Each week here at YNaija, we round up the best Nigerian writing on the internet, highlighting the stories, profiles, interviews and in-depth reporting that rise above the daily churn.

Here are the ones that caught our attention:

1. No more insufficient funds – Adewale Oloworekende 

”There is a long-standing association of Nigeria with cyber-fraud. The origin of these scams in the country can be traced to the 1980s: beset by flailing oil prices—crude oil being Nigeria’s primary source of income—the Shehu Shagari administration oversaw a period of economic decline that caused a spike in unemployment rates and a billowing poverty problem that kick-started the postal fraud era.”

2. Champagne no longer Pops as Nigeria’s Cash-Strapped Middle Class opts for red wine – Bailey Oluwabunmi

”Between 2011-2014, Bimpe Ige, an event planner used to get champagne requests frequently from clients on the type of alcoholic beverage drinks to be served at their events. But from 2014 till date, she noticed that those requests have been reducing with her client’s now preferring red wine. Bimpe’s clients are not the only ones reducing their consumption for champagne commonly referred to as “sparkling wine” but a lot of consumers are now opting for red wine due to its affordability.”

3. Girls Who Never got to be Girls – Sope Lartey

”Society’s greatest injustice to women is the theft of childhood. Whether through rape, suffering, labor, and abuse, girls have been stripped of their innocence and forced to put on armor against the struggle. How does society commit this crime?”

4. Lagos to Amsterdam – Fify Oddly’s Abroad Life – Boyin Plumtre

”The Netherlands is one of the more abroady-abroads for Nigerians. Almost everything about the country is different from Nigeria. It has qwhitethe white population; of its 17 million inhabitants, only about 700,000 are of Afro-Dutch ancestry. This made it a big change for a cute ass brown-skin Nigerian, like the subject of today’s story- Fifi Oddly.”

5. The New Guard of Nigerian musicians – Joey Akan

”The Lagos-born Bowofoluwa Olufisayo Odunsi dropped out of a Ghanaian university in 2015 because of his struggle with A.D.H.D. and soon ended up in a recording studio in Accra, where he experimented with beats pulled from ’80s and ’90s funk music. His debut album, “Rare.,” released in October 2018, defies categorization, hopping between dance-worthy pop and quieter ballads.”

6. Naming – Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu

”True, there has been an insistence on the part of my heart to fret over the well-being of this man whom I have tried with consistent failure to forget; to hope in the aching safety of its privacy that he is doing fine. There has also been the way my lips spoke him into cupped hands each time I sit in prayer before God, legs crossed under my weight and head bowed, shrouding him in a wish of perpetual well-being.”

7. The Mania of Queer Desire: In Praise of Fever Ray’s ‘Plunge’ – Logan February

“Plunge,” a track by the Swedish artist, Fever Ray, from her album of the same title, is a five-and-a-half-minute odyssey into the shape of desire. Not as a feeling, I think, but as a cognitive experience. It’s simple and intuitive at first, with no words or vocals. But as one listens further, one finds this map of desire to be full of dead-ends and detours, tricky slopes, many circles. The melody is pitch-shifted into various poses, into delicate depths and heights of terror. And the synths—at times shrill and cruel, but always exciting—develop a sadistic tone. The song gives a sense of being consumed by a napalm fire, sudden and slow. Or of plunging into frigid water. Those sensations must be very similar. Why do I imagine they must?”

8. What the Dead Man Said – Chinelo Onwualu 

”I suppose you could say that it started with the storm. I hadn’t seen one like it in 30 years. Not since I moved to Tkaronto, in the Northern Indigenous Zone of Turtle Island—what settler-colonialists still insisted on calling North America. I’d forgotten its raw power: angry thunderclouds that blot out the sun, taking you from noon to evening in an instant, then the water that comes down like fury—like the sky itself wants to hurt you.”

9. The End of an Incredible Journey at Paystack – Ibukun Akinnawo 

”When asked why I’m leaving, it’s difficult for me to give an answer that satisfies whoever is asking. And it’s difficult to explain outside of: I have a deep longing to try something new, discover a new challenge, step out of my comfort zone.”

10. Lets talk about Being A Christian Feminist – Stephanie C. Odili 

”If you are truly Christian, you shouldn’t be homophobic, you shouldn’t be against women preaching in church, you shouldn’t support any form of submission and women’s oppression. Because frankly, these doctrines are antithetical to the character of Christ. Read Galatians chapter 3 verse 28 : “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

11. What Nigeria’s Nollywood can learn from Med Hondo’s ”West Indies” – Wilfred Okichie

”Cinema in Nigeria has always existed as something of an elitist pastime, but it wasn’t until the video boom in the 1990s that the industry became truly democratized, with audiences speaking out with their money and placing faith on a new generation of business inclined producers. At this time, there were no theatre houses that survived the oil bust of the eighties and so all of the entertainment came through video and television.”