Women Authors From Nigeria

"work on every genre of literature from fiction to poetry, non-fiction and drama. I do work more on some than the others. My dominant focus, for instance, is mostly fiction and poetry. Recently though, I compiled a non-fiction anthology called Blessed Body: The Secret Lives of LGBT Nigerians. Of all the genres, I enjoy poetry the most. It gives me a space to condense my words and say a lot in a very limited space. It challenges me to utilize figures of speech, imagery and mood to capture my thought and ideas. I also like non-fiction because there is urgency about it. It almost feels as if I am documenting narratives live, as they happen. At the moment, I am working on a critical paper about how films/documentaries can be used as an effective tool of activism for the African LGBTQ activist. Additionally, I am editing and polishing my second collection of poetry collection entitled Brutal Bliss."

"I don’t know what you have heard. There have been so many different accounts of that particular situation. The fact that I am sitting here means that I didn’t do anything wrong. But I have not come out to set the record straight as to what happened. The social media has just run rife with different accounts."

"Last year, on Saturday, 14th September 2019, at approximately 5:52 pm, a fire broke out in my house at No 15, Justice Lawal Uwais Street, Asokoro, Abuja. Many of my documents were lost in the fire, including which was my NYSC certificate. Therefore, I am writing to apply for the replacement of my NYSC Certificate that was lost in the fire incident."

"I think what I owe Nigerians is to say that I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t break the law. The NYSC I did and finished. That is the much I can tell you. Everything I did was by the law."

"The matter had been adjudicated and one day, I will come out with my account. I have probably done more NYSC than you (presenter). I have done at least two NYSCs in my life."

"When I arrived home... [I] met my mother sitting on the cement slab outside the kitchen door, looking agitated. She said my father had gone out with Ify because Dayo, my immediate elder brother, wanted to make trouble. She said Dayo was categorical in his rejection of Ify because he was Igbo and had threatened to ensure that the marriage never happened... My mother said there was something disturbing about the way he spoke; she said she detected a level of vehemence that was troublesome... Finally, everybody was home and all hell was let loose. Dayo's vituperations astounded me."

"“hellish” to travel to work in the morning and a “nightmare of intractable traffic and bad roads” in the evening"

"You are a fresh graduate with little knowledge of the dynamics of your country. The northerners are good people but you've got to be ready to identify with them, demonstrate that you are a part of them, before you can benefit from their kindness[...] You have to claim to be a northerner to get a job in the north."

"I took a firm decision also not to share my misery with any of my mates because I knew what advice most of then would proffer. They would tell me I had no option but to succumb. They would give me a thousand and one names of students, past and present, who had succumbed; that I should be 'realistic'. And so I kept the matter to myself. I was suffering internally; I was going through agony trying to think of a way out. Nonetheless, I managed to maintain a calm exterior as I went about my other academic activities."

"Inter-ethnic marriage [I]s a weapon of peace and harmonious co-existence among the numerous ethnic groups in Nigeria."

"“‘Oga mi, wole kanle, eleyi gbomo,’” – “My boss, you need to park properly; this passenger has a child with them"

"The Anambra Igbos are not just good, they are far better than the Imo Igbos.The Anambra people are the genuine and authentic Igbos. Besides, look around you, nearly every great Igbo person in this country is from Anambra - Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chinua Achebe, Odumegwu Ojukwu, Emeka Anyoku; the list is long. You have spent close to one year in Anambra and you have tasted their hospitality. What further proof do you need?"

"The unfortunate class of homeless Lagosians"

"Our father and our God, are ask that you cure Anjola of her Yoruba stubbornness! Our merciful father, we know that Yoruba Stubbornness is a serious disease; it is a disease that is difficult to cure but we trust in your supreme power, oh God, because you are the God of Possibilities."

"It was home of the legendary CMS Grammar School, the oldest secondary school in the country, as well as Methodist Boys’ High School. It was also home to some movie stars and music icons like Obesere, Olamide, 9ice and Lil Kesh. Prominent tertiary institutions such as the University of Lagos and the Federal College of Education, Technical were just down the road."

"When a man is looking... happy..., the woman in his life deserve commendation."

"Don't look at your travails as a north-west problem. It's a national problem. The country needs help."

"there are only two things that 'qualify' an individual to even nurse a political ambition in our country... They are money and the strong backing of a godfather."

"What's the difference between a Yanmirin and an animal? Can the offspring of a hen be a duck?"

"Is it true that Igbo people in Imo are better than those in Anambra? That they are more hospitable, better organised and generally more elevated?"

"Not his-story. My own will be called her-story."

"When you get up every day, I want you to remind yourself that tomorrow will be better than today. That you are a person of value. That you are important."

"“My mama say education will give me a voice. I want more than just a voice, Ms. Tia. I want a louding voice,” I say. “I want to enter a room and people will hear me even before I open my mouth to be speaking. I want to live in this life and help many people so that when I grow old and die, I will still be living through the people I am helping.“"

"Death is only a doorway."

"Life is an ambivalent lover. One moment, you are everything and life wants to consume you entirely. The next moment, you are an insignificant speck of nothing. Meaningless."

"It’s something about being in love looking like all the things you’ve lost finding you once more."

"It is so critical to understand that speaking up transcends the ability to help just the person speaking up, but knowing that whenever we use our voices, we are doing so for many others who have suffered the same experiences or injustices. It is about starting crucial conversations that would hopefully lead to positive change. It is about refusing to be complacent, to accept what is seen as the norm."

