Academics from Nigeria

"I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there."

"The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny."

"There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?"

"[T]he PDP, on whose platform he stands, represents the most harrowing of this nation’s nightmares over and beyond even the horrors of the Abacha regime. If he wishes to be considered on his own merit, now is time for him, as well as others similarly enmeshed, to exercise the moral courage that goes with his repudiation of that party, a dissociation from its past, and a pledge to reverse its menacing future. We shall find him an alternative platform on which to stand, and then have him present his credentials along those of other candidates engaged in forging a credible opposition alliance."

""Come January 20, 2017; watch my WOLEXIT" [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/nobel-prize-winner-wole-soyinka-donald-trump-throws-away-green-card-a7450141.html"

"England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there....We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space.....A virus has attacked the world of sense and sensibility, and it has spread to Nigeria....The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world-as if someone had given them a new stature...Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere."

"The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism."

"the contemporary novel . . . I've read one or two: Rushdie, I've enjoyed, again, exceptionally, Marquez, I love his works: that's another exception. Bessie Head: I found her novels very, very gripping, fascinating, challenging, really intellectually intriguing. Then that black American woman writer, Toni Morrison, the author of Sula, Song of Solomon: she's a fascinating writer. Umberto Eco . . . But generally I don't read novels."

"Sidi feels empowered by seeing her beauty for the first time in the magazine prints. She recognizes that her beauty is a commodity, allowing her agency to make a future for herself. This is a novel idea: choosing one's own future is reserved for men."

"It is five full months since last / I took a wife"

"The greedy dog! Insatiate camel of a foolish, doting race."

"How often must I tell you, Sidi, that / A grown-up girl must cover up her... / Her... shoulders? I can see quite... quite / A good portion of—that!"

"(Lakunle, 2)"

"What I boast is known in Lagos, that city / Of magic, in Badagry where Saro women bathe / In gold, even in smaller towns less than / Twelve miles from here..."

"(Lakunle, 5)"

"Bush-girl you are, bush girl you'll always be; / Uncivilized and primitive—bush-girl!"

"(Lakunle, 9)"

"My Ruth, my Rachel, Esther, Bathsheba / Thou sum of fabled perfections / From Genesis to Revelations"

"(Lakunle, 20)"

"Sadiku, I am young and brimming; he is spent. / I am the twinkle of a jewel / But he is the hind-quarters of a lion!"

"(Sidi, 23)"

"No! I do not envy him! / Just one woman for me!"

"(Lakunle, 26)"

"To husband his wives surely ought to be / A man's first duties—at all times."

"(Sidi, 47)"

"I do not hate progress, only its nature / Which makes all roofs and faces look the same."

"(Baroka, 52)"

"Moreover, I will admit, / It solves the problem of her bride-price too. / A man must live or fall by his true / Principles. That, I had sworn, / Never to pay."

"(Lakunle, 61)"

"Lakunle, last seen, having freed himself of Sadiku, clearing a space for the young girl."

"(Soyinka, 64)"

"The accumulated heritage—that is what we are celebrating. Mali. Chaka. Songhai. Glory. Empires."

"I see we’ve got another of the good old days. Obaneji [on the contrary]."

"Will you take my case?"

"When you see a man hurrying, he has got a load on his back. Do you think I live emptily that I will take another's cause for pay or mercy?"

"The world is big, but the dead are bigger"

"This whole family business sickens me. Let everybody lead their own lives,""

"These rites of the dead. I do not know why you take them on,""

"Aroni has taken control. That is when the guilty become afraid."

"Adenebi becomes defensive and says, "Have you no feeling for those who died?""

"Why don't you confess it? You are the type who would rather die in your bed."

""I have a particular aversion to being mauled by women"

"Recognition is the curse I carry with me."

"Doesn't she look like the type that would drive men to madness and self-destruction?"

"When your businessmen ruin the lesser ones, do you go crying to them?""

"The guests we were sent are slaves and lackeys. They have only come to undermine our strength. To preach to us how ignoble we are."

"The descendants of our great forebears...let them symbolize all that is noble in our nation.""

"A King does not become a menial just because he puts down his crown to eat."

"A shilling's vegetable must appease a halfpenny spice."

"The nude shanks of a king is not a sight for children - it will blind them."

"It was our fathers who said, not I - a crown is a burden when the king visits his favourite's chambers. When the king's wrapper falls off in audience, wise men know he wants to be left alone."

"It is a mindless clown who dispenses thanks as a fowl scatters meal not caring where it falls."

"Only a foolish child lets a father prostrate to him."

"We lift the King's umbrella higher than men but it never pushes the sun in the face."

"The ostrich also sports plumes but I've yet to see that wise bird leave the ground."

"When the dog hides a bone does he not throw up sand?"

"Age has shrunk the tortoise and the shell is full of air pockets."

"When a squirrel seeks sanctuary up the iroko tree the hunter's chase is ended."

"If the young sapling bends, the old twig if it resists the wind, can only break."

"It's a foolish elder who becomes a creditor, since he must wait until the other world, or outlive his debtors."

"You say you get pride and you are still a conductor on a bolekaja."

"Nonsense, we run a bus. The seats face where you are going"

"Do you take me for a common gawper after misery?... My bed is among the dead, and when the road rises a victory cry to break my sleep I hurry to a disgruntled swam of souls full of spite for their rejected bodies"

"...There are dangers in the Quest I know, but the Word may be found companion not to life, but Death."

"God rot your coward bones! Do you think not enough people die here that you must come and threaten me with death. You spurious spew. You instrument of mortgage. You unlicensed appendage of the steering wheel..."

"It’s my life that’s gone into his. I haven’t burrowed so deep to cast good earth onto worthless seeds…."

"Power comes from bending Nature to your will."

"What is one flesh from another? So I tried it again, just to be sure of myself. It was the first step to power, you understand. Power in its purest sense. The end of inhibitions. The conquest of weakness of your too human flesh with all its sentiment."

"Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress truth."

"Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away"

"For me, justice is the first condition of humanity."

"I have always held the view that when you have that situation, you must refuse to be part of it"

"A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces"

"This market is my roost. When I come among the women I am a chicken with a hundred mothers."

"When they get this way there is nothing you can do. It's simply hammering against a brick wall."

"You know this business has to be stopped, Simon. And you are the only man who can do it."

"Is there now a streak of light at the end of the passage, a light I dare not look upon?"

"Then I slowly realised that your greatest art is the art of survival. But at least have the humility to let others survive in their own way."

"Because he could not bear to let honour fly out of doors, he stopped it with his life. The son has proved the father Elesin, and there is nothing left in your mouth to gnash but infant gums."

"Things do not always happen as one plans. There are many disappointments in life. There is always the unexpected. You plan carefully, you decide on one step after another, and then...well, that is life. We are not God. So you see, one cannot afford to be weighed down by the unexpected. You will find that only determination will bring one through, sheer determination. And faith in God. Don't ever neglect your prayers...."

"Yes, you know damned well what you should have done if you sincerely desired their surrender. You could have dropped it [the atom bomb] on one of their mountains, even in the sea, anywhere they could see what would happen if they persisted in the war, but you chose instead to drop it on peopled cities. I know you, the white mentality: Japanese, Chinese, Africans, we are all subhuman. You would drop an atom bomb on Abeokuta or any of your colonies if it suited you"

"Wild Christian shushed him, but I saw no difference in both their attitudes. I was overwhelmed by only one fact- there was neither justice nor logic in the world of grown-ups"

"It is time to commence the mental shifts for admittance to yet another irrational world of adults and their discipline"

"Change was impossible to predict. A tempo, a mood would have settled over the house, over guests, relations, casual visitors, poor relations, 'cousins,' strays – all recognized within a tangible pattern of feeling – and then it would happen!"

"Man is a bird without wings and a tree without roots."

"The ground that man walks on, has it not always been there?"

"We are the giants who bestride the world like a colossus, while others are mere mortals."

