Novelists From Nigeria

"Happiness is important, but I wouldn't say it is the main purpose of human existence."

"We came to tell you sir, that our clinic is run-down and abandoned.We came to tell you that we don’t have a single borehole onMorgan street... we are here to protest against this neglect--- weare dying from diseases. We are dying from a lack of hope. Andthat is why we are here today to protest. And this is the way wefeel we ought to express our displeasure"

"There had been an accident. Bola’s family-father, mother, and twosisters had been in a car crash. It was late in the evening...theywere on their way to Ibadan for a visit...The father driving hadfailed to see the truck laying on its side in the middle of the road.It was a military truck carrying the furniture of an officer ontransfer from Lagos to Ibadan. The father and mother, who were in front, had died instantly; Peju, the elder sister, died on the way to the hospital; the other sister, Lola, sustained minor injuries"

"Look out there, see the long queue of cars waiting for fuel. Someof them have been there for three days...And we are a majorproducer of oil"

"More than once ourtaxi was forced to hug the kerb as siren blaring military jeepspassed at top speed...”"

"A mob wielding cudgels and cutlasses is hot on the heels of a youthwho desperately crosses to the other side of the road, narrowlymissing the fender of a truck. The mob follows growing bigger asit goes. The youth, looking over his shoulder as he runs, crashesinto a light pole and falls senseless to the ground. Before he canregain a second wind the mob is on him. I watch the cudgels riseand fall; I hear his wailing ululating screams finally turn into awhimper. They poured petrol on him and set him ablaze"

"The students, who should have been busy taking theirbaths and getting set for lectures, sat idly...discussing the boycottof lectures"

"The houses were old and craggy and lichened. The place had theunfinished, abandoned appearance of an under waterscape.Crouching under the bigger or in their own clusters were hastilybuilt wood and zinc structures that housed an incredibly largenumber of families: the fathers were mostly out-of-work drivers,laborers, fugitives convalescing between prison terms"

"I don't have much of an imagination, but I have a mind bank of details, which I play with. It's how I daydream, so writing like that is natural for me."

"Even activism is for personal gain in Nigeria, so it’s no surprise that nothing improves. Should that happen, activists would be out of business. I am part of the world I complain about, but writing is not business as usual for me. It is an expression of hope that I might, in my small way, play a part in bringing about change. Now, you can’t kill the beast by feeding it, but you can slip poison into its food, which is what I attempt to do by writing honestly."

"We don finally reach the end of the road. We don dey together since I was born, but now time don come wey me and you must part. Bye-bye.Goodnight. Ka chi foo. Oda ro. Sai gobe"

"Your father left me for a beautiful woman. I told him I was pregnant but he didn’t want to hear it. He sliced me like okra and left."

"Let us not allow the world to see our shame, let us keep our secrets from those who may seek to mock us"

"Taju claimed that he’d beaten his wife senseless for letting his only son suck on a coin. This happened about a week after a male senator slapped a female colleague. The slap had resonated through all the quiet meeting rooms of the senate building and into the heart of every man on the street…men were slapping their womenfolk as if it had become a national sport…peeved taxi drivers prodded the heads of mothers who bargained with them; young girls were assaulted and stripped naked in the streets. Even in the labour wards baby girls frowned upon by their fathers. Taju too was inspired to throw his best punch"

"Even when the boys teased me over flap of flesh that circled my neck, I wasn't bothered. I looked at them and sniggered, knowing their father's fathers could not have a fraction of the wealth i have accummulated."

"“If you drag her by the hair, she’ll follow you anywhere, I swear it!”"

"“Don’t think I can’t see the challenges ahead of me. People will say I am a secondhand woman. Men will hurt and ridicule me but I won’t let them hold me back. I will remain in the land of the living. I am back now and the world is spread before me like an egg cracked open.”"

"My fingers liked the feel of money. My eye liked to see the piles of money swell. I worshipped money."

"Baba Segi only comes to deposit his seed in my womb. He doesn’t smile or tickle me. He doesn’t make jokes about my youth; he just rams me into the mattress…"

"Anyone who laughs at you for showing your family respect is a fool."

"“Only a foolish woman leans heavily on a man's promises”"

"“My daughters were born with eyes in their stomachs so they are quick to digest all that they see.”"

"When a plan does not go right, you plot again. One day you will succeed. One day you will be able to damage the person who hurts you so completely that they will never be able to recover."

"Now, in my working life as a teacher and writer, and as a mother of four children, I watch with horror when women of my generation opt to be second or third wives. And I have been shocked by the ease with which men in their mid-30s marry additional wives."

"Husband-sharing is ugly and, one way or another, someone's dreams are crushed when a new wife joins a household."

