‘Juju Eyes’: LASU, UNILAG, RovingHeights host Sam Omatseye to June reading from new novel
By Editor
HISTORIAN, writer, journalist and the Editorial Board Chairman of The Nation newspaper Mr. Sam Oritsetimeyin Omatseye has released a new novel titled Juju Eyes (Sunshot Associates). Omatseye will expose the new work to Nigeria’s reading public with three planned three readings for June 2025 in Lagos. The first reading will take place at Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo, Lagos on Wednesday, June 11 @11.00am at TETFUND Building, Faculty of Communications and Media Studies. Omatseye’s reading is in partnership with the Departments of English and Media Studies, with the event flyer inviting the public to ‘Come experience the magic of storytelling’.
Then six days later on Tuesday, June 17, Omatseye will read at the Faculty of Arts Boardroom, University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos @10.00am and again on Sunday, June 22, 2025, Omatseye will also read at RovingHeights Bookstore, Landmark Event Centre, Oniru, Victoria Island, Lagos @4.00pm.
Speaking about his new novel, Omatseye said, “Juju Eyes is an intersection of vanity and superstition, and how a rebel in the Nigerian soul wields this intersection often to our own hurt. In every sphere of our lives, we make gods and try to kill them until we realise there is no such thing as divine suicide, or is there?”
In late July and early August, Omatseye will square up with Florida-based Nigerian-born writer and Creative Writing lecturer at the University of Florida Uwem Akpan to a reading in selected cities across Nigeria. Akpan will be visiting Nigeria to read for the first from his critically acclaimed and controversial novel New York My Village (Parresia Publishing). Omatseye will pair with Mr. Akpan on his second novel My Name Is Okoro, a work in tune with Akpan’s New York My Village in their exploration of the negative impact of the Nigerian Civil War on minorities of the Niger Delta for whose oil wealth the war was fought in other guises. Sadly, minorities of the Niger Delta bore the brunt of the war as the territory changed hands between the two warring (Nigerian and Biafran) armies with dire consequences to the locals who were made to switch allegiances in the brutal war for their resource rich wealth and daily survival.
Sam Omatseye
The brutal impact of the war on the minorities is a subject not usually spoken or written about by writers of both sides, least of all writers of Igbo-extraction who have gone on to seize victimhood narrative and have published tomes on it, with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Half of a Yellow Sun) and Chigozie Obioma (The Road to the Country) as modern leading lights. But these two Niger Delta writers Omatseye and Akpan and others just emerging from the scars and shadows of the war are shedding more light on what really happened with their creative works that explore the atrocities both armies inflicted on the minority people of the Nigeria Delta, as Nigeria and Biafra jostled for supremacy over the oil resources in their land. One party won and the other lost, but the Niger Delta has remained under siege since the brutal war ended in January 1970.
Juju Eyes is the third novel by Omatseye who has also practised journalism in the US. Omatseye’s new novel has been receiving rave reviews on account of its unflattering realistic portrayals of Nigeria’s current socio-political scene, with one reviewer describing it as “a vast, sweeping, epic narrative that undercovers the underbelly of society in unflattering manner.” Published by Sunshot Associates, Juju Eyes has its thematic concept rooted in Africa’s mythic village scene but which morphs into modern city dwelling and how these two intersect. Juju Eyes follows the life of a young lady who like Nigeria suffers betrayal from a close quarter and is made to live a life and lie thrown her way by her country just to survive. Omatseye does not shy away from politics, a subject he devotes his weekly ‘In Touch’ Monday column at The Nation, a column that has become the most contriversial in recent years.
Other works by Omatseye include Crocodile Girl (first novel), Dear Baby Ramatu (poetry – 2009), A Chronicle Foretold (2016), Tribe and Prejudice (2017), Mandela’s Bones and Other Poems, Lion Wind and Other Poems, Scented Offal and The Siege (drama) that was performed to celebrate Prof. Wole Soyinka at his 80th birthday.
Critic, lecturer in literary studies and former Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Delta State University, Abraka, Prof. Sunny Awhefeada said Omatseye is one of the best stylists on the continent, “He’s one of the best stylists, not just of Nigeria but Africa today. I do not agree with many of the things he writes, but as a teacher and critic, I have to be objective and I rate him as one of the best stylists writing on the continent today. When I read his novel My Name Is Okoro, I was remembering my grandmother, because my grandmother told me most of the things in that book.”
