In this episode, Tobiloba and I talked about transformative environmental justice in Nigeria, Lekki as prime example of land dispossession in Lagos in the name of capitalist modernism, the challenges that come up in translating and applying current popular Western frameworks of social justice in Nigeria, and why we need more Nigerians, individuals and institutions alike, to fund social research. 

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01:19 Lekki, Lekki, Lekki

07:29 Wetin concern me concern government property?

11:56 ‘We were only four in my Landscape Architecture class.’

20:54 Landscape for the people by the people

29:49 Elsewheres: Transformative environmental justice practices in Nigeria

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Mentioned:

Dispossess: Evictions for ‘Development' (Immaculata for Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2021)

Lagos Urban Development Initiative (LUDI) 

hFactor

Fabulous Urban

Folu Oyefeso

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Website: sweetmedicine.me 

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Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

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In this episode, I speak with Gbope Onigbanjo, a researcher and consultant working in the fields of international affairs, peace studies, and political economy with a geographical focus on Africa. Our conversation centred around Nigeria’s role as Big Brother in West Africa and how that has bred skepticism among other states in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). This is a unique episode in this project in that it zooms out a bit from the individual and communities of individuals to look at Nigeria’s relationship with its mates: other countries in West Africa.

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01:32 Exploring Liberal Peace-Keeping

03:50 ‘Healing’ as Peace and Security

05:59 Understanding Peace in African Contexts

12:25 ECOWAS and Nigeria

23:18 Elite-based/State Peace vs Local Peace

27:30 Russian flag in Kano?

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Website: sweetmedicine.me 

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This episode is six years in the making. Many of us know the Berlin Conference of 1884, otherwise known as the scramble for Africa which was where European leaders decided how to share Africa like moi moi among themselves. But a lesser-known but equally important conference was the 1890 Brussels conference that King Leopold II organised as an anti-slavery conference. The agreements made at the conference were enshrined into an act titled: The Convention Relative to the Slave Trade and Importation into Africa of Firearms, Ammunition, and Spiritous Liquors.

This episode is about firearms, ammunition and spirits–what these objects that were so central to the slave trade can tell us about why Nigeria was made. It follows the line from the Transatlantic slave trade to the Scramble for Africa, down to the Prohibition in the US, to the Iva Valley massacre in Enugu and general police brutality in colonial Nigeria. And it takes the ‘social life of things’ route to get from point A to point Z. 

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01:28 The lesser-known 1880s B* conference 

03:39 ‘Firearms, Ammunition, and Spiritous Liquors‘

08:50 Negotiating power and identity/Local Agency vs. Colonial Control

15:11 The Iva Valley Massacre

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Website: sweetmedicine.me 

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Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

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In this episode, I speak with Obayomi Anthony, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist. Our conversation began with a discussion about his background and journey to becoming an artist, with a focus on the project that put him in the limelight: Bonafide Squatters. Then we went on to talk about his recent research project on Nigeria’s colonial origins where he went into the archives at the Lagos Museum to ask what motivated the Nigeria-creation project. I believe with him that art is a space for conversations, and that art should live and die. Art should live and art should die. 

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01:07 Living with Graphic Designers, Becoming an Artist

09:39 Becoming a Documentary Photographer

13:17 Bonafide Squatters: Addressing Student Housing Issues

20:15 Art is a Space, not a Thing, a Space where Souls Connect

30:06 Cognitive Dissonance in Nigeria

35:12 Technology for what?

43:20 The birds that left home; seeing Nigeria from top to bottom

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Website: sweetmedicine.me 

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Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr

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In this episode, I speak with Mr Israel Meriomame Wekpe, an all-round theatre practitioner. He is a lecturer in Theatre Arts at the University of Benin and directed a play I was a part of in secondary school in memory of the 60 students that died in the 2005 Sosoliso plane crash. 

This was a conversation about the challenges of teaching in Nigerian universities today, the art and spirituality of theatre, theatre as a reflection of society, the role of play in education and stories from his past as a student, including a stint as Maggi Cook of the Year in 1995 as a 300-level student.

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Chapters

03:36 Meeting Mr Israel/in memory of the 60 Angels

05:56 Challenges in Nigerian Higher Education

12:30 The Art & Spirituality of Theater

20:16 The Role of Theater in Society

22:06 Personal Tragedy and Its Influence

25:05 Socialization and Responsibility in Nigeria

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Website: sweetmedicine.me 

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Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr

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This episode is best summarised with the following quote from an essay by adrienne maree brown in YES! Magazine:

"The way I think of it now is in the framework of the imagination battle: there is a war going on for the future—it is cultural, ideological, economic, and spiritual. And, as in any war, there is a front line, a place where the action is urgent, where the battle will be won or lost. The world, the values of the world, are shaped by the choices each of us makes. Which means my thinking, my actions, my relationships, and my life create a front line for the possibilities of the entire species. Each one of us is an individual practice ground for what the whole can or cannot do, will or will not do.”