"Power is transient, but the deeds of those who wield it can leave an indelible mark on history."

"Ideas, like everything else, can be corrupted. Power is like that: it pollutes everything it touches."

"We must remember that the only true giants are those who walk with the people, not over them."

"Trouble me no further. The fooleries of beings whom I have fashioned closer to me weary and distress me. Yet I must persist, knowing that nothing is ever altered. My secret is my eternal burden—to pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, and bare the mirror of original nakedness—knowing full well, it is all futility."

"Now what am I thinking of? I must be getting tired. No sensible man burns the house to cook a little yam."

"When your business men ruin the lesser ones, do you go crying to them? I also have no pity for the one who invested foolishly. Investors, that is all they ever were—to me."

"What are you? Men have killed for me. Men have died for me. Have you flints in your eye? Fool, have you never lived?""

"The totem, my final insult. The final taunt from the human pigs."

"Envy, but not from prowess of his adze."

"My secret is my eternal burden—to pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, and bare the mirror of original nakedness—knowing full well, it is all futility."

"For the fire consumes all but the arsonist."

"Today, the constituency of fear has become much broader, far less selective."

"If you believe in democracy, are you not thereby obliged to accept, without discrimination, the fall-outs that come with a democratic choice, even if this means the termination of the democratic process itself?"

"Sadly, it is within the religious domain that the phenomenon of rhetorical hysteria takes its most devastating form...."

"There is nothing in the least delicate about the slaughter of innocents. We all subscribe to the lofty notions contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but, for some reason, become suddenly coy and selective when it comes to defending what is obviously the most elementary of these rights, which is the right to life."

"The fault, of course, is not in religion, but in the fanatic of every religion. Fanaticism remains the greatest carrier of the spores of fear, and the rhetoric of religion, with the hysteria it so readily generates, is fast becoming the readiest killing device of contemporary times."

"...the Christian world is not one, neither is the Islamic, nor does their combined authority speak to or for the entire world, but the world of the fanatic IS one and it cuts across all religions, ideologies and vocations."

"Everyone is linked, all our actions have ramifications, and music is a teacher of this interconnected reality."

"In one form or the other, the quest for human dignity has proved to be one of the most propulsive elements for wars, civil strife and willing sacrifice. Yet the entitlement to dignity, enshrined among the 'human rights', does not aspire to being the most self-evident, essential need for human survival, such as food, or physical health."

"The very least we can live with is an agreement that does not reduce us to slaves of imposition, but makes us partners of consent."

"There is peace in being a stranger."

"But then I am a woman. I have a woman’s longings and weaknesses."

"A village which cannot produce its own carrier contains no men."

"Surely it is too much to ask a man to give up his own soil."

"Ours is a strong breed my son. It is only a strong breed that can take this boat to the river year after year and wax stronger on it. I have taken down each year’s evils for over twenty years. I hoped you would follow me."

"My themed reading for both flights was Wole Soyinka, anything I had not yet read by the Nigerian novelist, memoirist, poet, and playwright. Because New York City was our final destination, I lingered over a poem of his titled "New York, U.S.A," which had been published more than a decade earlier. "Control was wrested from your pilot's hands,/And yours, mid-Atlantic, hapless voyager./Deafened the engine's last descent/To all but disordered echoes of your feet.""

"I like a writer like Ngugi, who lashes out, because he knows what is good and bad in writing. And I think this is true of Wole Soyinka, too... I admire Soyinka because I think he's continuous, much more continuous, as a writer…Wole Soyinka deserves the Nobel Prize."

"What I sensed in Soyinka is that, for the most part, as a middle-aged man he is able to look back on his childhood and still see his early life with that fresh eye."

"Now, the most eloquent irreligious individual voice in Nigeria is our first Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. Soyinka is an eminent literary scholar. He has consistently argued for tolerance and respect for the humanity of all in the face of religious intolerance and extremism. Soyinka has not minced words in condemning the unconscionable religious gladiators in the region that have often turned the country into a theatre of absurdity and holy wars. He has been consistent in his condemnation of the jihadists and crusaders who often orchestrate religious bloodletting in their quest to implement Sharia law or to further some self-styled divine mandate. While I cannot say for sure how impactful his rational appeals are on policies and programs, Soyinka’s statements are sources of hope and light at times of darkness and despair. I can say for certain that on occasions when religious extremists push the nation to the brink. When religion blinds and people are unable to see or think clearly, when fear and fanaticism loom very large, Soyinka is a voice of rational sanity, thoughtful courage, and moderation."

"Chinua Achebe was a real education for me, a real education. And certainly the plays of Soyinka and The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born of Ayi Kwei Armah-those things were at that time real, and they're the kinds of books that one can re-read with enormous discoveries subsequently."

"He is remembered in Nigeria with awe, both for a political boldness that landed him in prison and for a commanding intellect that is manifest in every genre he tackles."

"I consider The Road a masterpiece."

"The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place."

"For an African writing in English is not without its serious setbacks. He often finds himself describing situations or modes of thought which have no direct equivalent in the English way of life. Caught in that situation he can do one of two things. He can try and contain what he wants to say within the limits of conventional English or he can try to push back those limits to accommodate his ideas … I submit that those who can do the work of extending the frontiers of English so as to accommodate African thought-patterns must do it through their mastery of English and not out of innocence."

"found a girl who will suit [him] admirably"

"it is impossible for [him] to marry Nweke’s daughter"

"deeply affected by his father’s grief"

"the first rain in the year"

"calls for medicine"

"that women supply with success to recapture their husbands’ straying affection"

"obstinately ahead of his more superstitious neighbors in these matters"

"In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city it had always seemed to her something of a joke that a person’s tribe could determine who he married."

"‘I can’t—we must—I mean it is impossible for me to marry Nweke’s daughter.’ ‘Impossible. Why?’ asked his father. ‘I don’t love her.’ ‘Nobody said you did. Why should you?’"

"What one looks for in a wife are a good character and a Christian background."

"Yes. They are most unhappy if the engagement is not arranged by them. In our case it’s worse—you are not even an Ibo.This was said so seriously and so bluntly that Nene could not find speech immediately. In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city it had always seemed to her something of a joke that a person’s tribe could determine whom he married."

"As Nnaemeka walked home that evening he turned over in his mind the different ways of overcoming his father’s opposition, especially now that he had gone and found a girl for him. He had thought of showing his letter to Nene but decided on second thoughts not to, at least for the moment."

"“I don’t love her."“Nobody said you did. Why should you?” he asked.“Marriage today is different…”“Look here, my son,” interrupted his father, “nothing is different. What one looks for in a wife are a good character and a Christian background.”Nnaemeka saw there was no hope along the present line of argument."

"Nene Atang from Calabar. She is the only girl I can marry.” This was a very rash reply and Nnaemeka expected the storm to burst. But it did not. His father merely walked away into his room. This was most unexpected and perplexed Nnaemeka. His father’s silence was infinitely more menacing than a flood of threatening speech. That night the old man did not eat."

"Nnaemeka, for his own part, was very deeply affected by his father’s grief. But he kept hoping that it would pass away. If it had occurred to him that never in the history of his people had a man married a woman who spoke a different tongue, he might have been less optimistic."

"The story eventually got to the little village in the heart of the Ibo country that Nnaemeka and his young wife were a most happy couple. But his father was one of the few people who knew nothing about this. He always displayed so much temper whenever his son’s name was mentioned that everyone avoided it in his presence. By a tremendous effort of will he had succeeded in pushing his son to the back of his mind. The strain had nearly killed him but he had persevered, and won."

"Okeke was trying hard not to think of his two grandsons. But he knew he was now fighting a losing battle. He tried to hum a favourite hymn but the pattering of large rain drops on the roof broke up the tune. His mind immediately returned to the children. How could he shut his door against them? By a curious mental process he imagined them standing, sad and forsaken, under the harsh angry weather—shut out from his house. That night he hardly slept, from remorse—and a vague fear that he might die without making it up to them."

"Proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten."

"When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk."

"We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break."

"A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone."

"The Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly, so his chi agreed. And not only his chi but his clan too, because it judged a man by the work of his hands."

"But he was not the man to go about telling his neighbors that he was in error. And so people said he had no respect for the gods of the clan. His enemies said that his good fortune had gone to his head."

"Even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to intervene. He could not stop the rain now, just as he would not attempt to start it in the heart of the dry season, without serious danger to his own health."

"No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man."

"When did you become a shivering old woman," Okonkwo asked himself, "you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valor in war? How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed."

"You sound as if you question the authority and the decision of the Oracle, who said he should die." "I do not. Why should I? But the Oracle did not ask me to carry out its decision." [...] "The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her mesenger," Okonkwo said. "A child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm."

"After such treatment it would think twice before coming again, unless it was one of the stubborn ones who returned, carrying the stamp of their mutilation--a missing finger or perhaps a dark line where the medicine man's razor had cut them."

"And when, as on that day, nine of the greatest masked spirits in the clan came out together it was a terrifying spectacle. Okonkwo's wives, and perhaps other women as well, might have noticed that the second egwugwu had the springy walk of Okonkwo. And they might also have noticed that Okonkwo was not among the titled men and elders who sat behind the row of egwugwu. But if they thought these things they kept them to themselves. The egwugwu with the springy walk was one of the dead fathers of the clan."

"Beware Okonkwo!" she warned. "Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!"

"The land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors. There was coming and going between them, especially at festivals and also when an old man died, because an old man was very close to the ancestors. A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors."

"If the clan did not exact punishment for an offense against the great goddess, her wrath was loosed on all the land and not just on the offender. As the elders said, if one finger brought oil it soiled all the others."

"It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age."

"We have heard stories about white men who make the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true." [said Obierika] "There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?"

"Chielo, the priestess of Agbala, called the converts the excrement of the clan, and the new faith was a mad dog that had come to eat it up."

""Let us give them a portion of the Evil Forest. They boast about victory over death. Let us give them a real battlefield in which to show their victory." [...] They offered them as much of the Evil Forest as they cared to take. And to their great amazement the missionaries thanked them and burst into song."

"Okonkwo was popularly called the "Roaring Flame." As he looked into the log fire he recalled the name. He was a flaming fire. How then could he have begotten a son like Nwoye, degenerate and effeminate? [...] He sighed heavily, and as if in sympathy the smoldering log also sighed. And immediately Okonkwo's eyes were opened and he saw the whole matter clearly. Living fire begets cold, impotent ash. He sighed again, deeply."

"The white man is very clever. He came quietly with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart."

"As a man danced so the drums were beaten for him."

"Eneke the bird was asked why he was always on the wing and he replied: "Men have learned to shoot without missing their mark and I have learned to fly without perching on a twig.""

"Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life."

"In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. [...] One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate."

"A man who lived on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle."

"Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly forever. Conventional tragedy is too easy. The hero dies and we feel a purging of the emotions. A real tragedy takes place in a corner, in an untidy spot, to quote W. H. Auden."

"You cannot plant greatness as you plant yams or maize. Who ever planted an iroko tree — the greatest tree in the forest? You may collect all the iroko seeds in the world, open the soil and put them there. It will be in vain. The great tree chooses where to grow and we find it there, so it is with the greatness in men."

"If one finger brings oil it soils the others."

"A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it."

"When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun."

"Although he was still only a child it looked as though the deity had already marked him out as his future Chief. Even before he had learnt to speak more than a few words he had been strongly drawn to the god’s ritual."

"When a handshake goes beyond the elbow we know it has turned to another thing."

"We have no quarrel with Ulu. He is still our protector, even though we no longer fear Abam warriors at night. But I will not see with these eyes of mine his priest making himself lord over us. My father told me many things, but he did not tell me that Ezeulu was king in Umuaro. Who is he, anyway? Does anybody here enter his compound through the man’s gate? If Umuaro decided to have a king we know where he would come from. Since when did Umuachala become head of the six villages? We all know that it was jealousy among the big villages that made them give the priesthood to the weakest. We shall fight for our farmland and for the contempt Okperi has poured on us. Let us not listen to anyone trying to frighten us with the name of Ulu. If a man says yes his chi also says yes: And we have all heard how the people of Aninta dealt with their deity when he failed them. Did they not carry him to the boundary between them and their neighbors and set fire on him? I salute you"

"I have traveled in Olu and I have traveled in Igbo, and I can tell you there is no escape from the white man. He has come. When Suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool. The white man is like that. Before any of you here was old enough to tie the cloth between the legs I saw with my own eyes what the white man did to Abame. Then I knew there was no escape. As daylight chases away darkness so will the white man drive away all our customs. I know that as I say it now it passes by your ears, but it will happen. The white man has power which comes from the true God and it burns like fire. This is the God about Whom we preach every eighth day."

"A man does not speak a lie to his son,” he said. “Remember that always. To say My father told me is to swear the greatest oath"

"The man was a complete nonentity until we crowned him, and now he carries on as though he had been nothing else all his life. It’s the same with Court Clerks and even messengers. They all manage to turn themselves into little tyrants over their own people. It seems to be a trait in the character of the negro"

"a man should hold his compound together, not plant dissension among his children"

"The man who brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit"

"He looked as bright as a new shilling in his immaculate white robes."

"We had all accepted things from white skins that none of us would have brooked from our own people."

"A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday."

"In Chief Nanga’s company it was impossible not to be merry."

"What mattered was that a man had treated me as no man had a right to treat another—not even if he was master and the other slave; and my manhood requires that I made him pay for his insult in full measure."

"That’s all they cared for,’ [Max] said with a solemn face. ‘Women, cars, landed property. But what else can you expect when intelligent people leave politics to illiterates like Chief Nanga?"

"At first Onitsha looked very strange to Chike. He could not say who was a thief or kidnapper and who was not. In Umuofia every thief was known, but here even people who lived under the same roof were strangers to one another."

"After the incident of the leopard skin Chike lost some of his eagerness for crossing the Niger. He did not see how he could obtain one shilling without stealing or begging."

"The largest sum of money he had ever had at one time was threepence."

"Then the stranger went away and Mr. Nwaba retired to his room. Chike did not give much thought to the incident at the time. But he was to remember it later."

"In his joy, he said again, ‘Thank you, sir.’ The man did not reply; he was talking to his friend again, with a cigarette in his mouth."

"So Chike’s adventure on the River Niger brought him close to danger and then rewarded him with good fortune. It also exposed Mr. Peter Nwaba, the rich but miserly trader. For it was he who had led the other thieves."

"Praise bounteous providence if you will that grants even an ogre a tiny glow-worm tenderness encapsulated in icy caverns of a cruel heart or else despair for in the very germ of that kindred love is lodged the perpetuity of evil."

"By immediately identifying his people as “men of soul” ."

"Measure out / [their] joys and agonies / too, our long, long passion week / in paces of the dance”"

"A dead end nor total loss."

"Lying in wait for the people’s land and resources."

"He calls the ground where men return in death a place of “safety” and “strength” ."

"He warns them not to become “disinherited”."

"Lame foot in the air."

"They led and he followed blindly, his heavy chest heaving up and down in silent weeping ... it was the worst kind of madness, deep and tongue-tied."

"We did not ask him for money yesterday; we shall not ask him tomorrow. But today is our day; we have climbed the iroko tree and would be foolish not to take down all the firewood we need."

"I don't believe anybody will be so unlike other people that they will be unhappy when their sons are engaged to marry."

"People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories."

"When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool."

"War is war. The strong will always crush the weak. The only difference is that in the process some have made a lot of money and others a lot of misery."

"In his mind, he could see the ravages of war: destruction, suffering, hunger, and the grotesque faces of men turned beasts by the bitterness of combat."

