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It was May 2016, a year into the wait for Buhari to deliver the Nigeria of our dreams, a promise not more than that of 40 acres and a mule in 19th century America. Probably famished and certainly frustrated, Salim Yunusa was in a rickshaw heading home after a busy day at school. It was a Wednesday. He poured out his emotions in a poem and shared it on Facebook with the hashtag #PoeticWednesday. Abdulbasit Abubakar Adam enjoyed the poem and shared it. Maryam Gatawa saw it and was moved too. More people joined Salim to write poems the following Wednesday, and Maryam’s friend Nasiba Babale soon arrived to become the foremost devotee of this decade old burgeoning digital culture.

At the peak of the hashtag, peer pressure weighed on nearly every young educated person on Arewa Facebook to write a poem each Wednesday. It was such a compelling trend that almost everyone joined in. Many eventually grew tired and drifted away, but the few who remained are now some of the leading voices in the 4th generation of Nigerian poets, most notably the organisation’s Creative Director, Nasiba Babale, and Assistant Program Officer, Abduljalal Musa Aliyu.

I borrow the title of this piece from the opening chapter of Chinua Achebe’s war memoir, where he credits his parents with pioneering a cultural fusion of Igbo traditional values, Western education, and religion. While Achebe’s title ends with the plural “frontiers” to signal that cultural merger, this piece aims to make a case for a digital literary culture that was started and sustained on social media by Poetic Wednesdays.

2016 was not just a year of digital literary renaissance in the North; it was arguably the year of northern literature in Nigeria. Five months after the hashtag began, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s Season of Crimson Blossoms and Elnathan John’s Born on a Tuesday slugged it out for Africa’s most prestigious literary prize — the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature — with Ibrahim clinching it to become the first and only northern novelist to win. Both books are now widely regarded as modern classics in African literature.

This triumph resonated deeply among young northern poets and writers, bolstering their faith in literary creation and offering a tangible example of the possibilities the pen could unlock. In 2017, German journalist Gwendolin Hilse, writing for Deutsche Welle, would describe Ibrahim as a northern Nigerian “literary provocateur.” Salim Yunusa would later become one of Ibrahim’s numerous mentees.

Make no mistake: Poetic Wednesdays did not emerge from a vacuum. Northern Nigeria already had poets writing in English whose work, particularly among the 3rd generation of Nigerian poets, could stand toe‑to‑toe with the country’s finest. These poets include Ahmed Maiwada, the late Pius Adesanmi, Ismail Bala, Richard Ali, and Umar Abubakar Sidi. Notably, Bala, Sidi, and Ali directly mentored some of the founders of Poetic Wednesdays.

As poetry gained traction on northern social media, the young poets of Poetic Wednesdays invented “Engausa” poetry, fusing English and Hausa in their verses to broaden the craft’s local appeal. Abdulbasit Abubakar Adam stands as its leading voice. While this form is largely used by spoken word artists in the North, notable 4th generation Nigerian poets from the region — such as Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi — have also brought it to the written page.

Nigeria is a country adept at waging economic war on its citizens, and the cost of this war includes the very stingy compensation for the torturous labour of literary creation in the country. As a result, many of the passionate and brilliant poets from Poetic Wednesdays left the literary space in search of greener pastures. The development sector, born out of Nigeria’s twin national shames of high illiteracy and insecurity, has absorbed a good number of them. Others drifted into the civil service, business, or the corporate world, where demanding schedules leave little time for the leisure that writing requires. Maryam Gatawa stands out as the most promising poet the group lost to the business world.

Salman Rushdie once quipped that unless you’re Maya Angelou or Amanda Gorman, forget about making money from poetry. But he said this in the context of Western poets compared to their novelist counterparts. In Nigeria, both poets and novelists are ridiculously under‑rewarded.

“We were just finishing school. We were hot and young, with so much time on our hands,” Salim Yunusa said during a virtual discussion with Sadiya Abdulaziz (a volunteer at the group)  that also featured Abdulbasit Abubakar Adam and Nasiba Babale. 

Hosted by Poetic Wednesdays to mark its 10th anniversary, the event prompted reflections on the group’s journey. “We all loved what we were doing,” Abdulbasit said before recounting the labour put into nurturing that love. “We worked 9 – 5  jobs to fund Poetic Wednesdays.” But this love, and the toll of its labour, were not in vain. “We have now reached the stage where Poetic Wednesdays can stand without any of us,” Nasiba said.

