Award-winning investigative journalist Adeola Akinremi has published his debut poetry collection, “Scattered Ground.”
The former Features Editor of THISDAY and World Bank Group consultant announced the publication in a statement shared with PREMIUM TIMES on Friday.
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Mr Akinremi revealed that his writing sensibility was influenced by two literary giants: T.S. Eliot, the eminent Anglo-American Modernist poet of the early twentieth century, and J.P. Clark-Bekederemo, a pioneer of modern Nigerian and African literature.
He said, “J.P. Clark showed us that a journalist could also be the voice of a people’s grief and aspiration. And Eliot, that great Modernist, reminded me that poetry must not flinch from the ruins of the world it surveys.
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“Scattered Ground is my attempt to hold both of those truths at once: the African specific and the universal human.”
Scattered Ground
The poetry was shaped by Mr Akinremi’s experiences as a journalist, public policy practitioner, and witness to history.
Drawing on his reporting from conflict zones, his time navigating global centres of power, and his observations of climate displacement, migration, and the human condition across continents, the collection presents a voice that is both distinctly Nigerian and universally relatable.
The title itself serves as a layered metaphor: the scattered ground of a continent whose wealth and potential are often dispersed; the scattered ground of a self that has traversed multiple worlds; and the scattered ground of a language and a people striving to find their place in a rapidly changing world.
Themes
“Scattered Ground” confronts the defining crises of our time with courage and clarity. The climate emergency shapes the poems—the creeping devastation of desertification, rising seas, and dwindling resources that hit communities hardest, even though they have contributed least to the forces behind them.
Mr Akinremi writes as a journalist and policy analyst who has sat with displaced farmers across Africa and reported from flood-stricken coastlines; the climate grief in these pages is tangible, lived, and witnessed.
The collection also takes an unflinching look at the machinery of state power—the systems of governance that suppress the individual, silence dissent, and entrench inequality.
Drawing on his experience reporting on insurgencies and the slow erosion of democratic institutions, Mr Akinremi combines the precision of a journalist with the intensity of a poet. His reflections on power do not preach; they mourn, expressing the frustration of a citizen who had hoped for more.
Beneath the surface, a deep meditation on African identity and displacement runs. In an era of mass migration fuelled by war, climate change, poverty, and political persecution, Akinremi maps the inner journeys of those who leave and those who remain—people who carry the memory of home across borders and oceans, and those who watch it fade.
In “Scattered Ground”, migration is not a policy issue but a human reality, rendered with empathy and nuance.
Conflict and human dignity echo throughout the collection. Mr Akinremi depicts war from the perspective of its victims, not as abstract statistics or strategic manoeuvres, but as shattered lives and lost futures.
He insists on recognising the humanity that often disappears behind headlines. Interwoven with these broader themes are personal grief and memory—the intimate, private losses that give public crises their human weight.
Akinremi
Mr Akinremi, a United States-based public policy specialist, is recognised as one of the most accomplished journalists of his generation. His career has spanned the newsroom, the halls of global institutions, and now, the realm of poetry.
With the release of “Scattered Ground”, he enters a distinguished global tradition of newspaper editors who have embraced poetry as a second language. This lineage stretches across continents and centuries.
He has received numerous accolades, including the Nigeria Media Merit Award for “Features Writer of the Year” in 2006 and the Diamond Award for Media Excellence, two of African journalism’s most esteemed honours. His work has been cited by major international outlets, including the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Guardian (UK), The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.
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While on study leave from THISDAY, Mr Akinremi made global headlines in 2016 when he revealed that Nigeria’s then-President Muhammadu Buhari had plagiarised former US President Barack Obama’s 2008 victory speech—a revelation that sparked international outrage and led to a presidential apology.
His work in international development has taken him across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, where he has consulted for the World Bank Group.
He holds a Master’s degree in International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., as well as a second Master’s from the University of Ibadan. Mr Akinremi is currently pursuing doctoral research.
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