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Quramo Festival of Words 2025: Beyond books, conversations, performances



If you were at this year’s edition of the annual Quramo Festival of Words, you will marvel over how powerful and impactful words are.

For four days, the African literary community, including lovers of literature, authors, publishers, book clubs and high institutions gathered at Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, venue of the festival, to talk, learn, and imagine.

Also, guests from Kenya, Ireland, Ghana, and across Nigeria also graced the festival, proving that African stories are both deeply local and powerfully global.

From masterclasses with masters of their craft, provocative conversations, to the celebration of new voices, powerful cultural moments, among others, the Quramo Festival of Words 2025 was more than an event; it was an experience.

Yet, distinguished voices such as Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, a professor; Joke Silva, veteran actress; Tade Ipadeola, award-winning author; James Murua, Stephen James Smith, Dele Sikuade, among others, spoke volumes on how big the festival has grown, the sensitivity and relevance of its conversations and the calibre of panelists it now attracts.

Read also: From CANEX to Quramo Festival of Words 2025: Why brave new world matters

Even from the address of Gbemi Shosore, the convener, this year’s festival took the discussions, engagements and creativity a notch higher, and living up to the theme: “A Brave New World”, which was chosen in reflection of the time of rapid change, and need to be courageous in order to tell African stories, question new technologies, and imagine bold futures.

Truly as she said, the QFest 2025 offered the attendees a collective space to do just that.

“Our theme for this year, “A Brave New World”, invites us to reflect deeply on the unprecedented changes that are occurring around us”.

The changes, according to her, are evident as old forms – in technology, culture, art, and in all aspects of life – are dissolving, and new ways of living, working, and creating are emerging, hence requiring courage to step into the space to among other things; question prevailing narratives, imagine beyond boundary constraints, and forge new ways that others can follow.

Shasore confessed that this year’s theme has personal significance to her, as she returned from Algiers recently, where ‘Dear Zimi’, the 2023 Quramo Writers’ Prize winner, was shortlisted for the CANEX Book Factory Prize for Publishing in Africa.

She came home with a renewed sense of responsibility, saying “This experience reminded me that the small labours of a modest publisher in Lagos can ripple beyond our borders. It also affirmed something essential: nurturing writers at home is not a quiet act – it is an act of courage that ripples outward, reshaping how the world sees us and how we see ourselves”.

Back to the QFest, which is in its ninth year, Shasore noted that it has continued to be an exciting platform where writers, readers, publishers, artists and intellectuals converge to exchange ideas, challenge assumptions and reimagine what is possible.

The opening day witnessed the celebration of five writers of this year’s Quramo Writers Prize, who were introduced with a panel session moderated by Segun Aribisala, a culture manager, while a healthy rivalry ensued afterwards among them.

The writers spoke engagingly on their writings, manuscript entries and expectations about the prize.

The five manuscripts and their writers included: ‘Black Bird’ by Chioma Jane Okeagu; ‘Kaku’ by Esther Eniola Oyeleye; ‘Moon Child’ by Abisola Junaid; ‘Son of the Harem’ by Harry Onyeogo and ‘What Binds, What Breaks’ by Hubaidat Oyinkansola Ishola.

As in every competition, winners emerged from the five with Junaid’s ‘Moon Child’ and Okeagu’s ‘Black Bird’ emerging second and third consolatory positions respectively, while the best submitted manuscripts for 2025 went to Ishola’s ‘What Binds, What Breaks’.

The jury panel, headed by Aduke Gomez, a writer/culture promoter, with Anote Ajeluorou, a journalist and writer and Wase Aguele-Konu, who was absent, as members, was excited at announcing Ishola as winner of the prize worth N1 million, in addition to a publishing deal.

Read also: Quramo Productions concludes script lab for Yellow Moon

It was also a memorable occasion for Ishola’s parents who were on hand to share in their daughter’s joyous moment.

Chizeterem Chijoke, writer of ‘Dear Zimi’ the winning manuscript for the 2023 edition, which took Quramo Publishing company to Algiers, Algeria, as its entry for the CANEX Book Factory Prize for Publishing in Africa; was on ground to share with the audience.

Although Quramo Publishing narrowly lost to South African publishing company, Karavan Press for its book, In Silence My Heart Speaks by Thobeka Yose, for keenly contested USD$20,000 prize money, it assured that it will not relent at offering young writers a platform to aspire, knowing that someone is taking note of their creative efforts.

Chijoke took the stage to express her profound gratitude to Quramo for believing in her work and giving it wings to soar. She later revealed that she was working on a novel on distant marriages and its impact on family wellbeing.

Apart from the prize, the exciting spoken word performance saw 10 young poets lined up the stage to enthrall the audience with their fire-spitting vocal war.

The performance was timely, coming after intense three days of panel sessions, film shows and exciting book chats.

