Women Authors From Nigeria

"A true-bred Nigerian will always have a million and one things going on at the same time."

"When we bury ourselves in a story that is well told, we can’t help but go away with an understanding that we may not have had before. We go away with being able to see things perhaps a little more clearly, a little more humanely."

"My best advice is whatever you put your hand to do, do it to the best of your ability. Everything you do eventually becomes part of your skill set and ends up being part of who you eventually become."

"what would be considered a middle-class setting, where women seem to have power, but they are living in a particular context that requires them to contort themselves into different things. And so they make choices that are not necessarily the kindest choices for others or choices that we would consider to be good."

"Boniface — aka Cash Daddy — is an exuberant character who suffers from elephantiasis of the pocket. He's also rumored to run a successful empire of email scams. But he can help. With Cash Daddy's intervention, Kingsley and his family can be as safe as a tortoise in its shell."

"For much of his young life, Kingsley believed that education was everything, that through wisdom, all things were possible. Now he worries that without a 'long-leg' — someone who knows someone who can help him — his degrees will do nothing but adorn the walls of his parents' low-rent house."

"Being the opara of the family, Kingsley Ibe is entitled to certain privileges — a piece of meat in his egusi soup, a party to celebrate his graduation from university. As first son, he has responsibilities, too. But times are bad in Nigeria, and life is hard."

"At age seven, when it was confirmed that her right hand could reach across her head and touch her left ear, Augustina moved back to her father’s house and started attending primary school. Being long and skinny had worked to her advantage."

"My father was a walking encyclopedia, and he flipped his pages with the zeal and precision of a magician."

"Cash Daddy’s cheeks were puffy, his neck was chunky, his five limbs were thick and long."

"When a tragedy befalls his family, Kingsley learns the hardest lesson of all: education may be the language of success in Nigeria, but it's money that does the talking."

"Make una come see o, Graveyard don begin dey use perfume."

"Dear Friend, I do not come to you by chance. Upon my quest for a trusted and reliable foreign business man or company I was given your contact by the Nigerian chamber of Commerce and Industry, I hope that you can be trusted to handle a transaction of this magnitude."

"Is honesty an achievement? Personality is one thing, achievement is another thing. So what has your father achieved? How much money is he leaving for you when he dies? Or is it his textbooks that you’ll collect and pass on to your own children?"

"Odinkemmelu took his body odor away to the kitchen and returned with a teaspoon of salt."

"He brought out an it-was-white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped the sweat from his brows."

"Unconditional family support may be the way in Nigeria, but when Kingsley turns to his Uncle Boniface for help, he learns that charity may come with strings attached."

"My tender triceps started grumbling"

"Although his position on the family tree could not be described in anything less than seven sentences, Odinkemmelu was introduced to us as our cousin."

"It would have to be one of those dangerous pieces of advice that people dish out all over the place. A particularly popular one is: Follow your heart. What if the person’s heart is leading them into a dungeon of doom? What if the person’s heart is filled with foolishness? ‘Follow your heart’ is not just unwise counsel; it is a recipe for anarchy. Imagine a world where each of us followed our heart to wherever it led us, without caring for the people around us or the laws of the land."

"My novel came before the story: I decided to write a novel before I knew what to write about. The story wasn’t burning in my heart or bursting to be let loose on the page. It didn’t feel like there was this one story that I had to tell. But I have always been fascinated by why people do the things they do. While trying to come up with ideas for my novel, I decided on a story that explored that."

"I bought Male Daughters, Female Husbands on the title alone, expecting it to be an anthropological study discussing how an indigenous society had made space and roles for queer people. I was very wrong. Instead, Ifi Amadiune presents a brilliant study of how the Nnobi of Nigeria made space and roles for women, and how the Christian patriarchy took those roles away. Amadiune challenges her fellow anthropologists and western feminists about their assumptions about African societies. (Namely, that colonialism helped African women get out from under the thumb of bad African men, yet they still need western feminists to save them further. Amadiune clearly demonstrates how neither of these things are true and how these kinds of simplified views of any indigenous society are steeped in racism."

"Everyone can tell a story, but the skillful use of words is what I usually find captivating when reading a piece. The imagery. The alliteration. The emotion. The quotable quotes. Think Shakespeare. Think the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The skillful placing of word against word is what builds the masterpiece and turns a story into a memorable work of art. I often tell people how fascinated I was with Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. But while I have absolutely no recollection of the plot, I still remember how struck I was by her use of words. Her writing was pure art."

"This fine collection of poetry on love, nature and Sufism bursts forth with pure humanity and elegance of language. Dominated by the presence of beautiful, dignified womanhood that is tough but loving, giving and grateful, the poems peel off layers of time to reveal memories that refuse to dissipate. A celebratory voice singing the beauty of fall colors and the magic of Africa's star-studded sky and enchanted moonlit night is interlaced with a strong, unyielding moral voice that speaks against the injustice and bullying of the powerful, and the pillage and greed of empire. Amadiume's beautiful, moving, and well-crafted collection returns to nature what belongs to it--simplicity; and reminds humanity of what it has lost--the love that is divine. Love is Great!"

"Ifi Amadiume's Circles of Love speaks with passion of love gained, love lost, love desired. These are poems which embrace the pains and joys of exile--memory, sweetness, history and a sense of peace with the landscapes of home wherever these may be."

"Love is a many splendored thing and Ifi Amadiume spins the wonder of love in circles of memory, humor, joy and even political satire with a lyrical and often intimate voice that describes family, friends and special places. Here are poems you will want to read and remember."

"It was with pride that Nwokocha Agbadi returned the twenty bags of cowries to his former son-in-law and he even added a live goat as a token of insult."

