I’ve followed this week’s debate on the merits and justifications for piracy, and it is probably one of the more balanced arguments Nigerian Twitter has had in a while.

There were good points everywhere. Some people argued that piracy is plainly wrong because authors already earn very little from royalties. Others conceded that piracy is technically wrong but defended it as understandable when readers simply cannot afford the books they want to read. A few insisted that piracy is not morally wrong at all, especially in countries where exchange rates make books prohibitively expensive.

And then there was the take that seemed to provoke the most anger.

Someone said something along the lines of: if you cannot afford a book, maybe you should not read it.

Predictably, people were furious.

It is easy to see why that statement feels offensive. Reading is widely treated as an unqualified...

I should probably warn you that nothing you read in this piece will be revolutionary. Nothing here will rearrange your life. You will read it, nod or disagree, maybe send it to someone if you’re feeling dramatic, and then return to your regularly scheduled self-importance. And maybe that is the point.

This does not need to matter very much.

You are not special.

Not in your suffering. Not in your ambition. Not in your confusion about what to do next. Whatever you are going through has been gone through before, by people who also believed, briefly and sincerely, that they were navigating terrain no one had ever mapped.

We don’t say this out loud, of course. We perform humility. We insist we’re ordinary. But privately, we narrate ourselves as protagonists. We treat our lives as though they are carefully structured arcs. When things go wrong, it must be a turning point. When things go...

Every few years, someone in proximity to a technological frontier writes a piece like this.

It moves along a familiar spine: first the awakening, then the confession from someone who has seen behind the curtain; next the reminder that only a small circle truly controls the levers; then the chart bending upward, steeper and steeper; and, at the end, the insistence that this is no longer optional — that you, too, must grasp what is unfolding before it is too late.

The rhetorical engine is fear mixed with privilege. I have seen it first, therefore you are late.

What makes this one powerful is not the data points, but the emotional structure. It invokes February 2020 — the last time the world felt blindsided — and invites you to relive the embarrassment of underreaction. The implication is clear: if you do not believe this now, you are repeating the same mistake.

But analogies are not...

The central problem with Are You Ready for a World Without Patriarchy? is not that it asks hard questions. It is that it asks them from inside a frame that has already decided the answers. The essay presents itself as sober realism pushing back against naive idealism, but much of its force comes from exaggerating harms on one side while naturalizing, and at times aestheticizing, harms on the other.

This imbalance begins early, in the move from a single anecdote to a civilizational thesis.

The dinner-date story is treated as a philosophical stress test, but it does not bear the weight the author places on it. A woman expecting a man to check a noise is read not as inconsistency or ambivalence, but as proof that feminist critique collapses under pressure. The conclusion follows too quickly. Human beings routinely hold mixed commitments. They accept some norms while rejecting others. That...

There is a reason the children of the powerful occupy such a central place in our moral imagination. They represent continuity in a society defined by rupture. When Nigerians debate, once again, whether it is justified to resent them, the argument is not about manners or cruelty. It is about whether inherited advantage, especially when produced by public harm, can ever be separated from the conditions that made it possible.

Is it justified to hate the children of politicians and billionaires?

The respectable answer is supposed to be no.

Children did not choose their parents. They did not loot the treasury. They did not rig elections. They did not sign the contracts. To resent them is to commit a moral error. Guilt by association. A failure of empathy. An indulgence in envy.

This answer is neat, comforting, and insufficient.

It assumes that resentment is always about individual moral...

Yesterday, I read Ezra’s very profound piece on intentional obliviousness, and got motivated (yet again) to return to this piece I’ve been working on about something at the other extreme of the spectrum.
Reading his piece helped me form most of my thoughts for this, and I worry that as a result, some of my writing may feel like a rebuttal of some sorts to his piece, but I promise it is not. In fact I believe that a healthy life lies somewhere in the middle between intentional obliviousness and ubiquitous assimilation. But healthy is overrated, no?

Ezra argues that there is strength in looking away, in softening the edges of your world by choosing not to know. I believe that too. But I also believe in the beauty of total submission to the noise.

Last December, while in Lagos for the Nigerian Tournament of Champions, I caught up with some of my faves (and met a few new ones!) on a Friday...

This is a draft of my ted talk presented at Tedx University of Port Harcourt on Saturday, April 5, 2025. The final speech is a bit different from
this draft, due to some length considerations and the fact that I overestimated my retentive memory.

What are the odds that the person who will change your life is in this room right now?

Think about it – in this very room. Take a moment to look at the person next to you, “Is it them?” Don’t worry, I don’t know either, I just wanted you to look at a pretty face. But seriously, the question stands: What are the odds?
I’ll give you a hint: they’re a lot higher than you think. I’d argue you’re sitting in a giant lottery of potentially life-changing connections.

My father has always been one of the biggest positive influences in my life. He is a very smart man, unarguably one of the most hardworking men I know. He is also really audacious and...

If you heard someone spends their weekends disagreeing with strangers, you’d assume they were something crazy; maybe a football fan, or worse, a lawyer. If that same person tried to convince you it was the best decision they had ever made, you’d wager they were a crackhead. You’d be correct as well - I am a crackhead, and here’s why you should be one too.

BP (/b:ip/) - Eight people pair up into teams of two and yell at each other about opinions formed in under fifteen minutes.

For those who don’t know, British Parliamentary (or BP) Debating is a niche academic extracurricular activity thousands of university students can engage in. It takes many of the formalities of classic Presidential debates and adds a format reminiscent of the UK’s highest law-making body, and speeches that are usually as chaotic.

The judging metric sticks out the most: BP debating focuses on content and logic...

History is littered with groundbreaking technologies that failed, not because they weren’t brilliant, but because no one cared.

The last five years have been massive for the Nigerian (and African) tech ecosystem. We’ve seen massive raises, celebrated high-profile exits, and watched the ecosystem explode. While you’d expect these milestones to translate into broader economic impact (job creation, revenue generation, and industry growth), the reality is starkly different.

Nearly half of funded startups in the past decade make less than ₦10 million (or $6,000) annually, according to a new report by TLP Advisory.

Of course, there are underlying causative factors like weak government policies, currency devaluation, skyrocketing inflation, or the declining purchasing power of Nigerians.

But beyond these, we have an even bigger problem; we have a fixation on “great” technology without a...