I have been thinking about evil.

Not the dramatic kind we recognise immediately. Not the villain in the film or the monster, history eventually agrees to condemn. I mean the kind of evil that becomes normal.

The kind that builds institutions. Writes laws. Draws borders. Creates theories. Names one group civilised and another savage. Decides whose land can be taken, whose body can be owned, and whose language can be erased or, better yet, whose humanity can be questioned.

And the more history I learn, the more uncomfortable a thought has become for me.

Maybe we are not the same.

Now, before anybody runs away with that sentence, let me be very clear about what I am not saying. I do not believe any one race is biologically superior to another. I do not believe cruelty belongs exclusively to one race. Wars have been fought within races. Slavery within kinfolk has happened. Countless atrocities have been committed between people who look exactly like one another.

Human beings have always demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to hurt one another. It is one of the deepest flaws of human nature.

But, now that we have established what I am not saying, let me get into what has actually been pressing upon me.

Race.

More specifically, what human beings have been willing to do to other human beings because they looked different from them. Because of the colour of their skin. Because somebody decided that difference meant inferiority.

And when I look at that particular history, I cannot convince myself that the record is remotely the same.

Over the last several centuries, one racial hierarchy in particular became extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily global. White supremacy did not remain an opinion held quietly inside someone's head. European colonial powers and the societies they built gave that hierarchy territory, legislation, economies, armies and institutions. And Black and African peoples were repeatedly among those made to live beneath it.

Let's get into the record.

The transatlantic slave trade. Colonialism. Segregation. Apartheid. Scientific racism. Redlining. Racial terror. The extraction of land, labour and resources. The suppression of languages, customs and belief systems. Entire intellectual frameworks created to explain why one race was supposedly more intelligent, more civilised, more beautiful, more capable and ultimately more human than another.

And it wasn't simply the prejudice. It was the systems. Systems powerful enough to turn racial hierarchy into law, economy, education, science, geography and empire.

That history is horrific enough on its own. But after everything that has been done to Black people in the name of racial superiority, I find myself thinking about something we perhaps don't talk about enough.

What we did not do in return.

Where was the Black intellectual movement dedicated to proving that white people were biologically less human? Where were the Black governments constructing entire legal systems determining where white people could live, learn, work, marry or vote because of the colour of their skin?

Where was the Black scramble for Europe? Where were European borders carved up by African powers with little regard for the people already living there? Where were European children systematically taught that their natural features were ugly, their religions primitive, their languages uncivilised and their cultures something they should aspire to escape?

Where was whiteness made, globally and systematically, synonymous with inferiority?

Where was the reverse?

And I already know what somebody is preparing to type. Africa has war. Africa has slavery in its history. Africans have killed Africans. Corruption exists. Ethnic violence exists. Political brutality exists.

Of course.

But conflict within communities is not unique to Black or African people. Neither is greed, conquest, violence or the pursuit of power. That is a human problem, not a Black problem.

So pointing to the capacity of Africans to harm other Africans doesn't answer the question I'm actually asking.

Let's go deeper. Like, really look at it and ask yourself this:

Where is the comparable history of Black people constructing a global racial order around the inherent inferiority of white people?

I'm not talking about an individual act of prejudice, or an insult, or even a war between neighbouring peoples. I'm talking about a system. A sustained racial project in which whiteness itself became justification for enslavement, dispossession, segregation, dehumanisation and conquest.

👀👀👀 … Still looking.

I'll keep looking.

And perhaps there are histories I have not encountered yet. I am always open to learning, so genuinely, show me the comparable record. But as my fingers tap this keyboard, I cannot find one.

And that matters because we are living through another moment in which people are becoming increasingly comfortable talking about supposed biological differences between races. Race realism. Intelligence. Genetics. The suggestion, dressed up in intellectual language, that perhaps equality has gone too far. That perhaps attempts to correct historical exclusion have allowed people into spaces they were never naturally equipped to occupy.

It is an old argument wearing new clothes.

And perhaps that is why I keep returning to the historical record. Because if we are going to start asking whether Black and white people are somehow fundamentally different, I think we should be very careful about which history we invite into the room.

You cannot spend centuries constructing theories about Black inferiority and then ask us to ignore what was done with those theories. You cannot separate the idea of superiority from the behaviour it licensed. And you certainly cannot ask the descendants of those who survived it to pretend that history began yesterday.

But there is another part of this history that I find even more remarkable.

After slavery, Black people fought for freedom.
After segregation, Black people fought for equality.
After colonialism, African nations fought for independence.

Again and again, the demand was not: Let us do to you what you did to us.

It was: Let us be free. Let us vote. Let us own. Let us learn. Let us live where we choose. Let us govern ourselves. Let us be treated as human beings.

