It happened last night. It was one of those Friday nights when my friends and I decided to have a few drinks over plates of pepper soup, and if we were lucky, get some feminine company for the rest of the night. The latter only applied to Ken and Ayomide, however. I was the shy and reticent one who didn’t seem to have the bad boy blood in him. My friends had swung into party mode when we got to…
It happened last night, the images of his white face haunted her. A night of guilty pleasure had taken an unexpected twist. She could remember it all. His palm connected with her cheek, “If you shout, I will kill you,” he said. His eyes darkened from rage and lust, as he held up a knife so she could see it clearly. “Please Uncle Ken, please don’t hurt me,” she pleaded. He watched her lips quiver. The fear evident in her…
It happened last night, after I was relocated to one of the dark rooms. I couldn’t see the faces in the room well, but the smell of hatred, anger, and anguish spoilt the thin air we breathed from small windows hung far above the room. “You dey stay my space,” someone with the voice of a boy said. His mouth like a dead rat’s hole, I was unmoved. Then, a slap hit my nose. Blood. I left his space as…
“It happened last night,” whispers the voice from the other side of the confessional. “What, my dear child?” the Reverend inquires. “He hit me… My husband.” When a priest has received confessions for almost a decade, declarations such as this only stir pithy, impersonal admonitions. But the Reverend is no ordinary cleric. He prides himself in this. Why else has he ascended rapidly through the ranks of the clergy and received ample admiration from the laity? “But, my child, you…
On December 12 2017, the call for entries into the inaugural edition of the JB Afenfia Flash Fiction Contest was announced across all my social media accounts – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+. From that moment, emails with stories poured into the designated address – and climaxed on the final day, December 27th 2017. It was as though most participants had been waiting for the last day. In all, a total of 125 entries were received. For me and the…
Ever since I watched Will Smith and his son, Jayden in that movie they did together a couple of years back about happiness, I’ve had a fascination with the concept of its pursuit. That story though is for another day. Today, I prefer to dwell on a more localised construct, because as it turns out, I’m not the only inquisitive one. In America, it is an inalienable right provided for in the documents declaring their independence. Philosophers and great thinkers…
There’s really so much going on in the country right now. All the controversies about the wearing of hijabs and the Nigerian legal system sparked off by Miss Firdaus Amasa, and the arrest of the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Innoson Nigeria Limited, Mr. Innocent Chukwuma have got people reaching out for all sorts of ideological, political, ethnic and religious cards. It doesn’t take much really to have us scampering into camps and designing memes and GIFs for social medial campaigns.…
It wasn’t too long ago that Richard Quest of CNN started a firestorm over what country made the best jollof rice. I haven’t been to Senegal and I am yet to taste Ghanaian jollof rice, but something tells me Lai Mohammed, our Minister of Information, was wrong when he called that battle in favour of Senegal. Nigerian Jollof rice has got to be the best anywhere in the world rice is on the menu. There is no contest. Besides feeling…
Entries are invited from all over Nigeria for the JB Afenfia Flash Fiction Contest. This competition hopes to identify, publish and reward the best flash fiction from Nigeria. RULES AND CONDITIONS OF ENTRY Entry must be original, unpublished prose work in English. Entry must begin with the sentence, “It happened last night”. Entry must not exceed 400 words. Entries should be sent to admin@michaelafenfia.com. Entry closes by midnight December 27, 2017. Participants are not allowed to submit more than one entry…