A collaborative book convened by Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, facilitated by booksprints.net. Nameless strives to inspire change in Nigeria. Eight budding Nigerian writers; Rafeeat Aliyu, Fola Lawal, Kalu Aja, Chioma Agwuegbo, Pearl Osibu, Yas Niger, Elnathan John, and Azeenarh Mohammed, reflect a common vision for their nation's future. Nameless is about the complexities that is Nigeria.Nameless is a city. A country within borders. A boundless space of ideas. A cosmos with realities, stark and painful, quiet and loud. A space crippled by fears. Nameless is populated. West African. It is in the minds of its people, black and proud. Sometimes Nameless is human. An idea. Sometimes it is in the past. Often times is the now. Other times, it is the future. It remains Nameless. The oldest residents know its dreams, its origins, beginning in a major stream and ending in a clear deep pond. The youngest residents know its pulse, feel its heat, its blood coursing through the veins of the country the history they know is happening right before them, good and bad and ugly. Everyone knows its hopes.Afele is the heart of Nameless. The market place of items and ideas; the Centre where all things meet, where the blood of Nameless converges and gets pumped out into homes and heads and souls. It is the meeting point. It feeds Nameless and starves it. Nameless is ambitious. And in the third world. In darkness. With in adequate infrastructure. Darkened by the lack of electricity. Nameless is in light. Brightened by the hope in the eyes of its inhabitants. Slowed down by the pot holes on the roads. Sped up by anticipation of change by desire. Nameless is rich. And poor. And in between. Nameless is oppressed. Under surveillance. Nameless is free. To dream. Of change. Free. To dare. To live. To express. To break open the boxes in which sexuality and gender and tribe exist. Stifled and stifling. Free. To love and not to take oppression in the garbs of love. Free from the dubious bonds of religion and tradition, disguised as law. Nameless is many things. It is the present we loathe. It is the past that haunts us. It is the future we want.Nameless is what we own, the things we are ashamed of, the hurt that binds us, the leaders who stain our pre sent. Nameless is the clarity we have. It is the knowledge that things can not remain the same. The hope that our children will only know our tears as history. It is all we must do to move us from the things that cage us to being able to fly free to a place beyond where nothing can stop us.We are nameless.And Nameless is usA collaborative book convened by Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, facilitated by booksprints.net. Nameless strives to inspire change in Nigeria. Eight budding Nigerian writers; Rafeeat Aliyu, Fola Lawal, Kalu Aja, Chioma Agwuegbo, Pearl Osibu, Yas Niger, Elnathan John, and Azeenarh Mohammed, reflect a common vision for their nation's future. Nameless is about the complexities that is Nigeria.

A tragedy with two characters, unfolds in fast rhythmic exchanges. A play and poem that treats the tale of belittled feminism and hyped masculinity, reassures of justice's persistence. It touches on the seemingly unsafe nature of life, as people manage the simplest things and still tend not to really mend the silly holes of doubts they breed, seeking to even the odds life throws at them.This is both a play and a continuous poem. It is a tragedy with only two visible characters in its entirety. There is NE, a young disposed prince out to reclaim his family throne, and BI; his much younger sister and only sibling, who got tangled up in NE's struggles. The pair's dialogue unfolds the age old tale of belittled feminism and the over-hyped masculinity of the world that habitually swallows up all the laudable efforts of the women folk.The story emerges from their fast paced rhythmic exchanges within a small portion of a single day. Shrouded therein is the mischievous hypocritical malice of the many ordinary people surrounding the few notables ones and it all comes out as though it is true for everyone else, notable and ordinary folks alike.The struggles of people on the spot appears endless as everyone around them seems to wait to hear about their travails, desirous of finding out if they win their battles or not, if their wars can be classed as successful or disasters. People simply relish jeering at others when they fail and leer at them when they are triumphant.This is a tale that seemingly reassures that justice tends to resurrect subsequently, and put everything correct again. It is a poem that places destiny in both the hands of the particular individual and still puts fate in the unclear whril and thrill of luck. Set in the embattled order of seemingly medieval times, when life ironically felt less unsecured despite being certainly very unsure, the play asks more questions than it answers. The siblings' revealed experiences in the play, by extension hints of how everyone else appears to be at the mercy of chance, and yet living out a predestined order of events.Life feels unsafe because sometimes it turns out to vaguely be one instead of the assumed another or the expected other. It is odious to manage the simplest things and people can not really mend the silly holes of doubt they endlessly tend. Dubious questions appear to be posed for readied answers and answers altered to snugly suit unassailable queries as people continuously seek to even the odds life naturally throws at them. These answers appear to lurk in some exact and obscure faith, either or neither conventional or unorthodox. Still the logic of it does not fill the rational gaps that abound in ordinary human life, they simply confuse it farther.

A collection of over 250 poems that reflect on man as the poet and the actor who handles the helm of his affairs, on a timed cruise. His abilities compose and steer his story, as his capabilities and fate enables him. It encapsulates the essence of poetry, using eloquent words to convey the poet’s thoughts and experience. The poet mans the helm, and the cruise is his composed poem.This is a collection of over 250 poems that altogether seeks to reflect man as both the poet and the actor who handles the helm of his own affairs, on a timed cruise, down his very own banked personal river. Using his abilities to compose and steer his poetic story, faring only as suitably as his capabilities and fate enables him.The essence of poetry is in its use of eloquent apt words to convey the poet’s exact thoughts, as they are felt or experienced by him. Like it is the actor’s ability to apply specific skills to portray a scripted character reveals a story, it is likewise the poet's grant to create the content and set the beauty of the words.If the soul is scripted, if the mind can think, if the heart does feel and the body is specific; then every individual distinctively roams on a course throughout their lives that can be manipulated to fit their own different experience, but not actually change it. For the poet mans the helm, and the cruise is his composed poem.

A radio play about a young and older couple. The men are employed, with equally educated unemployed wives. The trend amongst couples in emerging economies replaces the denial of men to let their wives pursue public careers with a ruse. Still the modern African wife is limited by the shackling desire to be a good wife first, not her spouse’s economic and intellectual inability to dictate to her.This is a play written for radio but would suitably serve as a staged play. It sets to highlight the subtle new trend that is recently becoming evident amongst educated couples in emerging developing economies. The previously traditional conservative chauvinistic denial that had seen husbands out rightly refusing to let their spouses pursue every twist and turn in their preferred public careers, has been un-noticeably replaced with a highly misconstrued make-believe cooperation.It presents the modern wife with hopes that are still quite limited by her very own, age old self-shackling desire to be the good wife/mother firstly, and not practically her spouse’s economic and intellectual inability to dictate to her. He is limited to exploiting her only by relying solely on this one over-powering desire of hers.In a modern African cosmopolitan suburb reside two couples, who are very close flat neighbours. The younger couple is a newly married pair, while the much older couple already has teenage children. Though both men are gainfully employed, their equally well educated spouses are uncomfortably unemployed housewives.The articulated relationship the middle-aged couple had willingly shared with a highly principled civil society worker culminated in a genuine praxis that jarred both couples’ older and newer marriages with a reasonably honest intellectual quake of sincerity. The experience is a rude awakening for the two sets of couple and becomes a basis for the supposedly superior masculine gender to learn first hand that indeed what is good enough for the goose is good enough for the gander.The play is about only two of these couples’ normally quiet mornings.