By Agbeze Ireke Kalu Onuma, AI-KO
It has now been a little more than one month since I made the long and tiring trip back to Lagos from my quiet, hilly town of Abiriba. If you don’t know Abiriba, it is a place where in December the phone signal can be very hard to find, and the hills are green and peaceful, a world away from the noise and rush of the big city, but with a noise peculiarly ours in making and shape. That trip feels like it happened in a different lifetime now.
Today is the 20th of February in the year 2026. When I first got back to Lagos, the city was still covered in the heavy, dry dust of the not so harmattan season. That dusty air was the first thing to welcome me home. But now, that dry season dust has mostly settled down, and it has been replaced by something else entirely. It has been replaced by a thick, wet, and heavy heat that seems to press down on you from all sides.
This is the kind of heat that sticks to your skin and makes it hard to breathe. It is a heat that feels like it is more than just the weather. It feels like it is the physical form of the tiredness and frustration that everyone in this city seems to carry around with them all the time.
In the weeks since I came back, a lot has happened. I have sat back and watched the country slowly move past…
—