"A Conrad student informed me in Scotland that Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz. Which is partly the point. Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril."

"The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art."

"It always surprised him, he went on to say, because he never had thought of Africa as having that kind of stuff, you know."

"The earth seemed unearthly."

"Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth."

"We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet."

"A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days."

"The total life of man is reflected in his art. And so when people come to us and say, "Why are you... you artist so political?" I don't know what they are talking about. Because art is political. And further more I'd say this, that those who tell you "Do not put too much politics in your art," are not being honest. If you look very carefully you will see that they are the same people who are quite happy with the situation as it is. And what they are saying is not don't introduce politics. What they are saying is don't upset the system. They are just as political as any of us. It's only that they are on the other side. Now in my enthusiasm, art cannot be on the side of the oppressor."

"What art tries to do is domesticate whatever is around and press it into the service of man. Morality is basic to the nature of art."

"we are not gladiators. But there is something we are committed to of fundamental importance, something everybody should be committed to. We are committed to the process of changing our position in the world. This is what our literature is about. There is a certain position assigned to me in the world, assigned to him [Baldwin] in the world, and we are saying we are not satisfied with that position. This is important to me-to everybody. I think you see it is important to me. You may not see that it is important to you but it is. We want to create the new man. Mankind tries all kinds of ways, all kinds of solutions; some of them leading that far and no farther and it is wise that we try something else. We have followed your way and it seems there is a little problem at this point. And so we are offering a new aesthetic. There is nothing wrong with that...Picasso did that. In 1904 he saw that Western art had run out of breath so he went to the Congo-the dispised Congo-and brought out a new art. Don't mind what he was saying before he died: that much is entirely his business. But he borrowed something which saved his art. And we are telling you what we think will save your art. We think we are right, but even if we are wrong it doesn't matter. It couldn't be worse than it is now."

"Well there is an assumption there that Conrad's...Heart of Darkness is great art and I don't accept that. Great art flourishes on problems or anguish or prejudice. But the role of the writer must be very clear. The writer must not be on the side of oppression. In other words there must be no confusion. I write about prejudice; I write about wickedness; I write about murder, I write about rape: but I must not be caught on the side of murder or rape. It is as simple as that."

"A number of very young people in Kenya have adopted the Marxist analysis of society. And I cannot quarrel with that. But I can't help feeling at the same time... that my own aesthetic definition, which I gave earlier on, would be a little uneasy about the narrowing of things to a point where we no longer accept the truth of the Ibo proverb that "Where something stands, something else will stand beside it," and that we become like the people we are talking about the single-mindedness which leads to totalitarianism of all kinds, to fanaticism of all kinds. And I can't help the feeling that somehow at the base, art and fanaticism are not loggerheads. And so I don't dismiss the Marxist interpretation. I think it is valid in its way. But when somebody says "I am the way, the truth, and the light.... "Now my own religion, the religion of my people says something else. It says, "You may worship one god to perfection and another god will kill you." Wherever something is, something else also is. And I think it is important that whatever the regimes are saying that the artist keeps himself ready to enter the other plea. Perhaps it's not tidy perhaps we are contradicting ourselves. But one of your poets has said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well.""

"[W]hatever you are is never enough; you must find a way to accept something, however small, from the other to make you whole and to save you from the mortal sin of righteousness and extremism. (p. 154)"

"The guilty suffers; the sufferer is guilty. As for the righteous, those whose arms are straight, they will always prosper!"

"Don't disparage the day that still has an hour of light in its hand."

"As the saying goes, the unexamined life is not worth-living."

"My people have a saying which my father often used. A man whose horse is missing will look everywhere even in the roof."

"Those who mismanage our affairs would silence our criticism by pretending they have facts not available to the rest of us. Our best weapon against them is not to marshal facts, of which they are truly managers, but passion. Passion is our hope and strength."

"That we may accept a limitation on our actions but never, under no circumstances, must we accept restriction on our thinking."

"I wouldn't put myself under the democratic dictatorship even of angels and archangels."

"Do your people have a proverb about a man looking for something inside the bag of a man looking for something?"

"Aha! Come to think of it, that might explain the insistence of the oppressed that the oppressor must not be allowed to camouflage his appearance or confuse the poor by stealing and masquerading in their clothes. Perhaps it is the demand of that primitive integrity of the earth... Or, who knows, it might also be something less innocent (for the earth does have its streak of peasant cunning) - an insistence that your badge of privilege must never leave your breast, nor your coat of many colours your back... so that... on the wrathful day of reckoning... you will be as conspicuous as a peacock!"

"In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything."

"In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything. They can bring out crowds of demonstrators whenever they need them."

"The Igbo people of Southern Nigeria are more than ten million strong and must be accounted one of the major peoples of Africa. Conventional practice would call them a tribe, but I no longer follow that convention. I call them a nation"

"The Igbo nation in precolonial times was not quite like any nation most people are familiar with. It did not have the apparatus of centralized government but a conglomeration of hundreds of independent towns and villages each of which shared the running of its affairs among its menfolk according to title, age, occupation, etc.; and its women folk who had domestic responsibilities as well as the management of the scores of four-day and eight-day markets that bound the entire region and its neighbours in a network of daily exchange of goods and news, from far and near."

"The dispossession that caused my shrillness is in retreat though the marks of its pillage are still everywhere. I can see, in spite of them, that I have come a long way."

"It began to dawn on me that although fiction was undoubtedly fictitious it could also be true or false, not with the truth or falsehood of a news item but as to its disinterestedness, its intention, its integrity."

"We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: "He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down."

"...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly."

"Africa is people" may seem too simple and too obvious to some of us. But I have found in the course of my travels through the world that the most simple things can still givwe us a lot of trouble, even the brightest among us: this is particularly so in matters concerning Africa."

"I do not see that it is necessary for any people to prove to another that they build cathedrals or pyramids before they can be entitled to peace and safety."

"Paradoxically, a saint like [Albert] Schweitzer can give one a lot more trouble than King Leopold II, villain of unmitigated guilt, because along with doing good and saving African lives Schweitzer also managed to announce that the African was indeed his brother, but only his junior brother."

"The point in all this is that language is a handy whipping boy to summon and belabor when we have failed in some serious way. In other words, we play politics with language, and in so doing conceal the reality and the complexity of our situation from ourselves and from those foolish enough to put their trust in us."

"It is appropriate that we celebrate Martin Luther King, a man who struggled so valiantly to restore humanity to the oppressed and the oppressor."

"Some people flinch when you talk about art in the context of the needs of society thinking you are introducing something far too common for a discussion of art. Why should art have a purpose and a use? Art shouldn't be concerned with purpose and reason and need, they say. These are improper. But from the very beginning, it seems to me, stories have indeed been meant to be enjoyed, to appeal to that part of us which enjoys good form and good shape and good sound."

"There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless."

"People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience."

"Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform."

"Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world."

"The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader, who then becomes ready to be drawn into unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, toward a deeper understanding of self or society, or of foreign peoples, cultures, and situations."

"There was another epidemic that was not talked about much, a silent scourge—the explosion of mental illness: major depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, manic-depression, personality disorders, grief response, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, etc.—on a scale none of us had ever witnessed."

"Camara Laye’s The Dark Child and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart because they gave me a glorious shock of recognition. Until I read them, I was not consciously aware that people who looked like me could exist in books. I grew up in a Nigerian university town, and all the books I read before then were foreign children’s books with white characters doing unfamiliar things."

"I do reread novels I love, like Chinua Achebe’s “Arrow of God,” to remind myself of what fiction can do."

"When I read Things Fall Apart which is about an Ibo tribe in Nigeria, a tribe I never saw, a system-to put it that way or a society, the rules of which were a mystery to me, I recognized everybody in it. And that book was about my father. How we got over I don't know, we did!""

