For my final guest episode, I’m with the researcher and designer Oluwakemi Agbato who lives by the question: “How can we make good things to live with?” And explores that question through her research and design studio, Studio GB and her jewellery brand RENIKEJI. This conversation was full of passion on both sides for how history continues to live with us in the objects around us.

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04:41 James Baldwin on Suffering and Achieving One’s Own Authority

15:06 The Rich History of Nigerian Silk

19:34 The 1960 Nigeria Exhibition

22:16 “It becomes real, you’re the one pursuing knowledge, knowledge is not pursuing you.”

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Website: sweetmedicine.me

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Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

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Today’s conversation is with Mobolaji Otuyelu, the founder of two startups—a kitchenware company AGBO ILÉ and Ọjà Wellness Foods, a beverage company. As an entrepreneur focused on black innovation and social change, Mobolaji is also deeply involved with the Federation of Informal Workers’ Organisations of Nigeria (FIWON), where she collaborates on member-led initiatives to provide tangible support like health insurance, mortgage opportunities, and pension schemes for informal workers. In this conversation we discuss the ties between economic development and healing—the two need each other—, the gift of now and the power of the contemporary.

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04:02 FIWON: A Model for Informal Workers

08:48 Resourcefulness in Nigerian Entrepreneurship

16:15 Healing Through Money and Economic Capital

25:34 The Gift of Now/Culture is Dynamic

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Mentioned in the episode:

https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/

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Website: sweetmedicine.me

Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.

Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

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⁕

Consider joining or supporting Kwanda

From the founder of Kwanda, Jermaine Craig: "I'm focused on making the world a more generous place. I'm interested in the potential of the collective, not the individual. I want to get future philanthropists started earlier by gathering as 'Micro Philanthropists'. A blocker to generosity is a lack of transparency and trust, so I'm building Kwanda. This platform brings diasporans together to pool capital and fund local-led projects in Africa. The platform is financially transparent and allows members to decide how funds are spent."

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I've spent the past seven weeks discussing why social healing, why the humanities when people are starving, what do we do with History, what are Nigerian nervous conditions, what kind of society is Nigeria and why was Nigeria made in the first place. I set up these questions to give a sense of what the problem is, and how the centuries before now led us here.

With all this information, how can we work towards these resilient, compassionate and responsible futures? My suggestions: take ownership and pay attention to our bodies.

This episode includes an excerpt from this talk, What Kids Can't Do: Youth, Historical Agency, and Authority, by Abosede George (Associate Professor of History, Barnard College and Columbia University) at Wolf Humanities Center's 2020-21 Forum on Choice, March 17, 2021.

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03:21 Is agency all that matters? Abosede George on foregrounding other dimensions of being human

10:04 Connection comes with risk of loss and failure, connect anyway

12:47 My body’s my buddy / Body go tell you

18:24 Denying our self-sovereignty

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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, 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

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 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

Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.

Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

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

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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

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 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

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 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

Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.

Instagram: @ss.studiostyles

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

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