Launching the Poetic Wednesdays Youth Advisory Board was the first step the organisation took as it embarked on its second decade. “For ten years, Poetic Wednesdays grew organically because young people believed in the power of their own stories,” the founder said in a statement, adding, “Setting up this Youth Advisory Board ensures that our community remains grounded in youthful innovation, inclusivity, and fresh creative vision as we look toward the future.”

The inaugural members of the board include founding member Abdulbasit Abubakar Adam, novelist Fatima Bala, child rights advocate and poet Zara Alim Bakari, data scientist Yazid Mikail, and communication strategist Aliyu Kutigi. 

Poetic Wednesdays, registered with the CAC as Poetic Wednesdays Initiative, is now managed by a team of seven: Salim Yunusa, Founder; Nasiba Babale, Creative Director; Saphiyya Embee, Admin Officer; Usman Karofi, Program Officer; Abduljalal Musa Aliyu, Assistant Program Officer; Mustapha Aliyu, HR Manager; and Nana Sule, Communications Manager.

Surprisingly, Nana Sule was unaware of Poetic Wednesdays in its first two years. “I first met Salim in 2018 at the Minna Books and Arts Festival,” she told me, though she had no memory of that encounter until a year later. At that point, poet Ismail Bala recommended her to Salim to host a joint reading in Kano of Umar Abubakar Sidi’s The Poet of Dust and Umar Saleh Gwani’s Thunderclap, organised by Poetic Wednesdays. Salim was already acquainted with her, and as her ties to the initiative deepened, she joined the team five years ago.

As they virtually discussed memories of their modest beginnings with Sadiya Abdulaziz, a reference was made to the first writing workshop they organised in Kano, the city that now houses the organisation’s main office. The workshop was for secondary school children, and among the participants was then adolescent Hidaya Mahmud Muhammad, who is now arguably Kano’s most prominent spoken‑word artist.

On 6 June 2026, two weeks after the virtual discussion, the literati gathered at Alliance Française in Kano for a joint celebration: the Kano International Poetry Festival 3.0 Eid Pop-up and Poetic Wednesdays’ 10th anniversary. Whether by design or happenstance, the opening performance came from Hidaya, one of the fruits of Poetic Wednesdays’ early efforts. Her piece was a lament on the deplorable state of Nigeria. Hafsat Ismail Zubairu followed with an emotionally charged, satirical poem on what it means to be a Nigerian. Both Hidaya and Hafsat are fellows of Building Bridges, an academy renowned for instilling social consciousness in artists, so it came as no surprise that both delivered works of deep concern for the nation.

Abdul’ahad Dalhat, fondly known to friends and admirers as the Prince of Arts, took the stage after them and led the audience on a journey back through memories of Sallah celebrations from childhood to adulthood, using Engausa poetry. A young boy named Al’amin performed a poem advocating for literacy.

Founder Salim Yunusa took to the stage, occasionally scrolling his phone as he read out the matter‑of‑fact statistics of Poetic Wednesdays’ achievements over the past decade: ten thousand books mobilised and distributed free in seven northern states; three literary publications; two editions of the Kano International Poetry Festival; eighty workshops organised; and several collaborations with sister organisations. 

More poetry performances followed, before journalist Misbahu El‑hamza hosted Nana Sule and Nasiba Babale in a panel discussion, during which they revealed the theme “Reclaiming Indigenous Languages” and the dates (8–10 October 2026) for the third edition of the Kano International Poetry Festival (KAPFEST).

The KAPFEST, described by prominent art administrator and founder of Hill Top Creative Arts Foundation, BM Dzukogi as a bar-raiser, is Poetic Wednesdays’ biggest program yet. It has become the premier shrine in the North, where the literary ummah from across the country gathers to celebrate African literature and ideas.   

While founder Salim Yunusa has tilted toward literary administration rather than creation, Nasiba Babale is the bestselling author of Pickled Moments, a poetry collection published to wide critical acclaim. Abduljalal Musa Aliyu has earned multiple poetry accolades, including a chapbook, Encyclopedia of Dolour, published in the US by Chestnut Review. In prose, Nana Sule is the bestselling author of Not So Terrible People—a book I described as a small magic of artistic triumph.

Minna, Kaduna, and Jos  might still be vying for the title of the North’s literary capital, but for the past ten years, Poetic Wednesdays, operating from Kano, has seized the digital literary space, populated by the youth, from their grasp.

Ahmad Mubarak Tanimu is a writer and critic. A fellow of Flame Tree Writers Project and Freedom Vibes Academy.  He’s a teaching staff in the department of Economics, Nigerian Army University, Biu. His works have appeared in JAY Lit, Dlitreview, NWF Journal and Flame Tree Anthology.