The Sokoto Book and Arts Festival (SOBAFest) has officially confirmed its 2025 edition, announcing the theme “Intersections,” along with its curators, dates, and key partners. The festival will take place from August 22 to 24, 2025 in Sokoto, Nigeria, and is organised by Book O’Clock Literary Foundation in partnership with Poetry Club UDUS.
This fifth edition of SOBAFest will be co-curated by writer and cultural curator Zainab Abdulrazaq and award-winning poet Ridwan Fasasi, who will bring together bold literary and artistic perspectives rooted in contemporary African expression.
Each year’s theme at SOBAFest functions as a chapter in an unfolding narrative — a careful layering of identity and direction grounded in the historical and cultural memory of Northern Nigeria, yet open to broader intellectual and creative conversations.
In 2021, Changing the Narrative challenged inherited stories and dominant representations. 2022’s A Returning explored the act of remembrance and re-rooting. 2023’s Root & Route traced the dual journey of origin and movement. In 2024, Ascension marked a moment of emergence and collective rising. Now, in 2025, Intersections arrives as the natural next phase — the meeting point. A space where tradition and innovation, the local and the global, memory and vision all cross paths.
SOBAFest 2025 argues that the African postmodern artist is an intersectional entity. Accordingly, the festival will hold space for conversations around hybridity, post/decolonial identity, linguistic transformations, genre fusion and fluidity, reimagined authenticity, home-diaspora liminalities, critical arts, cross-sectoral practices, and AI-tech fusion — all within the bounds of literary and artistic expression grounded in Arewa.
Festival Director, Uchenna Emelife notes, “Intersections isn’t just a theme — it’s a reflection of the African artist who navigates multiple selves, a metaphor for how we live and create in a world of shifting meanings and layered histories. This edition will explore those overlaps with clarity, depth, and celebration.”
Audiences can expect a wide-ranging programme including poetry performances, panel discussions, book chats, art exhibitions, dance, music, workshops, and more — all designed to invite dialogue, provoke thought, and celebrate creative intersections.
ABOUT SOBAFEST
Launched in 2021, the Sokoto Book and Arts Festival is committed to reshaping narratives, celebrating cultural memory, and amplifying voices through multidisciplinary engagement. Since 2021, it has brought together over 500 art enthusiasts in the state and engaged them in cultural and artistic conversations, activities and performances. It is a project of Book O’Clock, a Sokoto-based literary organisation, in collaboration with community partners like Poetry Club UDUS.
ABOUT THE CURATORS
Zainab Abdulrasaq
Ridwan Fasasi
For media inquiries, interviews, sponsorship or partnership opportunities, please contact:
Zainab Abdulrasaq
Curator, SOBAFest
sobafest@gmail.com
08103594740