As well, Stephen James Smith, an Irish guest poet, lived up to the expectations of the audience, while Q-Conversation, the festivals signature event, had Joke Silva, veteran actress, pairing off with Shasore, festival convener, in a session that yielded intimate moments as the actress barred it all to the audience. Her recall of the tragic loss of her daughter in a careless manner in the hands of medical personnel at a tertiary medical facility, was emotional as well as sad for the audience.

Another highlight of the festival was the poetry slam where young poets, mostly university undergraduates and newly graduated ones, lined up the stage to strut their creative stuff. The session had three literary heavy weights jury panel; Mukoma wa Ngugi, a Kenyan professor; James Murua, a journalist and Stephen James Smith, an Irish poet, while Saheed Sunday, last year’s winner, moderated the poetry slam session.

Interestingly, the audience had a say in who won, as it was assigned 70 percent of scores each poet would garner.

At the end, Samuel Adeshimisola (Shimisola), Temiloluwa Bolawole (THATPOET) and Michael Gnaho (MAG) – became the last acts standing, while Gnaho emerged winner after further rounds of contest, and went home with the N100,000 cash prize.

But of the panels of discussion at the festival, “961 Days: Brothers at War, Never Again: The Nigerian Civil War”, was the most anticipated, most talked about and the most discussed by the highly informed panellists, who also spoke from personal experiences of the war and from their books on the war.

The panel, which was moderated by Tade Ipadeola, a poet, lawyer, and translator who writes in both Yoruba and English, got everyone listening with keen interest.

Read also: Quramo Writers Prize unveils shortlist, books of QFest 2025

Ipadeola, who was born nine months after the official cessation of the war, and whose Sahara Testament, which won the Nigerian Prize for Literature, noted that the panel was by far the most important gathering in the festival because “we are here to discuss perhaps the most important topic there is to discuss in the country and on the continent”.

Sharing his civil war experience, Dele Johnson, a professor, filmmaker, and author, who was about 14 years then, recalled losing two out of three of his brothers who fought on the Nigerian side during the war.

“It didn’t occur to me until everything died down, and I didn’t see my brothers, and then it started to affect me. It was at that point also that the beginning of the interest in writing started,” the professor recalled.
“That was where my mind went back to when I started writing about four or five years after. So, this is why I have written quite a great deal in my own history on the civil war”.

On his part, Ed Keazor, a historian, lawyer, and documentary filmmaker, shared the experience of the war from victims across both sides of the war, bringing the human angle to it, the losses and pains victims suffered and may still be suffering today due to the avoidable 961-day war.

‘I interviewed people who had suffered on both sides of the war. Obviously, the higher toll of suffering and death was on the Biafran side, but one life, one death is enough. Because every single one of the statistics, including children bombed who had no idea what the war was about, is bad enough,” Keazor, author of 120 Great Nigerians You Never Knew, and the award-winning film January 15, Untold Memories of the Nigerian Biafran War, decried.

He also recalled with nostalgia how his mother suffered from the war loss, with impact even up to eight years ago, when she died.

“I saw her in the hospital, because she was a nurse in eastern Nigeria, recounting the pain and the things she saw, the horrors she saw. It was one of the last memories I had before she died,” Keazor said.

The above has informed his interest in documentary movies and writings on the war.

Also sharing his experience of the war, Akintunde Akinkunmi, a retired major general in the British Army, consultant forensic psychiatrist, lawyer, historian and author, noted that the single most seminal event in the history of Nigeria is the civil war and that nothing comes close to it for a variety of reasons.

He recalled his first operational deployment during the first Gulf War in January 1991, amid being in conflict in Iraq twice, in Afghanistan twice, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and in Sierra Leone.

However, the retired major general, who was two and a half years old when the civil war started, noted that war is a horrible, awful and nasty business.

Akinkunmi, the author of Hubris, A Political History of the Nigerian Army, who is the middle of writing the history of the civil war, blamed the war on Yakubu Gowon and Emeka Odimegwu Ojukwu; two young officers, who could have settled the issue, but allowed it to escalate into an avoidable war due to ego and past scores to settle.

Read also: Mukoma wa Ngugi, Joke Silva to headline Quramo Festival of Words 2025

He also saw the war from the ugly experience of people, who had nothing to do with it, but were the unfortunate victims.

Another panelist, Sam Omatseye, a poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and chairman, editorial board of the Nation Newspapers, also shared more touching experiences.

At the end, the informed panelists, individually and collectively explored the civil war narrative beyond the usual perspectives, while insisting ‘No More Again’, a subtle advocacy they want all Nigerians to champion.

That marked the end of Quramo Festival of Words 2025, while young ambitious writers get back to work ahead of the 2026 edition as well as the organisers, as the audience hope to see more excitement in the coming edition.



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