Gazelle Mba is a Nigerian writer in London. She is working on her first book.
In the early hours of 10 September last year, Hauwa woke to discover water pooling beneath her bed. She attempted to stem the flow by stuffing bits of cloth in the gap under the door, but it continued to pour in. People outside were shouting, waking up her five young children. Hauwa couldn’t get all of them out of the house together, but some neighbours came to their aid. Two young...
The sculptor Richard Hunt was nineteen years old when he looked into Emmett Till’s casket. It was September 1955. Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, had called on mourners to witness and grieve for her son and, over three days, thousands of people filed past Till’s body at the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville on Chicago’s South Side, a short walk...
Towards the end of February, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan accused the Senate president, Godswill Akpabio, the third most powerful man in Nigeria, of sexual harassment. According to Akpoti-Uduaghan, in December 2023, on a visit to the Senate president’s house, Akpabio held her hand while giving her a tour, her husband walking behind them. In one of the mansion’s many sitting rooms, she says, he asked her if she liked his house and told her: ‘I’m going to create time for us to come spend quality moments here. You will enjoy it.’ In a second incident, Akpoti-Uduaghan says that Akpabio told her a motion she put forward would appear before the Senate if she ‘took care of him’.
William Ansah Sessarakoo’s father, John Corrantee of Annamaboe, on the Gold Coast, was a member of the Fante ruling family and a prominent merchant, well known in the interior and among European slave traders. In order to strengthen ties with his European business partners, and to give his heirs an advantage over their countrymen, Corrantee sent one of his sons to be educated in...
Nigeria already struggles with inadequate healthcare funding. This year’s budget allocates only 5.18 per cent of the total (2.48 trillion naira) to health – which is up from 1.23 trillion naira last year but still far below the 15 per cent target set by the Abuja Declaration in 2001. Without USAID, an already fragile system is weakened. This crisis forces a cruel reckoning: what happens when a nation accustomed to foreign aid is left to fend for itself? The abrupt withdrawal has revived debates among development economists. Critics argue that foreign aid fosters dependency and corruption, enriching elites while leaving ordinary citizens in poverty.
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