And I really need us to sit with that.

Because after everything, revenge could have been the language. Retribution could have been the goal. We could have demanded that the people who called us inferior now live beneath us. We could have decided that freedom wasn't enough. That equality wasn't enough. That after centuries of domination, it was finally our turn to dominate.

But overwhelmingly, that is not what we demanded.

We could have asked for supremacy, but we did not.

We asked for dignity.

Now, that does not make Black people saints. It does not erase our own histories of violence, conflict or wrongdoing. And it certainly does not mean melanin comes with some innate moral virtue.

But it does say something.

Something uncomfortable.

Because when I look at what was done to us specifically because we were Black, and then look at what we overwhelmingly demanded in response, I see a difference worth acknowledging.

But underneath every one of those demands was something even more fundamental. The most basic thing a human being should never have had to ask another human being for:

Recognise my humanity.

And maybe that's the part that gets me most.

Before I am Nigerian, before I am African, before I am Black, there is something that precedes every identity anybody can place upon me.

I am human. We all Are.

Before we belong to a Black race or a white race, we belong to the human race. And even after everything, somehow, Black people are still being asked to prove that humanity. Defend it. Fight for it. And, in far too many cases, lose our lives over it.

So when I hear arguments about racial superiority, when I hear people confidently entertaining the possibility that perhaps white people really are intellectually or biologically above Black people, I find myself thinking:

Are you absolutely sure this is the history you want to interrogate?

Because if we really want to compare the historical record, perhaps the conclusion will not flatter the people who have spent centuries assuming themselves superior.

So perhaps that uncomfortable thought I began with was not so ridiculous after all.

Maybe we are not the same.

Not because of biology. Not because melanin carries morality. Not because Black people are incapable of evil. But because history has given us a record to examine. What was done to us, and what we overwhelmingly demanded in response.

And I cannot ignore the difference between the two.

So again I say,

we are not the same.

And maybe, just maybe...

you … (you know who you are)

you should be grateful we aren't.

Because imagine if we were.

I say this as a Nigerian born and raised in the diaspora, the UK to be precise, with Nigerian heritage not as a footnote, but as my identity through and through. I do not speak as someone who has lived the daily realities of life in Nigeria. I speak as someone outside the system, watching closely, feeling deeply, and wanting better for my people.

It is clear to see that Nigeria is one of the most extraordinary producers of human excellence the world has ever seen. From culture to sport, from art to intellect, from innovation to sheer resilience, Nigerians rise. Again and again.

The saying, “Nigeria no dey carry last” … exists for a reason.

Yet there is a paradox at the heart of this brilliance that cannot be ignored. Nigeria creates greatness in an environment that does not reliably protect it.

This is not about talent leaving in search of better opportunities. It is about survival. It is about what happens when things go wrong, and whether there is a system designed to respond, to care, and to preserve life.

Car accidents happen everywhere. Medical emergencies happen everywhere. Infrastructure fails everywhere. But in functioning societies, failure is followed by response.

In Nigeria though, failure is too often followed by absence.

There is a saying many Nigerians know intimately …

“I pray Nigeria does not happen to me.”

It is not a joke. It is not self-hate, nor is it exaggeration. It is the quiet understanding that when something goes wrong, when the lift gets stuck, when the car crashes, when the body fails, the country may not show up.

This is the deeper paradox.

Nigeria forges people strong enough to dominate global sports, sharp enough to lead global industries, and creative enough to define global culture. Yet the same environment that hardens this greatness can erase it in an instant, not through malice, but through absence.

Absence of emergency services. Absence of reliable response. Absence of systems built to preserve the lives of everyday people.

Protection, response, and care cannot be privileges reserved for the elite. They must be intentional and available to the ordinary Nigerian. Because last last, before the private jet is fuelled, everyone, rich or poor, needs an ambulance to show up … right?

Money does not excuse Nigeria happening to you.

And still, joy persists. Music spills into the streets. Fashion flourishes. Art evolves. Celebration becomes ritual. This joy is often misunderstood as contradiction, but it is not. It is an adaptation.

When tomorrow is not guaranteed by structure, people celebrate loudly today. When systems do not protect life, joy becomes resistance. When safety is uncertain, culture becomes refuge.

This is why brilliance and fragility coexist so closely. Why a nation can feel euphoric and dangerous in the same breath. Why excellence is produced in abundance, yet must often leave to be sustained, protected, and fully realised.

Nigerians are exceptional everywhere, but our excellence is enjoyed more outside Nigeria because those environments are structured to protect people and projects at scale, and Nigeria is not yet there.

This is not a failure of the people. It is a failure of the ecosystem. And until that ecosystem is built, until protection, response, and care are as intentional as creativity, Nigeria will continue to export not just its excellence … but its survival.