"Achebe is a great writer. He is the father of our English literature. You can't take that away from him. His work is highly original. When I was doing my degree here, I used Arrow of God, which I think is his best work. But the critics seem to think everything should be like Things Fall Apart. Everytime you want to read Achebe, you feel you want to study it as literature. You don't pick it up as though you want to enjoy the literature. That is why for a very, very long time, if you went to the African Writers Series, you had the feeling that this is not for the common people."

"I rank Achebe very highly, especially his Arrow of God, and I consider it a tragedy that he has had to live under such disturbed conditions and writes so little."

"He has begun to resuscitate and reinstate the past, the precolonial era. I'm thinking of Arrow of God, which to my mind is perhaps the best novel to come out of Africa. I think it is an absolutely wonderful novel. And if you look at that novel, it really has almost nothing to do with the impact of the white man. It is about black life, black civilization, before the period of conquest. The period of conquest is just on the horizon, so to speak. But there are not many people who have tackled that kind of theme. There are not many black writers who have done it yet."

"Chinua Achebe was a real education for me, a real education."

"I've always wanted to write something that will show the world that prior to the coming of the British to Nigeria, we had some kind of complex systems. I feel like there hasn't been an African version of, say, Milton's "Paradise Lost" which actually explored the very foundational principle of Western civilization, which would be the free will. Or even Dante Alighieri's "Inferno." So I wanted to write something cosmological, and the chi has been very fascinating to me. It was very difficult, it entailed a lot of research, even down to actually going to shrines and interviewing the last adherents of Odinani, the Igbo religion, now that most Africans are converts to either Christianity or Islam…"

"I believe that some of the strongest stories we can have begin with very simple archetypes…The great mother, or the great father, for example. And you work your way from that, slowly, to more complexity. The idea of this guy who wants to be with the woman he loves – you can say the same of the movie Gladiator, for instance. If you strip everything down to the basics, it’s just about Maximus wanting to go back to his wife and every other thing stopping him. Even Homer’s Odyssey; he just wants to go back and the entire universe is conspiring against that ambition."

"There are some rhetorical moves that I wouldn’t be able to make if I didn’t know these languages. In terms of writing figurative language, I probably pull a lot from Yoruba imagery…"

"People always ask me, why do your stories end this way? And honestly…I want to write a feelgood story. But I think that because I’m fascinated with the metaphysics of existence, I keep thinking why, of all the people who came to Cyprus, was it Jay who died? Or, I read not too long ago of a nine-year-old doing her homework and there’s a drive-by shooting and a bullet comes in through the roof and kills her. She didn’t do anything to deserve that fate. When you think about these things, and you want to write fiction around that, the path it takes you to can feel inevitable and tragic."

"Hatred is a leech: The thing that sticks to a person's skin; that feeds off them and drains the sap out of one's spirit. It changes a person, and does not leave until it has sucked the last drop of peace from them."

"Mother was a falconer. The one who stood on the hills and watched, trying to stave off whatever ill she perceived was coming to her children. She owned copies of our minds in the pockets of her own mind and so could easily sniff troubles early in their forming, the same way sailors discern the forming foetus of a coming storm."

"I have now come to know that what one believes often becomes permanent, and what become permanent can be indestructible. The things my brother read shaped him; they became his visions. He believed in them. I have now come to know that what one believes often becomes permanent, and what becomes permanent can be indestructible. This was the case with my brother."

"Do you not know that there is nothing the eye can see that can make it shed the tears of blood? Do you not know that there is no loss we cannot overcome"

"Listen, days decay, like food, like fish, like dead bodies. This night will decay, too and you will forget. Listen, we will forget."

"That story, as all good stories, planted a seed in my soul and never left me."

"I'd heard someone say that the end of most things often bears a resemblance - even if faint - to their beginnings"

"I must have my pound of flesh and you must all join me in this because you caused it."

"M.K.O., you are beautiful beyond description,"

"We did it. We avenged them"

"Even in his most extroverted moment, a man is concealed from others. For he cannot be fully known."

"They were the minorities of this world whose only recourse was to join this universal orchestra in which all there was to do was cry and wail."

"Time is not a living creature that can listen to pleas, nor is it a man who can delay."

"The true being of a man is hidden behind the wall of flesh and blood from the eyes of everyone else, including his own."

"For the truth remains that more can also be more, and that less is often inevitably less."

"Guardian spirits of mankind, have we thought about the powers that passion creates in human beings? Have we considered why a man could run through a field of fire to get to a woman he loves? Have we thought about the impact of love on the body of lovers? Have we considered the symmetry of its power? Have we considered what poetry incites in their souls, and the impress of endearments on a softened heart?”"

"All the peace that had returned after his father finished mourning his wife for many years vanished at once. Grief returned like an army of old ants crawling into familiar holes in the soft earth of his father’s life....."

"Loneliness is the violent dog that barks interminably through the long night of grief."

"in Umuahia, a town in the land of the great fathers..."

"You’re a beautiful man."

"We don't have all the time in the world with oil. We have to use oil while it makes sense to do so."

"Hate speech is a specie of terrorism."

"No economy can tolerate the level of corruption seen in Nigeria without consequences."

"We all know that Nigerian jollof rice is the best anywhere. We beat the Ghanaians and Senegalese hands down."

"Here in Nigeria, what makes the news is conflict between the executive and the legislature."

"There must be more rigorous enforcement of rules promoting transparency in the international banking and financial systems, especially more stringent KYC rules on customer identity, source of wealth, and even country of origin."

"Corruption and illicit financial flows are different. But they really must be twinned. This is because, for practical purposes, it is an eminently more sensible approach to treat most of the sources of illicit financial flows as corrupt activity, within a broader use of the term."

"Tracing, freezing, and return of stolen assets has proved in many cases to be exceptionally difficult for most African countries."

"There is no wisdom of man that can change men or change nations; it is the power and wisdom of God that can."

"We in Nigeria have seen just how difficult it is to get back stolen assets from the international financial system, such as banks that ought not have received those funds in the first place if even the most routine questions were asked."

"It doesn't matter where one starts from; it doesn't matter at all where you start from. It is how committed you are, how determined you are, and how hardworking you are that will ultimately make the difference."

"The carnal nature of man is that he places his tribe above others, but the only basis for the power and unity of the church is that there is no Jew or Gentile."

"I am so pleased and happy, and I believe that the Almighty God has a plan for our nation by putting us in strategic positions in politics, business, and everywhere."

"The fundamental for the sustainable growth of Nigeria is not in the hydro-carbon industry but in agriculture."

"With 10 per cent of Nigeria's total land mass, 80 per cent of which is arable, Niger state symbolises the hope and greatness of Nigeria and has potential to feed the continent."

"Nigeria is still grappling with the negative consequences of the use of opacity by senior members of government and their cronies between 1993 and 1998, awarding themselves juicy contracts in the extractive industry."

"An active and vibrant railway system confers many benefits on the society."

"Railway network will support efforts to diversify the economy and enhance our export potentials."

"Any nation that does not emphasize integrity will always fail."

"The values of integrity and hard work are necessary for the development of our nation."

"You don't have to cheat or steal to be successful in life, but you must be ready to convert your challenges to opportunity."

"If people are stealing the resources of this nation, if people are taking bribes - if judges or persons in authority, whether they are judges or whoever they may be in government, ministers, whoever, if they are taking bribes - it attacks the fundament of our existence as a society."

"The most important thing is that we are on the right path, and we will not deviate from it, even in the face of strong temptation to choose temporary gains over long-term benefits."

"Our vision is for a country that grows what it eats and produces what it consumes. It is for a country that no longer has to import petroleum products and develop a lucrative petrochemical industry."

"Our diversity as a people united is also our potential to transform our large deposits of mineral resources and use same for national development."

"If the church says we will not accept you here or that we will expose you if you are stealing the resources of the country or stealing the resources of a private company or other establishment, where you work, then we would not have the type of problem that we have in this country. If only the church does so - just the church."