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03:48 Denzy’s ad

06:29 The Role of Individual Responsibility in Social Healing

12:06 Cynicism and Hope in Nigeria

16:22 Individual Practice Ground For the Whole

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Website: sweetmedicine.me 

Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.

Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr

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In this episode, I speak with psychotherapist Gbemi Adekoya (@gbemisoke on X) to explore the complexities of trauma, healing, and personal responsibility in interpersonal relationships. I consider this essential Sweet Medicine listening because all social change begins with the individual and this is the one episode in this project that focuses exclusively on the individual. We discussed Nigeria as a metaphorical abusive parent, the necessity of acknowledging one's feelings and experiences as part of the healing process, the vitality of hope and agency, and what unconditional positive regard looks like in Gbemi’s psychotherapy practice.

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02:54 Nigeria as an Abusive Parent

06:03 Hope and Agency in Healing

12:00 The Role of Unconditional Positive Regard

15:04 Navigating Personal Responsibility and Accountability

17:57 The Dilemma of Victimhood and Perpetration

23:46 Tools for Emotional Intelligence and Healthy Relationships

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Website: sweetmedicine.me 

Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.

Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr

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Didi Cheeka is a filmmaker, archivist and critic. In this profound conversation, we explored shared values as the glue for true belonging, Nigerians’ collective trauma, engaging history and archival studies with a psychoanalytic lens, one problem with the concept of ‘post-colonialism’, and much more. There’s a place where he says: “Each tear that is shed, that could have been avoided, is an accusation.” The spirit of apathy hates to see this one coming.

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04:57 How he came to memory work

08:02 Taught to forget, to be numb, to fear difference, to avoid our internal truths

12:48 Values

19:18 Is dialogue enough?

21:19 Belonging and Community, how Nigerian Marxists coped after the fall of the Berlin Wall 

27:52 Post-Colonialism vs. Post-Nationalism

34:57 The Healing Power of Archives

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Website: sweetmedicine.me 

Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.

Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr

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In this episode, I spoke with Aaliyah O. Ibrahim, a multidisciplinary artist and international development practitioner about the complexity of Nigerian identity, resilience as a practice of change and unity and freedom as practices of difference. Anchoring our conversation was Professor Bedour Alagraa’s concept of ‘The Interminable Catastrophe’. 

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01:19 Exploring the Interminable Catastrophe

09:57 The Otherways, the Otherwise

12:36 Making History and Self-Awareness

16:46 ‘I’m not a healer as much as I am sensitive and I want to be well.’

18:57 Interruption 

22:56 Land, Indigeneity, Language and other claims to Nigerianness 

34:49 Resilience and Change

38:51 ‘Our intellectual class is getting too comfortable with its nervousness.’

43:38 Afrobeats to whose pockets?

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Mentioned in the episode:

How can Nigeria make Afrobeats pay? (Eniola Olatunji, African Business)

'Afrobeats to the World' gets its biggest challenge (Joey Akpan, Afrobeats Intelligence)

“Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well? … Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you're well.” - Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters

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“i don't pay attention to the

world ending.

it has ended for me

many times

and began again in the morning.” 

― Nayyirah Waheed, Salt

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Website: sweetmedicine.me 

Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.

Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr

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I can trace the kernel of this chapter to February last year when I was asked this question by The Republic for their First Draft series: “The bulk of your work (as a writer, researcher, and visual artist) explores how Africans are making a living. Why is this important to you?” 

And I replied: “It is important because life can be very hard and a lot of us get really tired. I’d like for us to be less tired, or at least for us to not have to work through exhaustion and onslaughts against our nervous systems. But we often have to work through all of those because we lack security, social protection, secure means of livelihoods, homes where we can relax, strong community structures, or on the individual level compassionate senses of self.” 

This episode is a reflection on alienation, catastrophe, random acts of violence, cognitive dissonance, self-denial, brain fag syndrome, and some of the -isms at the root of these Nigerian nervous conditions today. It includes the voices of the film archivist Didi Cheeka, the international development practitioner Aaliyah Ibrahim, the artist Obayomi Anthony, and the founder of Pax Herbals, Fr Anselm Adodo.

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01:57 Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions

05:03 Historical Context & Brain Fag Syndrome

07:55 Crisis of Meaning and Cognitive Dissonance

11:19 Alienation in Nigerian Society

15:09 Marx's Theory of Alienation

19:51 Understanding Nigeria's Political and Economic System

22:40 Catastrophe- Interminable and so, Interruptable

Website: sweetmedicine.me 

Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.

Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr

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