If you had met Onyeka Nwelue in 2009, as I did, you wouldn’t have guessed that sixteen years later you’d need to look back and try to make sense of what became of him. Sixteen years ago, Onyeka Nwelue was an aspiring writer and digital native, avidly promoting his soon-to-be-published novel.
Like now, he was chronically online on his blog, promoting The Abyssinian Boy and name-dropping superstar writers of Indian descent, Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, in the comments section, positioning himself to become a famous author. The premise of his book, and perhaps its title, I believe, was taken from Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl.
DADA Books published Onyeka’s The Abyssinian Boy. This small press briefly injected a spark into Nigeria’s literary community, particularly with its publication of Jumoke Verissimo’s phenomenal debut poetry collection, I am Memory (2008). The next year, DADA Books would walk away with major prizes in both the fiction and poetry categories at the annual Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) prize ceremony; Nwelue’s novel won the T. M. Aluko Prize for first book of fiction.
Unfortunately, DADA Books closed a few years later. I know this because DADA Books was to publish my first poetry collection, Clinical Blues. One humid afternoon in Ndiowu, I received a PDF of my beautifully laid-out book of poems, complete with blurbs, and a Dear-Dami note from the publisher. DADA Books was letting me go.
As of 2025, Onyeka Nwelue has self-published at least 36 books. Sadly, he is not regarded for the quality of his writing or for the awesomeness or wholesomeness of his ideas. He makes the news often for controversies. His most recent appearance is a damning report from the Washington Post investigation into his links to Margaux Blanchard, an alias that published dozens of substandard AI-generated journalism pieces, which have since been taken down. All evidence in that report unequivocally points to Nwelue. His response to the investigation has been abusive, from insulting statements sent out as electronic mails to unrelenting abusive posts on social media. Nwelue is not new to controversy. Over the years of his developing a voluminous portfolio, his appetite for controversy has both sharpened and worsened, while in the main his literary ambitions have suffered, his overall credibility undermined by the very acts that have made him popular.
While the Washington Post was exposing Nwelue’s questionable actions, he turned his attention to Nigerian celebrity chef Hilda Baci, who was trying to set a new world record for the largest pot of Jollof rice. This wasn’t Baci’s first attempt at a Guinness World Record, and it wasn’t Nwelue’s first time criticising a celebrity on X. He posted a critical tweet about Baci that went viral and then elaborated on his opinion once people engaged with his tweet.
It is difficult to dismiss the possibility of Nwelue using his Baci tweet on X as a diversion from his own disgrace. Nwelue is known for his misogynistic, classist, racist, and tribalist views on social media, particularly on X, where he drip-feeds his timeline with vitriol. Every so often, his unsavoury views go viral. It is not unusual for him to apologise if good sense luckily succeeds in prevailing on him to do so. More often than not, those apologies are short-lived; he does not hold himself to any ethical standards, improvising his behaviour as he bumbles along.
If you know Nwelue in person, you would be conflicted about his online persona. In person, Nwelue is genial. A bit socially awkward, but also a showman, with a direct Nigerian bluntness. He is humorous and can come across as thoughtful; hence, it may become difficult to believe that he genuinely believes in the hate he spreads online. This, of course, does not take away from the distress he causes others by the sheer act of posting hate speech.
Days after the Washington Post piece and his Baci takedown, social media was awash with Nwelue’s photo-ops featuring the Nigerian politician, PR mogul, and magazine publisher, Chief Dele Momodu. The temporal relationship between Nwelue’s disgrace in mainstream US media and his not-so-subtle PR drive at Momodu’s residence in Accra, Ghana, is no mere coincidence. It is a masterstroke from a hustler whose media savvy gives Nigerian musician Portable a run for his hair dye.
In a widely televised moment at Momodu’s dinner table, prayers and kind words are said for Nwelue, whose shtick is to flatter his principals with gifts, usually copies of his latest book. I believe Momodu was presented with The Book of Davido, Nwelue’s festschrift for the Afrobeats musician, who has in the past openly insulted Momodu, both in person and in his recordings.
In the spring of 2023, Nwelue (or Professor Nwelue?) was removed from his role as an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford. The Academic Visitor is a non-paying, non-teaching role offered to an academic or researcher, which affords them both the time and resources of the prestigious university. During his time at Oxford, Nwelue founded the James Currey Society, which organised several literary events, including fellowship programmes that hosted residencies for writers.
