Zayd Ibn Isah and the uniqueness of the Nigerian spirit, By Sima Essien

One of the hardest things to write about as a Nigerian is the subject of Nigeria itself. This is because any attempt to capture the full sense of this nation must take into account its layered complexities, its turbulent history, and its remarkable diversity of cultures and peoples. Simply put, Nigeria resists easy summation. To approach this country, to analyse it, celebrate it, critique it, one must come armed with nuance, prepared to navigate an overwhelming spread of realities that are at once contradictory, exhilarating, and deeply sobering. The writer who takes on this subject without that nuance risks producing something flattened and dishonest; the writer who succeeds produces something vital.

Zayd Ibn Isah is a writer who succeeds. A young police officer and aspiring lawyer, Isah has, in a relatively short time, established himself as an intellectual of note and one of Nigeria’s most compelling public thinkers. His debut book, We Are All Guilty, was a short play that excavated the themes of systemic corruption and moral decay. In 2023, World Entourage Magazine recognised him as one of the 100 Impactful Young Nigerians, honouring his contributions to public discourse and nation-building, a distinction that, given his output of over a hundred articles published locally and internationally, was richly deserved. Now, out of that considerable body of work, comes The Nigerian Spirit Is Special, a collection of 33 of those articles, repurposed as critical essays that share a single, audacious common thread: an unshakeable belief in Nigerian exceptionalism.

The collection arrives with an impressive endorsement: its Foreword is written by former President and Commander-in-Chief, Olusegun Obasanjo, who frames the collection as “an incisive and layered exploration” of Nigeria’s “current socio-political, economic and cultural landscape,” describing Isah himself as “a voice for the common man.” It is a characterisation that the essays, taken together, bear out with some conviction.

The title of the book is itself quietly significant. Depending on one’s mood — or one’s experience of Nigeria — it can be read as a declaration of fact, or as a kind of plea for positivity. After all, true patriotism is not easy to come by in Nigeria today. Years of rising disillusionment with what might be called the Nigerian Dream have made optimism a difficult, even embattled posture. It is far easier, and in many ways more rational, to fixate on the corruption, the insecurity, the grinding poverty, the cycles of poor leadership, the crime and the moral decadence that have come to define too many headlines about Nigeria.

But Isah’s collection does not dispute that Nigeria is beset by serious, structural, deeply rooted problems. Rather, it insists upon what he calls a “stubborn belief…the sort that holds faith in our capabilities as a people, our progress as a country, and that special quality which distinguishes us from the rest of the world.” This establishes a chosen disposition, and Isah is disciplined about it throughout the collection.

What makes the book particularly compelling is Isah’s ability to hold a paradoxical approach without losing coherence. He can extol the positive aspects of Nigerian nationhood, while simultaneously calling out the habits and failures that dent the collective image. This may explain why mentions of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s celebrated TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” appear not once but twice across different essays in the collection. That talk, in which Adichie warns against the reductive power of a single, unchallenged narrative, becomes a quiet structural principle for Isah’s project. His central argument is that perceptions of Nigeria ought not to be imprisoned within a single string of stereotypes and shocking headlines. This is what allows him to criticise “the criminal actions of certain people who do not represent the truest essence of the Nigerian spirit” (p. 39), while also setting aside whole essays to celebrate the “great men and women who have made the country proud in all areas of human endeavours” (p. 19). The two impulses do not cancel each other out; they are, for Isah, different facets of the same honest reckoning.

Across several chapters, Isah celebrates the achievements of Nigerians who inspire in him a “sweet sense of national pride” (p. 27): the late Professor Dora Akunyili, Aliko Dangote, Allen Onyema, Tobi Amusan, Victor Osimhen, Ademola Lookman, Nafisa Abdullahi, Hilda Baci, the Super Falcons, and Tunde Onakoya, among others. These figures populate the collection as evidence that the country’s spirit, however tested, is not extinguished.

Isah also demonstrates a keen ability to remain in step with the zeitgeist, writing on contemporary issues that resonate well beyond their immediate moment. In “Lessons From Mummy Zee,” he uses a social media incident as a lens through which to examine Nigeria’s shifting societal values. In “Ejikeme, JAMB and Trust Deficit” and “2025 UTME and Our Fault Lines,” he addresses the “glaring trust deficit” between Nigerian citizens and the public institutions that are supposed to serve them. Reflecting on the furore that followed Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma’s controversial JAMB results, Isah observes, “I have never seen a country so united, yet so divided, as Nigeria” (p. 138), a line that captures our national capacity for collective outrage and simultaneous fracture.

However, Isah is not merely a writer of the moment. There is a wider historical consciousness at work throughout the collection, an ability to plant a foot in the past while keeping his gaze fixed on the future. Nowhere is this more evident than in “Nigerians and Their Priorities,” where he extols Nigeria’s glorified literary history before lamenting the present drift of youths from that heritage: “As a nation, we prioritize fleeting trends over lasting influence, and the sensational over the substantial” (p. 96). This particular essay closes as an appeal for the cultivation of talent in future generations, and carries real urgency within it.

Throughout the collection, Isah dispenses wisdom with a generosity that feels earned rather than presumptuous. He makes a case for developing Nigeria’s tourism potential; he condemns fraud and gender-based violence; he argues, perhaps counterintuitively given his own profession, that Nigerians ought not to write off the entirety of the Nigerian Police Force as corrupt or beyond redemption. And in perhaps the most personal essay in the collection, “Encounter With an Asthmatic Patient,” he writes with moving simplicity about the necessity of empathy towards strangers in moments of medical crisis: “Times are hard on a lot of people, but they become easier when we come together to ease our burdens” (p. 84).