I think as you grow up and you see things which are around you and you ask questions and you hear the answers, your situation becomes more and more of a puzzle. Now, why is it like this, why are things like this and since writing is one way in which one can ask this questions and try to find these answers, it seems to me a very natural thing to do, especially as it meant stories which I always found moving, almost unbearably necessary.

I was a supporter of the desire, in my section of Nigeria, to leave the federation because it was treated very badly with something that was called genocide in those days.

The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.

Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.

Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.

Anybody who wants to rule a group will find that if this group is quarreling among themselves they leave you alone.