Just Adachi

I attended the FHNW's Makeathon today as a mentor...all thanks to my husband, Chidi, and the convener, Prof. Emanuele Laurenzi. I quickly discovered that the only group I could genuinely follow was the one working on SMEs. The others; they went past me like a Keke driver being chased by a VIO. But I was determined to join the chase, so I became what I always become at these things: an observer. A sponge. Absorbing everything, understanding roughly fifty percent, nodding at the other fifty. I believe in the intersection of disciplines. I believe it the way some people believe fervently in astrology, and with the sense that the universe is trying to tell me something (please allow me my delusions).  AI is one discipline with a hundred tentacles, and I spent the day being gently slapped by each of them...with consent of course. At Afrochives Studio , we do heritage research on Igbo culture. Not because other cultures don't interest us. Funding is the issue, and our office is in t...

If regret is a song, then let me answer it once, low and without feathers ruffled: I do not regret you. Even now. Even as your morning song tries to unwrite our mornings. You think your sorrow is a river— it is a mirror. You polish it each dawn to see yourself as someone who once loved and lost the right to. But love was never a right. It was a branch we both landed on. That row? It was not the fall. It was your pride refusing the landing. So sing your elegy to the empty field. I have already flown not away from you, but past the story you need me to live inside. You call it regret. I call it your ego wearing mourning clothes because it could not win a fight that never needed winning. I will not match you grief for grief. Instead, I will eat the same red berry under the same sun and remember us whole— not because I am blind, but because I am not afraid of the small, broken parts. Your regret is yours to carry. Mine would be a lie. And lying to make you comfortable is the one thing I ne...

I am reading Igbo Worlds by Elizabeth Isichei, and I keep stopping at the names of the people she interviewed. They are names like Ogbuamazie, Odada, Amaruife, Anyanta, Okwumabua. You cannot mistake them for anything other than Igbo. They speak of a heritage untouched by Christianity or Western influence. Reading them, I feel I am hearing echoes of a world before my own. Then I think of my own name: Adachukwu Onwudiwe. Adachukwu—literally translated as God's Daighter but really means 'a child of God’s will'. It is beautiful, but it is shaped by Christianity. The Chukwu is Igbo, yes, but the naming impulse that produced it belongs to the church. Onwudiwe, though, is different. That name ties me directly to my ancestral roots. It has a story encoded in it, one that existed long before any missionary arrived. My surname, too, is the final link that still connects me to an ancestor’s story. I find myself wondering how many of us still carry such names. Not the Christian-influen...

Every morning, as I power-walk through my street, I see the same pattern: new houses springing up, streets filling with people who are invisible to the local government that is supposed to serve them. The Local Government Area office  that sits miles away, with no idea how many people who live in its layouts, who owns the properties, or what services are needed. We have managed to build a quasi-modern society on the ground, but our LGAs remain stuck in an administrative time warp. And the tragedy is that we seem to insist on not evolving them. Please note that this article is not a finished blueprint. It is food for thought; a practical starting point that we can argue about, improve, and build upon. At its heart is a simple question: what if every resident belonged, in real time, to the LGA where they actually live? Imagine that when you move into a new area, you don't just pack your bags. You walk into the LGA secretariat or open a portal and register your presence. You provide y...

I am from Imo State, but I live in Enugu. I work here, I pay my taxes here, my children will go to school here. Enugu is where I build my dreams, contribute to the economy, and participate in the daily life of my community. Yet, in the eyes of Nigeria’s legal and administrative system, I remain primarily a citizen of Imo—my “state of origin.” If I seek certain government jobs, apply for state‑sponsored scholarships, or even aspire to political office in Enugu, I can be told I am not an “indigene.” I am, in effect, a permanent guest in the place I call home. This is the reality for millions of Nigerians. Our current framework gives overwhelming weight to state of origin: a fixed label assigned at birth, tied to ancestral ethnicity, while state of residence, where we actually live, work, and contribute, remains secondary. I believe this is a fundamental flaw in how we structure belonging. If we are serious about reducing ethnic bias, strengthening accountability, and building a true nati...

My love,  they say the clouds are gathering for a protest and has said woe betide the uncovered skulls caught in it. The national grid has fallen on it knees again,  in despair or supplication,  I cannot tell. So I light the scented candles we saved from our last time together,  to watch the shadows grow, and think of you, and the last words you spoke. You said the mad men have started again,  and everyone watches with winter frosted  glasses. But darling, we are Aba-made; like the tinker,  we have learned to beat tin scraps into pans. I’ll tie my wrapper tighter, plant ugu and  cassava, and tell the hungry ghosts to wait a minute. My love is not a thing they’ll get their hands on. I see the men at the newspaper stands, the young ones salivating at the prospect of witnessing history they only read about; the old ones shaking their heads at them. I write the rising prices as prompts  for stories that will be told one day. My blue jerrycan is r...

The pen is heavy.  Heavier than the hoe I swung in the sun. Heavier than the basket of yams I carried down from the farm. Heavier than the baby who only chose to draw breath outside this world. This little stick of blue plastic, it has the weight of a grinding stone. My name is Uwalaka.  I am seventy-three seasons old. All my life, my mouth has been a locked box, and the key was swallowed by my father, then my husband. When I was a girl, I saw the moon split the sky in two, a silver gourd pouring light. I ran to my mother, my voice a small bird in my throat. “Mama, Mama, the moon has broken!” She pressed her hand, dry and cracked like old leather, over my lips. “Shhh, Uwa. A girl’s words are like smoke. They have no place in the air. Shut your mouth.” The bird in my throat learned to be silent.  It built a nest of stones. When I was a wife, I felt a pain like a hot coal in my belly, a different pain from the one that brought my children. I tried to tell my husband, his ba...

