USAFRICA NAMES OKEY NDIBE AFRICAN WRITER OF 2014

Okey Ndibe

 The international multimedia networks and public policy organization, USAfrica, has named Okey Ndibe, prolific commentator, professor of English/African Literature and author of the highly-acclaimed 2014 novel, Foreign Gods, Inc., as the African Writer of the Year 2014.

A statement issued from Houston, Texas, by the Founder & Publisher of USAfrica and the first African-owned, U.S.-based professional newspaper published on the internet, USAfricaonline.com, Dr. Chido Nwangwu, notes that “the trinity of Okey Ndibe’s contributions as a critical commentator, a first-rate scholar and a novelist validates USAfrica editors’ decision to recognize his outstanding skills. The riveting testimonial to his creative capacities is fresh and evident in Foreign Gods, Inc., which I had the privilege of reading in its advance/pre-publication galley in 2013.”
The novel tells the engaging story of Ike, a New York-based Nigerian, college-educated cab driver who undertakes a trip to his natal hometown in order to steal the statue of an ancient war deity and sell it to an arts gallery in New York City.
According to USAfrica founder, Dr. Nwangwu, “Foreign Gods, Inc. continues to draw warm reviews for the author who holds the inept or corrupt Nigerian political class in contempt. Prof. Ndibe began his journalism career in Nigeria, but relocated to the US in 1988 to serve as the founding editor of the defunct African Commentary magazine (co-owned by the great writer Prof. Chinua Achebe). Ndibe has written commentaries on diverse topics, including corruption, failure of public/governmental agencies, Biafra, youth unemployment, religious hypocrisy and exploitation, and the abuse of female students by male lecturers in Nigerian colleges and universities. He has served since 1995 as a contributing editor of USAfrica (print) and USAfricaonline.com. He also writes for the Daily Sun newspaper (Lagos) and, from 2006, for saharareporters.com.”
Ndibe, who earned MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, is the author of another novel, Arrows of Rain, and co-editor (with Zimbabwean writer Chenjerai Hove) of Writers, Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa.Arrows of Rain was first published in 2000 in Heinemann’s African Writers Series. Soho Press (New York) will release an North American edition of the novel on January 6, 2015. Ndibe, who has taught at Brown University, Connecticut College (New London), Trinity College in Hartford, Simon’s Rock College (in Great Barrington, Massachussetts), and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright lecturer), is currently working on a series of memoir vignettes titled Going Dutch and other American Mis/Adventures.

USAfrica — with almost 23 years of professional journalism and multimedia publishing business from its headquarters in Houston, Texas — has been acclaimed by the CNN, The New York Times, international scholars and public policy leaders as the largest and arguably the most influential African-owned, U.S-based multimedia networks.