKOtv.com, “The Netflix of Africa”. I’ve had male counterparts refuse to speak to me (one physically closed his eyes until my male subordinate spoke); I was asked by a male client in a packed meeting room if he could sit on my lap, and the number of business men that hoped they could conclude our deal in their hotel room is endless. Sexism has followed me to Lagos like a virus: unwanted yet unshakable. Yet (and this may surprise some), I would argue that being a woman in Lagos has felt like LESS of a career barrier for me in my work compared to my time in North America or Europe.

This is Lagos: Tales From Daily Bus Ride IV

(By Jude Idada)

The driver kept his hand on the horn of the bus.
The honk was loud, continous and vexatious.

And as though obeying the order of a conductor in an orchestra, the other drivers in the cars and buses around the bus, did the exact thing.

The din was deafening.

The abuses started flying in pidgin and Yoruba as each driver cursed out the other driver.

I watched in silence from the first row of the bus in which I sat.

Wondering how vehicularly quiet the streets of Toronto were in comparison to those of Lagos. So quiet, you could go through a year without hearing the honk of a car.

We were heading to Victoria Garden City in Lekki and the traffic jam at the Jakande Junction - fifth roundabout - was holding us hostage.

I noticed his stare.

This is Lagos: Tales From Daily Bus Ride III

(By Jude Idada)

I stood at the bus-stop for nearly an hour.
Lekki.

Buses and taxis stopped and drove on.

After the conductors had called out.

"Obalende!"

"CMS!"

A few actually called out -

"Oshodi!"

I was heading for Freedom Park on Broad Street.

I had hoped to hear them call out.

"Race course!"

My plan was to get there and walk over to Freedom Park.

But none had called that out.

It was hot.

I was sweating.

Finally another bus slowed down in front of me.

This is Lagos: Tales From Daily Bus Ride II

(By Adesegun Damazio) - Tales from the early morning bus... 

**************

CONDUCTOR: Sand field, Law School, CMS! Sand field, Law School, CMS!!

DRIVER: **shouts at the conductor** Weyrey awon LASTMA wà leyin wà o, instead ko watch, o n pe ero weyrey (Mad man! LASTMA officers are behind us o. Instead of you to "watch", you're calling mad passengers)

CONDUCTOR: Weyrey lawon people yen sha. Your side! your side! (Those people are mad sha. Your side, your side - which colloquially means "zoom off, zoom off")

**Few minutes later**

CONDUCTOR: Yes sir, your money.

PASSENGER 1: Conductor I'm not comfortable here. Please tell them to shift.

CONDUCTOR: Abeg help am shift for there. Na four four.

PASSENGER 1: Please help me shift

Nollywood and Lagos Cinema Culture

(From The Tribune) How patriotic are the indigenous cinemas? Newton Ray-Ukwuoma, in a bid to answer this question, investigates the reasons behind foreign movies gaining ascendancy in Lagos cinemas and brings his report.

Revamping a cinema culture where more indigenous movies are the choice selections of cinema goers might be a vastly wrung out imagination, but a possible break point for a boom in the Nigerian movie industry known as Nollywood, which spins out a whopping sum of 2000 straight-to-the-video movies per annum, ranking higher than America’s Hollywood and behind India’s Bollywood. But for most cinema houses in the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria, Lagos State, it is all about the exotic and the fray.

Nollywood Celebrates BuNna Showroom Unveiling

L-R: Solid Films boss Uzochukwu Ezeanyaeche, Entertainment Express editor Azuh Amatus,
BuNna boss Azuh Chibunna, & movie star Victor Osuagwu

Famous actor and the Lagos State chapter chairman of the Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN), Victor Osuagwu, leading filmmakers, Uzochukwu Ezeanyaeche (Solid Films), Obi Madubogwu and editor of Entertainment Express and Sunday Express, Azuh Amatus, recently led a deluge of other entertainment personalities and celebs to the unveiling of upscale fashion and lifestyle outfit, BuNna, in the heart of Surulere, Lagos.

The one stop fashion showroom located on Agboyin Avenue opened for business last week Thursday, July 17 amid networking sessions and relaxation among friends, patrons, associates and well-wishers alongside endless flow of victuals.

Owned by youthful fashion connoisseur Azuh Chibunna, BuNna, with the pay-off, Fashion and Lifestyle Redefined, has the best of quality male fashion items money can buy. From Italian leather shoes to designer shirts, jeans, jackets, blazers, trousers, suits, contemporary natives and traditional attires, BuNna has them all in quality.

“We have redefined fashion and lifestyle at BuNna, so come let’s clothe and pamper you,” added Chibunna boss of the outfit that is currently the toast of entertainers and celebs.

Lagos na Waa. Eko for Life

"Lagos has never been, will never be, and has never aspired to be like New York, or anywhere else for that matter. +Lagos has always been indisputably itself, but you would not know this at the meeting of the Nigerpolitan Club, a group of young returnees who gather every week to moan about the many ways that Lagos is not like New York as though Lagos had ever been close to being like New York. Full disclosure: I am one of them. Most of us have come back to make money in Nigeria, to start businesses, to seek government contracts and contacts. Others have come with dreams in their pockets and a hunger to change the country, but we spend all our time complaining about Nigeria, and even though our complaints are legitimate, I imagine myself as an outsider saying: Go back where you came from! If your cook cannot make the perfect panini, it is not because he is stupid. It is because Nigeria is not a nation of sandwich-eating people and his last oga did not eat bread in the afternoon. So he needs training and practice. And +Nigeria is not a nation of people with food allergies, not a nation of picky eaters for whom food is about distinctions and separations. It is a nation of people who eat beef and chicken and cow skin and intestines and dried fish in a single bowl of soup, and it is called assorted, and so get over yourselves and realize that the way of life here is just that, assorted."

"The first commenter wrote: Rubbish post. Who cares? The second wrote: Thank God somebody is finally talking about this. Na wa for arrogance of nigerian returnees..."

 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

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