"“Even listening in on their plans for me did not take the tomato seller off my mind. After searching for days, I traced her to the farmland on the edge of our village. When I saw her, courage failed me. My liver weakened and I could not bring myself to talk to her. I abandoned my fufu and stalked her, overjoyed to be breathing the air she was breathing. I saw every man she teased. A gasp escaped my lips every time she rolled her hips and jiggled the beads that adorned her waist. Sweat was dripping from my neck like rain from the awning. I can’t explain why but I wanted her for myself. I wanted to build a house for her and keep the key between my breasts. I wanted to dress her in the finest aso oke so she could parade herself for my delight alone. I wanted to lock her between my thighs.”"

"The world has no patience for spinsters. It spits them out."

"The choices we have to make in this world are hard and bitter. Sometimes we have no choices at all."

"I like doing things that put Africa and Africans on the map. My job and the stuff that I do allows me to come in contact with so many talented, incredibly hardworking people. Young but doing incredible stuff. I want the world to see them. And when I say the world, the truth is, in fact, more than anything, I’m talking about Africa, as in the African world."

"A real woman must always do the things she wants to do, and in her own time too. You must never allow yourself to be rushed into doing things you're not ready for."

"Men are nothing. They are fools. The penis between their legs is all they are useful for. And even then, if not that women needed their seed for children, it would be better to sit on a finger of green plantain. Listen to my words. Only a foolish woman leans heavily on a man’s promises."

"This is a new kind of meaning, this danger. A serious kind of love. For oneself, one’s kin; and what life is meant for. Dangerous. I didn’t say it then; I was too young and answered Doctor or Mother but ask me now what I wish to be when I grow up"

"“Men are so simple. They will believe anything.”"

"The sad truth is, polygamy constitutes a national embarrassment in any country that fantasises about progress and development. Polygamy devalues women and the only person who revels in it is the husband who gets to enjoy variety. You, poor women, will become nothing more than a dish at the buffet."

"Once you crash the idea of normal in your mind, all impossibilities become possible."

"Dangerous women show up sometimes, they disturb something"

"Many of the women on the island of my birth are like this. Their bow tongues launch arrows into the world and never miss their mark"

"My grandmother was one such woman. For very long she convinced me only of her sweetness until one day when I commented on how lovely she was she, holding a pot of boiling water, said Muh dear there was time when I throw this water on you soon as look as yuh. It would appear, I learnt, that my sweet grandmother once had a temper. Most dangerous women do, an important ability to access their rage whose existence alone runs counter to nursery rhymes we were fed about sugar and nice"

"When I think of dangerous women I don’t think of women in whose presence I am in danger. When I think of dangerous women I think of women in whose presence the dangers of life finally meet their match. The kind of dangers I’m talking about are the hypocrisies, the patriarchy, the rules that are no rules at all but simply ways to cheat freedom and oppress those who dare sing out"

"My mother died when I was 23, and apart from the recent birth of my children, that is the most profound experience of my life. The grief that followed is a sharp memory of mine and I’ve often joked that the experience irrevocably marked my writing."

"Regardless of how many years I’ve lived in South Africa I think of myself as a product of three nations: Barbados, Nigeria and South Africa. Nigeria forms a very strong part of my sense of myself, my identity"

"My mother’s cousins. Dangerous in the sense that they take up magnificent space, they know what it is to laugh even though they have cried too"

"Identity is complex. I love being a Nigerian, I love belonging to that identity even if my belonging is complex, due to my multiple identities and migratory life experience"

"Hating, after all, was a drier form of drowning."

"The pieces of life, even when put together, assembled, never amount to the life itself."

"She understood what perhaps they are only just learning. That if you attempt to clean the messiness of life you end up scrubbing the life away from living. We can't excise joy from pain."

"The beauty of poetry shouldn’t be in how well the poet hides meaning between the lines. It should be in how easily he makes his readers discover them. A poem does not have to be difficult to be profound; ‘simple’ and ‘profound’ are not mutually exclusive."

"“Your Father Walks Like a Crab”"

"I believed that the woman in front of me, frail and sitting, had eaten life, swallowed it completely whole. I imagine she danced, fell in love, made love, made children, made lives, and set people straight with her arrow-words. And you know, danger, in the way it manifests in these women, has never been more allowing or more generous"

"“How could I tell her that I had failed to preserve my dignity? I was too ashamed to let her see the fickle shell I’d become. Inevitably, it became unbearable. The more she pushed, the more I resisted. I didn’t want a job! I didn’t want a white wedding! I just wanted the war between who I used to be and who I’d become to end. I didn’t want to fight anymore.”"