Abu Bakr Sadiq is a Nigerian poet. Author of Leaked Footages (University of Nebraska Press, 2024), he joins two other Minna poets; Saddiq Dzukogi and Hauwa Shafii Nuhu on the list of poetry exporters from Minna to the USA. Abu Bakr Sadiq is the winner of the 2023 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry. He is the winner of the 2022 IGNYTE award for Best Speculative Poetry, and a finalist for the Evaristo Prize for African Poetry, 2023. His work is nominated for the SFPA Rhysling Award, Pushcart Prize, and is published in Boston Review, The Fiddlehead, MIZNA, FIYAH, Palette Poetry, Uncanny Magazine, Augur Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, and elsewhere.
Currently a student at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, he is the co-founder of JustForWords, a literary organization dedicated to the promotion of old and new talents in performance poetry. In 2021, JustForWords organized and hosted the first ever poetry slam in Minna.
With his poems published in various journals and magazines around the world, Abu Bakr Sadiq is steadily etching his name as one of the most vibrant new voices in the African poetry scene. He is known for a unique style of poetry called “Speculative Poetry” which utilizes elements of science and fiction. He has so mastered it that his contemporaries call him Spec lord (lord of speculative poetry)
He is passionate about using poetry as an instrument for sharing personal narratives of the lives of his people that may not readily be available to the world, with the hope of finding solutions to their problems.
