Project 1: Ghost Stories of Oluyole
The Nigerian literary scene has been characterized by such timeless classics such as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Prof. Wole Soyinka's Kongi's Harvest and relatively more recently, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's marvelous Purple Hibiscus.
The passage of time has initiated a clamour for Nigerian works exploring genres other than contemporary literature, works that are good enough to stand toe-to-toe with that of writers from other countries with a more established structure in place. This gave rise to masterpieces like Ben Okri's The Famished Road, and Nnedi Okorafor's science fantasy novel Who Fears Death, amongst other projects that have proven to be a good enough answer to the question: can Africans write speculative fiction? A quick browse through the astonishing works on thedarknotes.com exploring the horror genre should belay whatever fears an inquisitive mind might have on the flexibility and ingenuity of Nigerian writing.
That is why Aiki Initiative, a multimedia content creation and production outfit is embarking on a project that will explore one of the often neglected genres in Nigerian writing: horror. Aiki Initiative's flagship project is an embodiment of the organization's emphasis on ingenuity and creativity and it will feature a roster of exiting new young writers, some of whom are not particularly strangers to the Nigerian audience. These writers will contribute short stories on the theme 'a ghost story set in Ibadan' and the collection will make up the anthology, Ghost Stories of Oluyole.
The project is simply the first of many on Aiki Initiative's production schedule poised to explore the genres otherwise consigned to oblivion. Alongside developing exciting content for the reading audience, Aiki Initiative will also produce films and musical content in a way that the world has just not seen yet.
It is said that there is nothing new under the sun, Aiki Initiative is set to prove otherwise.