Where Is Dadiyata? Selected Writers

Title image Selected writers © Goethe-Institut

This document brings together the selected writers for the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, an artistic intervention under the Art & Country initiative of the Goethe-Institut Nigeria. Responding to the ongoing question of disappearance, memory, and civic voice, these writers approach the theme through diverse forms including poetry, essay, performance, and experimental text.

Each selected participant brings a distinct perspective, engaging the question not as a fixed inquiry, but as an evolving site of reflection, resistance, and public engagement. Together, their works form a collective exploration of absence, accountability, and the conditions that allow such questions to persist.

Selected Writers

Aisha Kabiru Mohammed is a writer and cultural practitioner whose work centres on people-driven storytelling at the intersection of culture, society, and everyday life.

For the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, she presents The Voices that Remain—a series of poetic, interview-based texts that reflect on memory, absence, and the quiet persistence of lived experience. Drawing from real conversations, her work will explore how people speak
about loss, using pauses, repetition, and silence to hold space for what is known and what remains unresolved.
Ogochukwu Umeadi is a Nigerian writer and filmmaker whose work explores memory, identity, and the politics of storytelling across page and screen. For the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, he presents 66 Ways to Completely Erase a Man—a satirical, text-based piece that frames disappearance as a deliberate, procedural act. Through fragmented, redacted, and incomplete entries, the work will examine how absence is constructed, normalized, and sustained, shifting attention from the missing individual to the systems that make disappearance possible.
Amarachika Emele-Ralph is a Nigerian writer, researcher, and cultural practitioner whose work engages Black identity, culture, and design through essays, criticism, and experimental text. For the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, he will develop a text-based work built around variations of the question “Where is Dadiyata?”—using repetition as a method to probe disappearance as both a political and social condition. Moving from unresolved absence to broader systems of silence, the work will interrogate what remains when civic courage and dissent are eroded.
Seyi Lasisi is a Nigerian film critic and culture journalist whose work interrogates the socio-political dimensions of African cinema. For the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, he presents The Political Economy of Erasure—a research-driven essay that examines Dadiyata’s disappearance as a systemic, state produced act. Drawing on Marxist analysis, the work reframes disappearance as a tool of power, positioning memory as a form of resistance and shifting the question from where he is to what his erasure enables.
Jacob Akoji James (Jason Cypher) is a Nigerian spoken word artist, curator, and community developer whose practice centres on storytelling as a tool for social change. For the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, he proposes a participatory mural intervention in Kaduna—transforming public space into a living text. Through collective inscription, the work invites community voices to respond, question, and remember, turning the act of writing into a shared demand for accountability and a powerful form of public memory.
Feyisayo Aluko is a writer, artist, and editor whose multidisciplinary practice spans poetry, audio, and film, engaging themes of memory, nationhood, and the emotional afterlives of colonial education. For the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, she proposes a series of poems drawn from oral history interviews with Nigerians in exile, translating personal testimonies of silence, displacement, and memory into layered text. These works will extend into a visual installation of etched plexiglass panels, where fragmented narratives overlap—positioning text as both archive and public intervention.
Sulaiman A.M. is a Nigerian writer and lawyer whose work moves between the personal and the political, uncovering philosophical depth in everyday experience. For the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, he presents The Pattern That Eats Its Own—an experimental essay that draws a line between the attempted abduction of Umaru Dikko in 1984 and the disappearance of Dadiyata in 2019. Moving across these moments, the work examines how systems of power evolve yet persist in silencing dissent, revealing a recurring pattern within Nigerian political history.
U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo is a Zimbabwean-American poet and multidisciplinary artist whose work spans poetry, film, fashion, and public installation, engaging memory, identity, and belonging across the African diaspora. For the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, she presents In Plain Sight—a series of poetic texts that explore disappearance as an everyday civic condition. Drawing from observations of urban life, the work will trace how absence is normalized and overlooked, extending poetry beyond the page into public space as a quiet but persistent act of witnessing.
BEKINWARI (B.) is a Nigerian writer whose abstract, fragmentary style explores existence, emotion, and the limits of language. For the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, they present a cyclical text that will approach disappearance through accumulation—where names dissolve into numbers and loss becomes routine. Moving through fragments and repetition, the work will reflect the tension between remembrance and fatigue, holding attention not on a single absence, but on the conditions that make disappearance persist and recur.
Chidera Udochukwu-Nduka is an award-winning Nigerian-Igbo writer whose work spans fiction, poetry, and essays, with a growing international presence across literary platforms. For the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, she presents The Question That Echoes Throughout the Country—a recursive lyric essay that returns repeatedly to the question “Where is Dadiyata?” Each repetition gathers weight, tracing the emotional and political toll of unresolved disappearance, while refusing closure in a way that mirrors the ongoing uncertainty surrounding his absence.
Al Amin Al Hassan is a poet and artist whose work interrogates socio-political realities, memory, and the quiet resilience of communities shaped by conflict. For the “Where Is Dadiyata?” project, he presents Silence as Language—an interdisciplinary work combining poetry, performance, and participatory engagement. Through fragments, repetition, and deliberate pauses, the piece examines silence as both a tool of suppression and a form of resistance, inviting audiences to confront what remains unsaid within Nigeria’s civic space.

Where Is Dadiyata? Selected Writers

Selected Writers

Aisha Kabiru Mohammed

Ogochukwu Umeadi

Amarachika Emele-Ralph

Seyi Lasisi

Jacob Akoji James (Jason Cypher)

Feyisayo Aluko

Sulaiman A.M.

U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo

BEKINWARI (B.)

Chidera Udochukwu-Nduka

Al Amin Al Hassan

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