"Many would say the reason why they steal is because they want to have an arsenal for future political exploits. It is a lie. It is greed. In any case, even if you want to do that, you have no right to do it."

"If the church says you are not allowed to steal, and we will ostracize you in our midst if you did, if what a man has does not measure up to what he has, if we found that a man has more money than he should have, if a man is earning a salary of a civil servant or a public servant and he has houses everywhere, we have to hold him to account."

"If this government is doing the right thing by fighting corruption, the Church should support it."

"In stabilizing the macroeconomic environment, we have focused on aligning fiscal with monetary policy and nudging the central bank toward the objective of more market-determined exchange rates."

"It is not possible for one tribe to dominate another based on the way God has structured the country."

"The reason we have Christian president and Muslim vice president or Muslim president and Christian vice president is to have balance."

"If there is one person in Nigeria that believes that petroleum prices should not go up by one naira, it is President Buhari."

"Great economies and great nations, prosperity, and abundance of nations and communities are created by men and not spirits."

"The truth is that many, if not most, nations of the world are made up of different peoples - and cultures and beliefs and religions - who find themselves thrown together by circumstance."

"The most successful of the nations of the world are those who do not fall into the lure of secession but who, through thick and thin, forge unity in diversity."

"I understand the law of sowing and reaping. It is a spiritual law that has tremendous physical implications. Every time that we delay or frustrate what we can do today, leaving it till tomorrow, we hold back the future. We, too, must reap what we have sown by experiencing delays."

"No matter how much you pray or fast, our country cannot grow without some of us deciding to do the hard work that makes nations work."

"The quality and quantum of potential investors in Africa is huge."

"The most important thing for Africa is that whoever wants to invest in our countries should start in manufacturing."

"We in Africa must prepare our economies in that direction that attracts such huge and qualitative investments. It is for us to push, and we must push."

"It is the resolve of the government that none will be allowed to get away with making speeches that can cause sedition or that can cause violence, especially because when we make these kinds of pronouncement and do things that can cause violence or destruction of lives and property, we are no longer in control."

"Nigeria's unity is one for which enough blood has been spilled and many hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost. Many have paid for the unity of this country with their lives, and it will be wrong of us, as men and women of goodwill in this generation, to toy with those sacrifices that have been made."

"We are committed to a continuous engagement with our people to explain government policies, receive advice and criticism."

"As we move to diversify our economy, we are particularly aware that we need oil to get out of oil."

"It will be wrong of us to approach our grievances by threatening to disobey the laws or by threatening the integrity of our nation."

"Africa Rising is as much about improving standards of governance as it is about an increasingly confident youths and civil society. It is also about businessmen and women who are stepping beyond national borders and going global."

"Africa cannot afford to underestimate the power of technology to fast-track the continent's rise. Emerging technologies have played extraordinary roles in every aspect of the continent's most touted successes."

"Many of the ethnic and other parochial tensions that have tended to create insecurity and outright conflict, time and time again, are largely as a result of failure to deliberately undertake nation-building efforts."

"Economic growth is not sustainable without nation-building and, even of greater importance, state building."

"We are in a democracy and there is a process by which things can be done and that process is the one where you bring forward amendments to the National Assembly and they will do whatever is considered useful in the circumstance."

"The Diaspora in the UK is particularly important because this is the largest diaspora community in the world. So really if you are talking to hundreds of thousands of Nigerians for anyone with any sense at all it’s a very important community to address. So it’s representative, it’s the way to go. The Diaspora here is also very active at home,"

"The first thing is that I have passion for my profession. I am an actress and at the same time I’m in the academics."

"You need to impact when you get to a particular stage in your profession, or what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?"

"You don’t have to abandon your own passion with the aim that you can shine in that of others. It’s my job that demands that I am a celebrity; it doesn’t make me change from being who I am. I am interested in my job, as well doing it very well. That is why it is widely accepted. So, anybody can be great in his chosen profession if he loves and takes it seriously. The popular belief that whoever is seen on the screen is in money is not correct. People should not forget that it is a world of make-believe; it is an illusion."

"We need to be educated. When you are a professional and properly trained in acting, you will realise that you know the value, ethics, and the demands of the profession. You will know you are supposed to develop techniques often."

"Acting is beyond showbiz. One has to be versatile and be ready to take any role."

"In every area of your life, you need to study; there is no end to education. You don’t just go into movies just because you have the talent alone but you know, education is not limited to the four walls of the university. When you observe people, you can even give yourself personal training."

"Nigeria has regressed into a nation where mediocrity is allowed to lead where we have intelligent people."

"I am told that when you ask any child what they want to become, they say, footballer, yahoo-yahoo person, kidnapper/bandits, comedian or LGA chairman: the easiest way out of illiteracy to make easy money in Nigeria."

"University education is critical and it is been ignored in countries like Somalia, South Sudan Northern Niger, Chad."

"In Khartoum and southern Cameroon and other places there were students in final year who all have to flee, as it was libraries and books have all being burnt."

"if there is crisis in any Africa country affecting the university there it then means the student can transfer acquired credits to the new choice university in another country and continue the work."

"There is nothing positive or salutary about incessant strike actions, or indeed any single strike action in public universities. It is an indication of lack of trust, lack of integrity in the implementation of agreed negotiations. It indicates that the government and ASUU are not on the same page regarding their commitment and management of higher education in Nigeria."

"To press home their demands without necessarily down-tooling, ASUU should consider the long-term needs of universities and advise the government accordingly. This makes for good planning and budgeting"

"All over the world people have embraced technology much more than we think. There is nothing you can do now without technology. Technology has taken over all parts of our system."

"The world is now depending on digital economy so this is what the policy is advocating, that the Universities should appreciate the use of digital learning in today’s world"

"Technology is like our inorganic DNA if you like and so it has become imperative to appreciate the role of technology in teaching and learning so that the next generation will be better placed in appreciating the world and of being trained so that they are better suit for the work force and better entrepreneurs."

"All we need is implementation, that is what we need. Once it has been implemented all our children from primary yo tertiary institutions will be digitally literate."

"There is a clear and direct relationship between a country’s development, economic progress, and education offered to its people."

"Illiteracy, poverty and low development indices have roots in the low level of education. Today, more than ever, the main wealth source is knowledge. The global economy is being transformed from a material-based economy to a knowledge-based economy."

"No country can develop unless its citizens are educated. Education does not change the world. Education changes people, people change the world"

"Our educational system is driving in reverse full throttle without the use of the back or side mirrors. In the same vein, our secondary school graduates can be best described as half-baked illiterates who constitute a danger to the society and to themselves."

"It goes without saying, therefore, that higher education contributes significantly to the political, scientific, technological, economic, social and human development of any country"

"I hold on to the maxim that if one lives right and does right, everything shall be alright. So, I try to be good and live by the ideas, ideals and ideology of Islam."

"Marriage has taught me that it is just a union of two imperfect persons seeking perpetually to make sacrifices and understand each other."

"I clear the earth and another says the land belongs to his mother. I plant my seeds, and another says it belongs to his father. My seeds grow, And he says he worked hard during the planting season. Like the lazy python, he has always had eyes on my eggs………"

"Ovonramwen our Lord. A rare one that has no stain, nor does he has dirt. One whose character is as white as the white bird (enibokun)."

"I asked my new wife to stay with my brother until I thatch my roof. Soon she begins to put on weight, and she says he is kind and gentle. But slowly, the day breaks and her stomach reveal the secret"

"Oba Ovonramwen, son of Adolo. Here in subdued glory with the white man's feathers fluttering like a peacock unsure of what weather of the day to spread its wonderful, colourful wings. Here I am, posing for the white man's jejers […..] He desired my empire and envied my position, and wanted my throne. […..] Here I am aboard the British yacht in leg irons."

"It is not changing into the lion that is hard, it is getting the tail of a lion"

"Kolanut last long in the mouths of them who value it."