The work ahead is not to prove Nigerian greatness. That has already been done. The work ahead is to build a country where greatness does not have to leave to stay alive.

The question now is, how?

I’m sure by now you’ve seen IShowSpeed’s Africa tour. And if you haven’t… I’m not sure what to tell you. You might actually be living under a rock. Lol.

But jokes aside, watching IShowSpeed travel across Africa, streaming in real time, has been genuinely beautiful. Not just for him, but for the millions of people tuning in and seeing Africa and Africans as they truly are. Full of life. Warmth. Complexity. Joy. Long-standing and intentionally warped ideas of Africa are being dismantled loudly, publicly, and in real time.

That part has been powerful.

But what really stayed with me was something else entirely.

The videos of African Americans watching.

Overwhelmed. Some crying. Some were struggling to put words to what they were feeling. Speaking about having been lied to. About Africa feeling like home in a way they hadn’t expected. In a way, they didn’t even realise they were longing for.

At first, I didn’t fully understand the emotion.

Part of me thought that in this day and age, with access to information everywhere, how could the idea of Africa as only poverty and huts still hold? That instinctive response came from where I stand, as a Nigerian born and raised in the UK, with a named heritage, living parents, language, food, and a tangible connection to home.

But I had to check myself.

Because that reaction made sense only within my own lived experience. It didn’t account for the very different journey African Americans have lived, one shaped not by choice, but by force.

And once I sat with that distinction, the tears began to make sense.

What struck me next was how different our relationships to Africa can be across the diaspora.

For many of us in the UK, particularly those who are first or second generation, our connection to our homelands, while complicated, is still relatively intact. We know where our parents come from. We carry surnames that locate us. We have languages, foods, family homes, and stories that tie us to somewhere specific. Even as we navigate racism and the realities of being Black in a predominantly white society, our roots are named. Tangible. Reachable.

But that is not the same starting point.

For the vast majority of African Americans, the journey to the Americas was not one of choice. It was a violent rupture. Culture was stripped. Language erased. Identity dismantled and rebuilt under unimaginable conditions. What emerged from that history is nothing short of extraordinary. African Americans have created culture, community, resistance, and global influence that have shaped the world. That is a fact not up for debate.

But it is also true that this history leaves a particular kind of absence.

To be told repeatedly that you do not belong where you are, while also being severed from where you came from, creates a tension that never fully resolves. Africa becomes both distant and charged. A place invoked as an insult. As a threat. As something you are told to go back to, without ever being given the tools or permission to feel connected to it.

So when I saw African Americans watching IShowSpeed in Africa, I began to understand that the tears were not about tourism. They weren’t about aesthetics. They weren’t about discovering that Africa has cities, joy, or modernity.

They were about witnessing a kind of ease.

Watching an African American move through spaces where his presence did not need to be explained. Where his Blackness was not a negotiation. Where he was not a problem to be solved, feared, questioned, or othered. He was not Black first. He simply was.

That realisation is destabilising.

Especially if you have spent your entire life being made aware of your race. Loudly. Constantly. Uncomfortably. Through policy, policing, culture, media, and everyday interaction. Through what is questioned, restricted, feared, or denied.

To suddenly see someone like you exist without that weight, even briefly, can crack something open.

And I think that’s what we were witnessing online.

Not a sudden desire to relocate. Not a rejection of African American identity. But a moment of grief for something unnamed. A recognition that somewhere in the world, there exists the possibility of belonging without explanation.

Watching that kind of ease forces a question I can’t shake.

What is it like to live somewhere where you aren’t Black first, you just are?

I don’t have answers, and I’m still thinking this through. I’m definitely still learning. And I’m very aware that this is not my lived experience.

But I do know this. Watching that moment unfold reminded me how unevenly belonging is distributed. How deeply history shapes what we long for. And how powerful it can be to witness someone simply exist in a way you’ve never been allowed to.

And maybe that’s why it moved so many people to tears.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Nigerian hall parties lately.

Not in a nostalgic way. More in a curious one. The kind of curiosity that comes when you realise something that once felt ordinary doesn’t show up in the same way anymore.

For our parents, hall parties weren’t rare or ceremonial. They weren’t reserved for weddings or big milestones. They were frequent. Casual, even. A child’s birthday. A job promotion. A thanksgiving. Sometimes, for no reason at all beyond the fact that people needed to be together.

Looking back, I don’t think that frequency was accidental.

Many of our parents didn’t arrive in the diaspora with much. Not the money. Not the ease. Not the certainty. But what they did arrive with was culture, and an urgent need for community to make foreign places feel survivable. Hall parties became one of the ways they solved that.

They gathered often because gathering reminded them of home.

They celebrated because celebration softened displacement.