A young man was recently killed in Nigeria for being gay. His death was not quiet. It was not private. It was public, brutal, and—most disturbingly—celebrated. Men applauded. They cheered. They filmed. They shared the videos with captions dripping with righteousness, as if they had just rid society of a plague. And I want to ask a simple question: So he was gay. What about it? What about his sexuality warranted death? What about two consenting adults loving each other in private justifies mob violence? What about homosexuality is so threatening to our collective survival that we must hunt down and eliminate gay men and women? The answer, of course, is nothing. There is nothing about homosexuality that threatens Nigeria. But everything about our response to it reveals the rot at our core. Our obsession with policing other people’s sexuality exposes not moral clarity, but moral bankruptcy. It reveals our collective insecurity, our desperate need for scapegoats, and our willingness ...

Panic grips the edge in a bid to climb up. Stoicism and optimism, frantically, try to pry off its fingers. Later, the quiet: panic skulking in the shadows.

The global spotlight recently fell on Nigeria through the viral tour of streamer iShowSpeed. While his travels in other African nations showcased cultural immersion, rich heritage and positive interactions with people, his experience in Nigeria infamously devolved into a chaotic display of what many have termed our "begging culture." The outcry has been swift, blaming disorganised influencers and oblivious tourism bodies. But this incident is not an anomaly; it is a stark symptom of a deeper national disease. Our problem is not a lack of tourist sites or events, but a profound failure in our people culture, which happens to be the very foundation of tourism and hospitality. The common rebuttal is that "not all Nigerians" are like this. True. But tourism is not an exercise in statistical averages; it is a chain of consecutive experiences summed up in a feeling. Imagine a crate of eggs where a significant portion is stale. Your gratitude for the good eggs is overwhelm...

I usually let my poems speak for themselves, but 'Becoming' requires a bridge between two worlds. When I first heard the relentless, labouring cadence of Rudyard Kipling’s Boots, I didn’t just hear soldiers marching; I heard the rhythmic thud of hoes against red earth and felt compelled to reimagine that cadence for a 16th-century Igbo maiden, a girl caught between her own fear and her role as a reluctant sacrifice to shield her village from raiders. This is the rhythm of her transformation from a daughter of the soil to Ala itself.

Obu Nanka Photo credit: Dr. Ikenna Ezeasor

A recent whisper on social media, masquerading as an insult, has lingered in the air like woodsmoke: "Over here, our traditional leadership titles are earned by inheritance, not by cash in hand."  The statement hurt, not because it was false, but because it is true. For us, Ndi Igbo, the sting came from the mirror it held up to our faces. It forced us to confront an uncomfortable, oft-ignored reality: we have allowed the sacred currency of valor and responsibility to be traded for the rustle of cash. There was a time when a title was not a prize to be won, but a burden to be borne. It was conferred upon men and women of demonstrable "timbre and calibre," those who had already shouldered the weight of the community. Their yam barns were full, yes, for wealth was a sign of wisdom and industry, but it was a means, not the end. The ultimate qualification was a life of service. The cowries and goods exchanged during the ceremony were not a simple purchase; they were a re...

When a relative first mentioned a scholarship for underprivileged children from WeShare Initiatives, we immediately thought of a pretty little girl in our village, Amanda. This quiet, watchful seven-year-old had a silent struggle. A severe case of untreated malaria when she was a baby had tragically stolen her ability to speak. Living in a rural area of Imo State with semi-literate parents who were ill-equipped to advocate for her, Amanda faced a double hardship. The stigma surrounding disability meant her parents insisted she attend a regular school, one completely unprepared to teach a mute child. At seven, she could not communicate in sign language. She relied on gestures and body language, which made her reasoning and learning progress slower than her peers. When we learned about the WeShare Initiatives scholarship, we thought we had found her lifeline. We were right, but we had no idea of the hurdles that lay ahead. The journey began in June 2025 when this relative came across a t...

Last night I came across a tweet that asked if it is possible to have a conflict-free relationship. While most of the responses circled around romantic partnerships, I couldn’t help but think wider. Every kind of relationship, be it family, friendship, community, work, lives in the tension between challenge and care. Problems arise, emotions flare, and suddenly the way people respond to each other becomes as important as the issue itself. In those moments, two tendencies often show up: the comforter and the compounder. The comforter is one who listens with empathy, who understands that solutions often begin not in logic but in tenderness and empathy. They sense that what the other person needs first is not a lecture but presence; an embrace in words or even silence that says, “You don’t have to carry this alone.” For the comforter, the framing is always we vs. the problem. That shift alone changes everything: it turns conflict into a chance to deepen trust. Even when the answers are un...

The erosion of values in Nigeria is a widely observed and discussed phenomenon, yet its root causes are often oversimplified. Basic courtesies, communal belonging, and a shared social contract appear to be dissolving, replaced by a cutthroat ethos. This systemic decay is not merely an external force but a self-perpetuating cycle deeply tied to the choices of the nation’s elite and peculiar form of disengagement. In my humble opinion, I postulate that the deterioration of Nigerian values is driven by a paradox: the privileged’s escape creates a vacuum that is then filled by a new, unprincipled class, further accelerating the societal decline and prompting more departure. The initial stage of this cycle is the privileged class's retreat from the very society they inhabit. Overwhelmed by the country's failings, this group, comprised of the elite and top-tier middle class, begins to actively curate a Euro-Americancentric existence for their children. Through carefully selected scho...