"When the chameleon brings forth a child, is not that child expected to dance? As we have made you King, act as King."

"When the rain falls on the leopard, does it wash off its spots? Has the richness of kingly life washed off the love of our King for his people?"

"My people. Children of our fathers. Sickness is like rain. Does the rain fall on one roof alone? No. Does it fall on one body and not on another? No. Whoever the rain sees, on him it rains. Does it not? It is the same with sickness."

"It is sickness that man can cure, not death"

"To get fully cured one needs patience. The moon moves slowly but by daybreak it crosses the sky."

"By trying often, the monkey learns to jump from tree to tree without falling."

"The horns cannot be too heavy for the head of the cow that must bear them."

"Until the rotten tooth is pulled out, the mouth must chew with caution."

"When the frog in front falls in pit, others behind take caution."

"You do me great wrong, therefore to think that, like a rock in the middle of a lake, forever cooled by flowing waters, I do not know, and cannot know the sun's hotness that burns and dries up the open land."

"Have I been sleeping? If so, I am sick in the head: for only a madman would go to sleep with his roof on fire."

"Now my people, when trees fall on trees, first the topmost must be removed."

"Me an Ijekun man, a stranger in your tribe [stares at CHIEFS] when crocodiles eat their own egg, what will they not do to the flesh of a frog."

"The hyena flirts with the hen, the hen is happy, not knowing that her death has come."

"If you think you can drum for my downfall, and hope that, drum will sound, then your head is not good."

"If you think like a tortoise you can plot against me without my first cutting you down with my own tortoise tricks, then, fellow, madness is in your liver."

"Your highness, if you think to have heavy suspicion is wisdom, then your head is not well."

"Two rams cannot drink in the same bucket at the same time. They will lock horns."

"If you rise too early the dew of life will soak you."

"A man who cannot control his wife is like a chief who cannot control his subjects."

"When a man's wife is mad, the whole town knows, but when a man is mad, only his wife knows."

"A madman is like a child, he speaks the truth without knowing it."

"When a man's beard is on fire, he does not worry about whose axe is sharp."

"A man who has no respect for his wife is like a farmer who has no respect for his farm."

"Me fight am sojar for Lugard. 1901, we take am Kontagora. West Africa Frontier Force. Me dey 1902 we take am Bauchi, go Borno. Lugard telli me...(patting himself on the back) 'Good man, good man!' 1903 - we take am Kano, take am Sokoto. Lugard make am me Corpul-one rope..."

"What's the man so proud about, fighting to advance British imperialism in Africa? And the two of you sitting there, encouraging such vulgar memories... From the day the White man set foot on our shores! First, Rum to our fathers: to confuse their minds. Then Rifles to shoot ourselves. The aftermath? Ruin. Slavery and external ruin!"

"Some people have started gathering in groups with people of their own kind. That too must stop"

"Multi-lingual interpretation is done concurrently among members of the group [the characters], but in subliminal whispers."

"He says it's not that we don't want to be alive."

"Apprentice barber is sitting on the stool. Nothing to do, he is leafing through the pages of some tattered newspapers…all of which report on Talks – all spices of Talks…On the bench at the other side of the shop the Master Barber himself lies full length, face heavenwards asleep…"

"Poverty has also endeavoured to enlist the usefulness of a hook-up wooden radio and a standing fan - albeit a scrawny and temperamental oddity."

"Large-faced, burly hunk of choice meat and big bones. He is affluently attired although with a touch of the bumpkin."

"He picks up a comb from the table, blows dust and loose hair off it. But as he leans forward with the comb to dig into Man’s hair, Man jerks his head backwards, dodging the Barber’s contact. Barber’s hands halt in mid-air, himself startled."

"Barber’s arm stops in mid-air. It trembles visibly. Man throws his arms up triumphantly. Starts scooping money into his pocket."

"Everything really depends on our vote…any vote cast for a politician tomorrow on the basis of sheer fatherhood by birth; or of brotherhood by clan; or sisterhood by religion, is your doom and my doom."

"All your shrines drenched in the blood Of your worshippers/All your sacred symbols wiped out by fire!"

"Nowadays, when the strong fight the weak, it's called a Liberation War to free the weak from oppression."

"Nowadays, in the new world, it is suicide to be weak."

"I ask you- without a shrine, without worshippers, what is a god?"

"When fate decided to strike you down, what amount of crying can help?"

"It's us, not the gods, who created war. It's us, we human beings, who can kill it."

"The gods are out to punish human beings who she claims ‘learn only from suffering and pain."

"Some words are such that when we hear them, all the light inside us dies at once, and our smiling daylight turns into the bleakness of night."

"I lit the torch so I will not have to grope my way to the camp where I shall be married to my enemy, that handsome butcher of our people."

"Insanity is the drug of misery."

"The gods! Which gods! Do you still trust any of them after this? Or have you quickly forgotten what they told us about Anlugbua just now? No, women, there is no shelter anywhere but in ourselves! Each of us has become our own god."

"Happiness is a fake. The gods employ it as a mask to trick us each time they are about to plunge us into grief."

"Don't speak like that, my child. Death is sweet, we think. But it is easier to talk of it, than to welcome it. We do not know what is on the other side, whether it is better or worse than here. Whereas even at its most bitter, life offers hope at least, which death does not."

"Even in misfortune, which levels everyone, the potions are unequal: we dare not tell you what we believe will becoming to us. ["

"My daughter, you won't like to hear this but my advice is- do like the reed in the bush. Stand and strut in good weather. But when it storms, learn also to bend."

"When you have lost a war, you have lost, and there's nothing you can do about it but accept the consequences."

"It was my son your wife bewitched and led us to this calamity"

"Anger and desire are twin sisters in this drama we call love, two kernels in the same nut!"

"Anyone can kill. But it is not everybody who can forgive, or who can be just, as I know you are."

"An artist has only his dreams. He has no power."

"When Mother Goat nods at the sonorous sound of the drum, she is not dancing! It is because each time it sounds, she recognizes the wailing of the leather!"

"[T]he skin that graces the king's shoulders, the leopard knows who supplied it. When mother Goat nods at the sonorous sound of the drum, she is not dancing! It is because, each time it sounds, she recognizes the wailing of the leather!"

"It is the fate of the conquered to toil for the strong! That is the logic of war, the logic of defeat!"

"Beauty makes all women vulnerable to the greed of men"

"War never ends, but only moves to another place?"

"How can you claim to be strong, when your minds are so feeble."

"Let no one count herself lucky till she finds herself on her death bed."

"Home is where every traveller returns after a journey, however long. When night falls, the visitor must take his leave of his hosts."

"No swimmer, however good, can swim beyond the rim of the world."

"A father can only chew for a child; he cannot swallow for her."

"It is the rulers who write story - It is the hunters who compose the story of the hunt - It is the revellers, not the slaughtered cows, who record the fable of the feast."

"Then the deer must train themselves to seize the gun from their hunters! The cows to take over the narration of their own story."

"We should apportion blame appropriately. In a lot of the areas where there were very serious challenges, politicians played a direct role."

"Death is a necessary end. It comes when it will come."

"If there are no equality of opportunities; no equity in the distribution of resources, no good governance; the same problems will keep recurring."

"The Chinese have found 500 million barrels reserves in Chad itself and a pipeline is being laid to Segigi Field, where a refinery is being built, which is going to serve the whole of Chad. Also, another 500 million barrels were found in the Tannit in Niger, and we have similar soil structure and similar basin, which makes sense to intensify surveys in our own Chad Basin."

"A comprehensive and simultaneous survey acquisition of gravity for electro-magnetic study of the basins for 2D seismic and 3D seismic in the areas found to be very prolific."

"Now we don’t have enough data to attract investors, but after the studies companies can now begin to explore for oil based on the findings."

"Every country has strategic policy regarding its natural resources in order to preserve them. So we can’t rule out the possibility that we might have strategic reserve areas and the Department of Petroleum resources, DPR, will demarcate the areas."

