Mid-term update on my personal curriculum

I’m about half-way through my personal curriculum! If you recall, for Q1 2026, I’m studying three subjects:

1. Nigerian political history
2. Non-Abrahamic religions
3. Yoruba language

Now just over half-way through (no mid-term break unfortunately), I’d like to share some updates on what I’ve been studying and my plans for the second half of the term.

Nigerian political history

I started off reading the book “Nigeria: A New History of a Turbulent Country” by Richard Bourne, which I randomly picked up at Roving Heights in Lagos a few months ago. After reading the State of Africa last year, I was looking for something similar, but more specific to Nigerian history.

I’m so glad that I stumbled upon this book because it did a great job of giving me a breadth of knowledge about all the important events in Nigeria’s history, from the amalgamation in 1914 to the elections of 2015. The book doesn’t go into a huge amount of detail, which makes it great as an introductory text.

Following this, I watched the classic documentary, “A History of Nigeria” by Jide Olanrewaju.

This was a great way to consolidate the learnings from the previous book. Like that book, it wasn’t incredibly detailed but rather a good overview. It was a nice way to bring that book to life, seeing the real video and audio of quotes I had read in the book.

At this point, I had to decide on if I wanted to do a deep dive into one or two of Nigeria’s previous leaders, or continue with a more general overview of our entire history. I opted for the latter, and picked up a book by an author that was widely recommended to me, Max Siollun.

Siollun has many books that cover Nigeria’s history from before British rule, to more recent political history. Because of my limited time, I decided to start with the book that covers the more recent history - “Nigeria’s Soldiers of Fortune: The Abacha and Obasanjo Years”. This covers the period from 1993 - 2003.

I’m now about half-way through this book, and I’m absolutely loving it. It is a much more detailed account than the previous resources. For example, events that are covered for a paragraph or one page in Bourne’s book are an entire chapter in Siollun’s book. It feels like I’m able to take a topic I already have a surface understanding of, and dive much deeper to unravel the nuances and full context of the events.

Following this, I plan to find resources that cover the more recent years in political history, since it seems most books stop in the early 2000s. So I will look into articles, podcasts, and other more media that may cover the last decade. Please share any recommendations if you have them!

Non-Abrahamic religions

I started this topic off watching a really simple/short video on Youtube, “All religions explained in 10 minutes”. This was a funny but educational summation of the key differences between the major world religions.

A more in-depth resource I watched next was the documentary “Around the world in 80 faiths”. I already wrote about my takeaways from this in my previous newsletter, so won’t go into much detail here, but this was an eye-opening documentary that expanded my view on world religions. In some ways, it showed how diverse religions around the world are. But in other ways, it showed how, at their core, all religions are the same in helping humans navigate uncertainty in life.

My goal in studying non-Abrahamic religions was to expand my view on what religion can look like outside of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. There were four religions in particular I wanted to understand better.

First, Buddhism. I finished reading the “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” earlier in the year, and have been listening to the “Secular Buddhism” podcast, which has been an interesting alternative take on Buddhism outside of “religion”.

Next, I wanted to understand the traditional Yoruba religion and read “Wisdom of the Orishas”. This was a short book that broke down who the Orishas are, what Ifa is, and how to actually practice this religion.

The next two religions I would like to understand more are Hinduism and/or Sikhism. I haven’t yet found the right resources for this, so if there’s any books or documentaries you recommend on either, please share!

Yoruba language

For my study of Yoruba, I have primarily been doing lessons with a tutor every week, which has been going well.

In addition to this, I’ve ordered the book “The Forest of a Thousand Daemons“, which was originally written in Yoruba (Ògbójú Ọdẹ nínú Igbó Irúnmọlẹ̀) but has also been translated to English. I think it could be an interesting practice to read the same book in both languages, to help improve my reading and vocabulary.

Finally on my list, I plan watch at least one Yoruba movie. I’ve put down “Oleku”, which I found on Youtube in Yoruba with English subtitles, but again, if you have recommendations for other movies, please let me know.

Assignments 📝

Now for the hard part 😅

For Nigerian political history, I want to create some sort of data visualisation that will showcase each head of state with their key moments and contributions. I haven’t figured out exactly what it will look like, but will share when it is complete.

For Non-Abrahamic religions, one of my assignments is already complete, which was to write about my takeaways from the documentary “Around the world in 80 faiths”. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll give myself another assignment.

For Yoruba language, I plan to do a translation of Asake’s album, “Mr Money with the Vibe”. It’s one I’ve listened to a lot but would like to break it down properly to really understand everything being said.

   

That’s my update! When my term is over, I plan to share all the resources I used, so stay tuned for that.