Kano has always been a city of stories, told in markets, sung in palaces, whispered in courtyards. But for three radiant days, the city did not just host stories; it became one. With the just-concluded KAPFEST 2.0, Kano wore poetry like a crown, and the world bowed in awe.
This was not a festival that raised the bar; it carved it into the sky. From the lineup of panels to the brilliance of the panelists, to the audacity of topics that bridged art with politics, memory with resistance, the planning bore the fingerprints of a team that worked with precision, sweat, and vision. The effort was not simply visible — it was felt in the bones of every session.
KAPFEST 2.0 was not just a sequence of performances and conversations; it was an experience. Panels became firesides where truths collided, where voices of griots and sages stitched together history, justice, and longing. Poetry leapt off the stage, refusing to be caged as mere words, becoming instead a call to reimagine Nigeria itself.
In the quiet pauses between sessions, the festival revealed another kind of beauty. I spoke with guests who admitted this was their first visit to Kano. Their eyes glowed with surprise and delight, their voices heavy with gratitude. They came curious and left transformed, carrying stories of a city reintroduced to them through poetry, kindness, and vision.
And so KAPFEST became more than a literary festival. It was also an act of cultural diplomacy, a reframing of Kano in the eyes of the world. Where outsiders expected dust, they found brilliance. Where they imagined silence, they encountered a chorus of voices refusing to be ignored.
For the Poetic Wednesdays Initiative — the dreamers who dared to give us this stage — the work is done, but not without cost. They poured themselves out. And in the words of Ibrahim Sodangi, tabbas su Salim sun gajiyar kansu. Indeed, they gave their all, and in that giving, they gifted us something unforgettable.
KAPFEST 2.0 has set a standard that will demand courage to surpass — even from the team that birthed it. Yet, perhaps that is the true triumph of this festival: it has shown us that Kano, and indeed Nigeria, can imagine higher, demand better, and create beauty that carries far beyond its borders.
Ismail writes from Kano – Nigeria