"With regard to the concentration of survey in the Chad Basin, I explained that this is because a lot of finds have been made in other neighbouring countries along the rift zone."

"The Basin (Chad) lies along the West and Central African Rift System. All the basins along the rift zone like Doba, Salamar, Bongo and the Chad Tannit in Niger, there have been a lot of finds and oil exploration."

"The NNPC had done an integrated study of the Chad Basin with 10 international companies, during which 23 oil wells were drilled and areas with oil and gas potential were determined."

"Previous works in the Anambra basin had yielded little results, as of the eight wells drilled in the region, seven of them had gas with only found with oil, “so more work is needed to be done in this area to quantify the studies… in Bida, Sokoto and Benue basins, we have not drilled any wells."

"All these are part of the work being done for frontier exploration in the country, while explaining that for now, government is saddled with all the responsibility of doing the surveys to prove the prospectivity of the basins, as the International Oil Companies, IOCs will only come in thereafter."

"The IOCs operating in the country has cooperated with government with regard to the geological surveys by supplying data where demanded. “Now we don’t have enough data to attract investors, but after the studies companies can now begin to explore for oil based on the findings."

"You’ve chosen the right subject. You’re in the right faculty, It’ll take you places in life if you make the best use of the opportunity it offers—to become better versions of yourselves and to be of service to others"

"Do a good job of research and teaching, put yourself out there in the faces of companies who will support your work and the Department with donations of critical equipment. It is in their enlightened self-interest, and it will be a win-win for both of you.."

"My path to studying law was not as straightforward. I actually studied Law by mistake. And that is easily the best mistake I have ever made."

"I find both law teaching and practice to be equally stimulating and fulfilling"

"I had no serious challenge as a father because God provided all the enabling. I had a good job as a lecturer; I had a good car and a good house."

"my father, Overseer Daniel Okebukola had a caring and loving relationship with all his children and applied a super strict disciplinary regime to keep us all on the path of righteousness."

"The father should be a provider, protector, teacher, mentor, role model, talent developer and counsellor."

"My goal is to make my children better than I am"

"When leaders fail to properly manage their countries’ resources, they allow foreign corporations or governments to exploit them, perpetuating a narrative that African countries need external forces to thrive"

"Resources mismanagement bane of development in Africa"

"The Peter A. Okebukola family is driven by at least five core values- fear of God, respect for elders, non-flamboyant lifestyle, exemplary work ethics and diligence. It is such a delight that all the children have imbibed these values and those with children among them are transmitting these values."

"Crying is not a sign of weakness. Everybody cries. It is either you cry on the outside or you cry on the inside. Crying is an expression of joyful or sorrowful emotions. For me, those who cry on the outside, at least in a moderated form, are able to outwardly express emotions and are sublime thereafter. For those who play macho and cry on the inside, the emotion is bottled up and find vent through other channels. On balance, people should learn to moderate their cries based on the circumstance and context."

"My motivation for inventing methodologies for teaching science which won me the 1992 UNESCO Prize, is based on the overload of methods of teaching developed by non-Africans which are not fit for purpose for the African cultural context."

"The logic is that by striving to model the great scientist and implement a work plan to surpass such scientist, the student will learn the way of the scientist and work towards achieving greater heights. When there is a will, there is a way. The outcome is predicted to be improved achievement and better attitude to STEM."

"The goal is to make technology accessible to everyone, regardless of the language of communication.”"

"By teaching in Yoruba, I’m able to reach those who might struggle with English-based resources, empowering them to use tech in their everyday lives."

"So for me, he declared, “the MVP award is a testament to the power of inclusive education"

"When people can learn in their native language, they gain confidence and can more easily grasp complex concepts like AI and data analysis."

"It’s not just about learning technology; it’s about empowering people to use it to solve real problems in their communities"

"it is always in our best interest to drive disruptive learning and innovation with world’s best practices. As a result of our partnership with Diamond Challenge, we foster learning through entrepreneurship, technology, and global citizenship amongst teachers and students in Nigeria and Africa."

"So, I am passionate about making technology more inclusive and accessible, and I’m thrilled that my efforts have resonated with so many people both online and offline including the over 100,000 followers on my various social media handles."

"This event brought together top government and global agencies officials including ministers of education, UNESCO, the ILO, the World Bank, and other major organizations."

"So, it’s been incredibly rewarding to see my work featured on platforms like the BBC and TechCabal, and I’ve even had the honour of speaking as a panelist at the just concluded African Union’s Skills Week held in Accra, Ghana."

"I strongly believe that using technology will greatly help to close educational gaps, especially among people in the hard-to-reach communities across Africa."

"Nigeria needs to take more proactive measures to position itself for prosperity within the digital economy, we must also emphasize the promotion of basic digital skills among those on the other side of the digital divide.” — on bridging the tech skills gap in Nigeria"

"“I was enjoying teaching but curiosity pulled me deeper into tech and AI and today I still teach not just students but teachers and business owners because there’s no limit to what you can be or achieve.” on his journey from classroom teacher to tech educator"

"If adequate recognition is given to research and innovation, it will go a long way in enabling some works which will be of immense benefits to the society."

"Lack of funds is a contributing factor to non-research output in the country due to the fact that many researches are financed from the pockets of scientists."

"We should look inwards; when we do, we will find out that solutions to many of our problems are within us."

"We must ensure that we have diversified sources of energy throughout the country, both renewable and non-renewable."

"We must encourage energy use across multiple sectors — not only for household lighting, but also for transport, industry, commerce, and other productive activities — to boost the nation’s economic capacity."

"I am happy the way some states have aggressively responded to the coronavirus pandemic."

"The keys necessary to effectively battle this invisible army are testing, tracing, isolation and treatment."

"I am in total agreement with the NMA and the other health professionals. I know that our health professionals are well trained. We have regulatory bodies that regulate their training in addition to National University Commission (NUC) that provides the basic academic inputs for each course. All they need is adequate facilities and motivation to carry out their functions."

"In this pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is mandatory for our health workers and first line responders to protect them from being infected."

"Right at the outside bar,you will be surprised at the number of vessels that cannot move or those that are substandard because they cannot meet the minimum standard required for a vessel to be operational."

"In any civilised county,the first thing should be to get a competent marine engineer or a good ship surveyor to go and inspect the vessel and give a honest report before it is purchased."

"My experience over the years has shown that many students loathe programming; they perceive programming courses as difficult subjects that should be avoided where possible, and where the courses are compulsory, the students do everything possible to obtain pass mark."

"Teachers and lecturers handling programming courses should re-skill and retool regularly; they must keep abreast of development in the area."

"Increased level of computerization and deployment of IT is a sure way of motivating the indigenous software industry."

"This is similar to the perception of mathematics by students in secondary schools. And yet, programming is interesting, enjoyable, stimulating, fulfilling and profitable."

"We should create incentives and motivation for the learning of programming – this can be done by creating stimulating learning environment through the provision of adequately equipped computer laboratories; award of prizes and according recognition for outstanding performance; formation of software development clubs in schools as networking for the exchange of ideas and knowledge; organizing more software competitions in schools. {source}}"

"The industry is growing faster than the regulations we have. We want the government to keep up with this pace."

"I don’t know what linkages and connections one can establish, but one thing was clear. Not only was I the only child, my mother was the only child."

"I believe that the country must draw necessary lessons from its experience and deliberately build itself into a strong nation exploiting fully its diverse talents and culture."

"If you are conscious that you are not qualified, maybe you will work hard enough to justify our confidence."

"“Because that’s the way""

"“First of all, you are not yet addressing the political problem of your country. You have been put into power by your neighboring countries under a false assumption, and sooner or later they are going to turn against you because you would not be able to deliver what they want from you."

"I came to ECA to foster regional cooperation and integration, not to be an undertaker of the corpse of defunct ones."