In the Dark in Nigeria (2023)
Role: Writer, field researcher, narrative analyst
Focus: The psychological toll of infrastructure collapse
Summary:
In the Dark in Nigeria reveals the unseen emotional and psychological costs of Nigeria’s chronic electricity failures. Through field interviews and lived experience, I traced how blackouts seep into daily rhythms, shaping moods, decisions, and even how people perceive time and connection. What begins as a story about ‘energy poverty’ becomes an inquiry into what it means to live without light—light as visibility, as relief, and as power.
Drawing from academic research and oral testimony, the essay situates Nigeria’s condition within a global continuum of infrastructural neglect and emotional fatigue. It listens closely to language, revealing how people metabolise systemic failure as a private, bodily experience.
Read more: https://popula.com/2023/07/29/in-the-dark-in-nigeria/
“In colloquial Nigerian, we do not speak of ‘blackouts’, ‘power cuts’ or ‘load-shedding’. We generally simply say: “There is no light.” And we mean light as in ‘to make things visible’, light as in relief from a burden, light as energy, and light as power, all at once. All the connotations of ‘light’ combine to draw a fuller picture of the multiple dimensions of energy poverty.”
🌟 Why this resonated:
This project exemplifies how attentive my storytelling practice is to voice, texture, and the quiet revolutions of ordinary life. It shows how I build emotional architecture around policy and infrastructure topics, helping audiences not only understand systems but also feel them.
For cultural institutions, publishers, and creative collaborators, it serves as an example of how narrative can humanize the abstract and restore intimacy to discussions of development and progress.