"Extremely powerful and assertive women were able to dominate their husbands."

"Read for my Anthropology of Gender class. This is an incredibly thorough ethnography that traces the history, colonisation, and modern traditions of a small area in Nigeria. Amadiume doesn’t just reclaim, explain, and evaluate the customs of the Igbo people from the town where she was born, she also demonstrates the long history of how colonialism has distorted, misconstrued, and tried to erase them. It makes me wonder how many indigenous religions we’ve completely lost due to the efforts of colonisation trying to either mould them to the “White Christian ideal” or wipe them out completely. It’s a sad thought, but I’m still glad Ifi Amadiume is here to speak for herself, taking back the fierce power of anthropology from those who would use it for ill."

"The men were no longer known by their own names, but by reference to their role as husband."

"I spit out everything onto the page, from beginning to end, and then go back and edit. I’m one of those people who like to tick off things on my to-do list; so, it helps me psychologically to get to the end first, and then settle down to revise."

"“Since women were basically seen as producers, the principals of control and protection applied to them throughout their productive period, whether as daughters, wives, or mothers. It is said when a woman outgrows the question, 'whose daughter is she?' people then ask, 'whose wife is she?' Only as matrons were women no longer valued in their sexual or reproductive capacity; matrons were, therefore, beyond control."

"A woman at this stage of her life no longer sought to be sexually attractive to men, and was no longer in sexual competition with other women. Matrons, in order to succeed economically and wield power, had to free themselves of 'messy' and 'demeaning' female domestic services, which included sexual services. Woman-to-woman marriage was one of the ways of achieving this. The younger wife would then take over the domestic duties."

"In the traditional society, a flexible gender system meant that male roles were open to certain categories of women through such practices as nhaye, 'male daughters,' igba ohu, 'female husbands. These institutions placed women in a more favourable position for the acquisition of wealth and formal political power and authority. Under colonialism, these indigenous institutions – condemned by the Church as 'pagan' and anti-Christian – were abandoned or reinterpreted to the detriment of women."

"I Do Not Come To You By Chance is set in the world of Nigeria’s 419 scammers. It was a world I was very familiar with having grown up in South East­ern Nigeria. There were lots of people, lots of young men I knew who were going to, who were 419 scammers. So I wanted to write a story of how people from good homes, people from the kind of home I came from could become international financial terror­ists."

"If it was authoritarian for the Nigerian government to ban the use of Twitter, it was even more problematic for an American swivelling in a chair in Silicon Valley to poke their finger into the internal affairs of a sovereign African state."

"Man seems to have wanted… to give the universe his own gender…anything believed to have value belongs to men and is marked by their gender…he gives his own gender to God, to the sun."

"Government should incentivize production, provide enabling environment for businesses to thrive, ensure locally produced goods and services compete in the International Market and ensure that necessary infrastructures are put in place with these Nigeria will be self-reliant. In other words, there is need to Identify areas where we have competitive advantage, then develop required and necessary policies and most importantly ensure proper implementation of developed policies."

"… a flexible gender system … meant … certain women could occupy roles and positions usually monopolized by men, and thereby exercise considerable power and authority over both men and women."

"As men increased their labour force, wealth and prestige through the accumulation of wives, so also did women through the institution of "female husbands.‟ When a woman paid money to acquire another woman, the woman who was bought had the status and customary rights of a wife, with respect to the woman who bought her, who was referred to as her husband, and the "female husband‟ had the same rights as a man over his wife."

"“The fact that biological sex did not always correspond to ideological gender meant that women could play roles usually monopolized by men, or be classified as 'males' in terms of power and authority over others. As such roles were not rigidly masculinized or feminized, no stigma was attached to breaking gender rules. Furthermore, the presence of an all-embracing goddess-focused religion favoured the acceptance of women in statuses and roles of authority and power."

"Finance is the blood of the business. FINTECH is driving access to finance and helping to boost aggregate demand and investment."

"She is said to have had about 24 wives… the qualities attributed to her were hard work and perseverance. She was … a clever woman, who knew how to utilize her money."

"Nigerians are not looking for a handout, what they need is the space and they will do the rest. People are really entrepreneurial, so for us as a country, it’s not for lack of human assets or the passion or desire to progress, it is about lack of good policy, good governance around economics, and making the environment conducive so that all Nigerians can prosper, no matter what positive endeavour they decide to engage in."

"Senator Anyanwu has no moral justification to run down Governor Rochas Okorocha, whose achievements in less than eight years have surpassed the achievements of all those who had governed the State before him put together”."

"The fact that this bad precedent has been repeated by a government that espouses respect for human rights is dangerous. What it implies is a deepening belief among the military that journalists can write a coup."

"The information support of IFEX has really helped press freedom NGOs around the world to lift advocacy work to new heights so that there was pressure everywhere Abacha’s government reared its head...Without the work of groups like CCPJ, the tyrannical grip on Nigeria would have been tighter. The widespread negative publicity and the groundswell of consciousness it raised neutralized the millions of dollars they spent laundering the image of a sick regime."

"What I saw in the days of incarceration is a long story but to me what is important are the positive things that came out of it...I now appreciate life more fully. I have learned the true meaning of freedom. I value it and will fight for it both for myself and others."

"Boko Haram is a curse to humanity and all Nigerians at all levels should reject it in its entirety, knowing fully well that it is an issue that does not affect only the Chibok girls but affects the entire Nigerians."

"I infuse influencing into my lifestyle, I make sure I take every brand like it’s my first and I try to create content that flows naturally and can be related to my followers in the best way possible"