"It’s so heartbreaking that we’re killing talent. We’re killing intelligence. We’re killing future leaders. We’re killing brains, inventors. We’re killing so much by not allowing these girls to be educated."

"You must do good for other peoples, even if you are not well, even if the whole world around you is not well."

"We all be speaking different because we all are having different growing-up life, but we can all be understanding each other if we just take the time to listen well."

"I want to tell her that God is not a cement building of stones and sand. That God is not for all that putting inside a house and locking Him there. I want her to know that the only way to know if a person find God and keep Him in their heart is to check how the person is treating other people, if he treats people like Jesus says--with love, patience, kindness, and forgiveness."

"I don’t want to write trauma for trauma’s sake. I want to write it in a way that leads to empathy. To action."

"That’s the disgusting reality about the human ability to adapt. At first the shock, the repulsion, is all in 3D — sights and sounds and smells. You recoil and gag and wish for a bath and cry at the devastation. Time passes. You live in it. You spend time in it. You blend, and everything fizzles to normalcy, and that which once repulsed slowly becomes natural, acceptable if you do nothing. That, I realize, is what culture is: doing things a certain way until you get used to it."

"Kike picks up her basket, sets it on her head, leaves it to balance by itself. The girls in our village learn how to do this from when they are first growing two teeth. They know how to use every part of their body to work so that their hand can be free to do even more work."

"Trees, they die dead like people too. They need care too. The earth around us needs care. We come from earth, we eat from earth, and one day we must go back to earth, so why are we treating it so bad?"

"“In our land, a sad wife is better than a happy woman with no husband.”"

"I didn’t tell Ms. Tia that I ever marry Morufu or about all the things he did to me in the room after he drink Fire-Cracker. I didn’t tell her about what happen to Khadija. I didn’t tell her because I have to keep it inside one box in my mind, lock the box, and throw the key inside river of my soul. Maybe one day, I will swim inside the river, find the key."

"When she come out, she draw deep breath and her chest, wide like blackboard, is climbing up and down, up and down. It is as if this woman is using her nostrils to be collecting all the heating from the outside and making us to be catching cold. I am standing beside Mr. Kola, and his body is shaking like my own. Even the trees in the compound, the yellow, pink, blue flowers in the long flowerpot, all of them too are shaking."

"I tear to pieces the paper, and throw it to the floor. Then I swim deep inside the river of my soul, find the key from where it is sitting, full of rust, at the bottom of the river, and open the lock. I kneel down beside my bed, close my eyes, turn myself into a cup, and pour the memory out of me."

"She open her eyes, give me a sad smile. “I wish I am a man, but I am not, so I do the next thing I can do. I marry a man.”"

"“When you begin to born your children, you will not be too sad again,” she say. “When I first marry Morufu, I didn’t want to born children. I was too afraid of having a baby so quick, afraid of falling sick from the load of it. So I take something, a medicine, to stop the pregnant from coming. But after two months, I say to myself, ‘Khadija, if you don’t born a baby, Morufu will send you back to your father’s house.’ So I stop the medicine and soon I born my first girl, Alafia. When I hold her in my hands for the first time, my heart was full of so much love. Now, my children make me laugh when I am not even thinking to laugh. Children are joy, Adunni. Real joy.”"

"“But you were blind to your wife’s depression and silent resentment. She hid it from you because she loved you. And you were blind to it because society offers you that blindfold, that thick cloth of entitlement, patriarchy, at birth.”"

"I am leaving Ikati. This is what I been wanting all my life, to leave this place and see what the world outside is looking like, but not like this. Not with a bad name following me. Not like a person that the whole village is looking for because they think she have kill a woman. Not with one half of my heart with Kayus and the other half with Khadija. I hang my head down, feeling a thick, heavy cloth as it is covering me. The thick cloth of shame, of sorrow, of heart pain."

"“Fifteen years ago, I was selling cheap materials from my boot, going from place to place, looking for customers. I wasn’t born into wealth. I have worked hard for my success. I fought for it. It wasn’t easy, especially because my husband, Chief, he didn’t have a job. If you want to be like me in business, Adunni, you will need to work very hard. Rise about whatever life throws at you. And never, ever give up on your dreams. Do you understand?”"

"If it takes two people to make a baby, why only one person, the woman, is suffering when the baby is not coming? Is it because she is the one with breast and the stomach for being pregnant? Or because of what? I want to ask, to scream, why are the women in Nigeria seem to be suffering for everything more than men?"

"I feel a free that I didn't feel in long time. And when I smile, it climb from inside my stomach and spread itself on my teeth."

"Write your truth, Ms. Tia say. Your truth."

"Who knows what else tomorrow will bring? So, I nod my head yes, because it is true, the future is always working, always busy unfolding better things, and even if it doesn’t seem so sometimes, we have hope of it."

"Now I know that speaking good English is not the measure of intelligent mind and sharp brain. English is only a language, like Yoruba and Igbo and Hausa. Nothing about it is so special, nothing about it makes anybody have sense."

"“Your schooling is your voice, child. It will be speaking for you even if you didn’t open your mouth to talk. It will be speaking till the day God is calling you come.” That day, I tell myself that even if I am not getting anything in this life, I will go to school. I will finish my primary and secondary and university schooling and become teacher because I don’t just want to be having any kind voice . . . I want a louding voice."