They showed up physically because that was how identity stayed intact.

Community halls became places where culture could stretch its legs. Where music, food, language, hierarchy, humour, and memory could live without explanation. Where being Nigerian didn’t need to be performed or translated. It could just simply be.

But somewhere along the line, that shifted.

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Today, for many of us in the diaspora, the Owambe has narrowed. It mostly appears as the Nigerian traditional wedding. Bigger. Louder. More elaborate. Less frequent. More symbolic than habitual.

We still gather, just not in the same way.

We hold community digitally now. Through group chats, timelines, voice notes, and shared references. And that isn’t inherently a loss. But it is an adaptation. And I guess culture does do that … Right?

And it’s that pondering that brings me to the thought of what changes when gathering becomes occasional instead of repetitive? When does culture become something we attend rather than something we enter regularly?

That question stayed with me.

Especially when I was asked to present a documentary exploring Nigerian hall parties. (by the way, it’s a documentary for the big boy BBC, ya know 🥹 but we can gist about that later .. back to the matter)

As someone born and raised in the diaspora, my relationship with Nigerian culture has always been layered. Inherited, practised, questioned, adapted. Growing up, hall parties were one of the few spaces where that relationship felt embodied rather than abstract. Where culture wasn’t something to explain, but something you simply stepped into.

What struck me most while making Into the Owambe wasn’t just how joyful these gatherings were. It was how intentional they had been. How necessary. How much work they were quietly doing … And maybe, should still be doing.

Every day, it’s becoming clearer to me that cultural preservation doesn’t only happen in museums or textbooks. It can happen in so many different ways, one of them being repetition. In showing up again and again. In making space, even when space is limited.

And sometimes, preservation happens later. When you pause long enough to realise that what once felt ordinary was actually holding a lot together.

That’s why documenting hall parties mattered to me.

Not because they were the best parties, although they were and still are lool, argue with yourselves. But because they tell us something about how our parents survived migration … and ask us a quieter question about how we choose to gather today.

📻 Into the Owambe, my first ever BBC Radio 4 documentary, is now available on BBC Sounds. I’m super proud about it, so please go listen and let me know your thoughts … honestly.

Thanks in advance 🤎

What is cultural preservation, truly?

It is something I have anchored myself in for as long as I can remember - in my home, in my food, in the way I wear my hair, in the clothes I choose, in the name I carry, and in the very core of the platform I am building.

But what is it really?
And why does it matter, not just to me … but to us all, especially in this day and age?

We know this much to be true:

What is not preserved can be rewritten.
What is not documented can be distorted.
What is not claimed can be extracted, repackaged, and sold back to us without acknowledgement.

Across fashion, music, food, wellness, and storytelling, culture has moved to the centre. What was once marginal is now influential. What was once dismissed is now referenced, celebrated, and, in many cases, monetised.

Culture has become currency.

But currency without context is dangerous.

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Cultural preservation is often misunderstood as nostalgia, a desire to freeze time, to cling to the past, or to resist progress. But that framing misses the point entirely.

Culture is not about going backwards.
It is about remaining recognisable as we move forward.

In a world that moves at speed, where trends are created, consumed, and discarded in weeks, culture, when not protected, becomes content. Stripped of context. Stripped of meaning. Stripped of origin.

Preservation, then, is not about museums or archives alone.
It is about memory.
It is about continuity.
It is about ensuring that what we inherit does not disappear under the weight of speed.

For many of us … particularly those in the diaspora, culture becomes a portable home. When geography shifts, when borders blur, when belonging feels fragmented, culture is what grounds us. It tells us who we are, where we come from, and what we carry forward.

Without it, identity becomes negotiable.
Easily reshaped.
And for many, easily lost.

This matters not just emotionally, but structurally.

When algorithms decide what survives, what is recorded often outlives what is true.

Cultural preservation, therefore, is an act of authorship.
It is the choice to tell our own stories, in our own voices, before others do it for us.

This is why I know I am not alone in this thinking.

As culture becomes more visible, more valuable, and more marketable, the responsibility to protect its meaning becomes greater, not smaller.

Preservation is not about visibility for visibility’s sake.
It is about meaning. About memory. About responsibility.

For me, cultural preservation has never been abstract. It lives in how I choose to show up, in the spaces I create, and in the work I build. All Things Africa exists not because culture is fashionable, but because it is foundational.

Because without understanding where we come from, we cannot fully understand where we are going.

And this is the reminder I hope we hold onto.

In a world eager to consume culture, preservation asks us to pause.
To ask why this matters.
To protect depth in an age of speed.

To remember that culture is not just something to be shared, but something to be carried, with care.

That is why cultural preservation still matters in 2026.

Not as nostalgia.
Not as trend.
But as intention.

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