Nigerian Journalist Publishes Poetry on Climate and Hope

A journalist who once exposed a president's plagiarism is now using poetry to expose deeper truths about our changing world.

Adeola Akinremi, the Nigerian investigative journalist who made global headlines in 2016 for revealing that President Muhammadu Buhari plagiarized Barack Obama's victory speech, has published his debut poetry collection. "Scattered Ground" draws on his years reporting from conflict zones, climate disasters, and centers of power across four continents.

The collection doesn't shy away from hard topics. Akinremi writes about desertification creeping across farmland, rising seas swallowing coastlines, and families displaced by forces beyond their control. But these aren't abstract policy problems on the page—they're the faces of farmers he interviewed and the voices of communities he witnessed firsthand as both a reporter and World Bank consultant.

The title works as a triple metaphor: Africa's dispersed potential, a self that has crossed multiple worlds, and a people finding their place in rapid change. Akinremi studied under the influence of T.S. Eliot and Nigerian literary pioneer J.P. Clark-Bekederemo, learning that journalism and poetry can both carry a people's grief and dreams.

His credentials back up the ambition. Akinremi won Nigeria's Media Merit Award for Features Writer of the Year and has been cited by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian UK. He holds two master's degrees, including one from Johns Hopkins, and is currently pursuing doctoral research while working in international development.

The Ripple Effect

What makes this collection powerful is how it refuses to separate personal from political. Akinremi weaves intimate memories of loss with larger stories of state power, democratic erosion, and war's impact on ordinary lives. He's crafting what he calls "the African specific and the universal human"—poetry that honors Nigerian identity while speaking to anyone who's watched their home change or been forced to leave it.

The book joins a long tradition of newspaper editors who became poets, but Akinremi brings something fresh: the precision of investigative reporting applied to verse. He doesn't preach about climate justice or migration—he mourns, witnesses, and insists on seeing the humanity behind every headline.

For readers burned out on doom scrolling, "Scattered Ground" offers something different: clear-eyed honesty about our crises paired with deep empathy for those living through them.