Nwelue fell out of favour at Oxford after organising a book-reading event on campus with the controversial journalist David Hundeyin. Both Hundeyin’s books were published by Abibiman Publishing, a partnership launched in 2021 by Onyeka Nwelue and Chudi Igweonu.
Nwelue and Hundeyin’s versions of what happened at the book event are confusing. Nwelue believes his removal from Oxford was racist, though he initially issued an apology for his actions. When the apology did not yield the desired outcome, he reverted to his aggressive behaviour online. Oxford University and the Cherwell editorial board have since published reports on Nwelue’s questionable activities on campus. The main issues were the unauthorised use of university logos, misrepresenting himself as a professor without the necessary credentials, and failing to be transparent about how fellows were selected for the James Currey Society.
Soon after publishing his first novel in 2009, Nwelue was admitted as an undergraduate at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He left university shortly thereafter to focus entirely on his growing career as a writer, scriptwriter, and filmmaker. He started working on two film scripts and his second novel, The Orchard of Memories.
I attended both the first and second Bayelsa Book and Art Festivals organised by Onyeka Nwelue in 2011 and 2013, respectively. Both events failed. The first failed because the event’s programme was overly ambitious, and there was no audience in Yenagoa. The second failed because no one was coordinating the event, and there was still no audience. At both events, Nwelue would disappear and reappear with his entourage, smiling and apologising profusely. He was also organising a film festival in Yenagoa at the same time.
Nwelue knows how to be charming, especially when you’re about to lose patience with him. In 2014, he accompanied me to the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Yaba, to collect my appointment letter for residency training. Because of the colourful, trailing dreadlocks of our consummate show-off, an enthralled, overzealous hospital guard mistook him for a psychiatric patient and eagerly offered to help him along to secure his hospital admission.
Also in 2014, Nwelue invited me to write a chapter for his book, Hip-Hop Is Only for Children. I was disappointed when he sent me a draft of the complete manuscript, and my writing was buried in the text without a clear byline. Was he trying to pass off my work as his? Were there other ghost contributors whose words would be stolen from them? I asked him to remove my work from his book. He apologised and explained: he had crowdsourced ideas and words. Later in the editorial process, credit would be restored. True to his word, a chapter of my writing clearly bearing my name was featured. But I did not receive a publishing contract, an advance, or any royalties.
One of the most-read articles in the culture journal The Lagos Review was a special report on the incident at Oxford. The Lagos Review Report supported Nwelue. Suffice it to say that it was a media spin to salvage what was left of Nwelue’s reputation. Can you explain in lucid prose why someone who dropped out of university would walk around a famous university town in England dressed up in fancy robes and claim to be a professor? The position of Academic Visitor at Oxford surely is grand enough, but appropriating the title of Professor at Oxford is what would gratify a case of megalomania.
Two years ago, moved deeply by Celestine Ukwu’s music, I wrote in my Substack newsletter that I would one day write about his work. Nwelue replied on X that I could not write about Celestine Ukwu. He was once again spreading ethnic bigotry, claiming I couldn’t write about an Igbo Highlife musician from Enugu State simply because I am Yoruba. This is surprising, given that he has written books with the following titles: The Real Owners of Britain, The Strangers of Braamfontein, A Japanese Professor in Accra, and The Buried Africans of Mexico. Isn’t it amusing, its perniciousness not thereby diminished, that a writer known for writing about characters from other ethnic backgrounds would be so bigoted about the transethnic work of another writer? Even more, Nwelue’s latest book is a tribute to David Adeleke, an Afrobeats musician from Ede, Osun State.
People’s true character and motivation become clearer with time. The warning signs that we sometimes miss return to us in retrospect. Nwelue was always clear about the terms under which he intended to engage with the world. His conviction was rock-solid, near delusional, like the character Jimmy McGill of the Netflix show, Better Call Saul.
His approach to language was always gimmicky. When I reviewed his first novel, I praised his improvisational use of language. I said it reminded me of Amos Tutuola. Nwelue doubled down on his effort, investing absolutely in gimmickry and gewgaws, rather than in industry and craft. He has authored numerous books, for which he is the principal promoter. He spends most of his time on social media, hawking his wares alongside his self-destructive ideas. If you don’t patronise his wares, you would engage with his provocative ideas. Either way, he has your attention mostly because of his inclination to self-devaluation projected onto others, and this has always been Nwelue’s grift.
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