Naming is like putting a stamp on something and fixing it. A kind of formaldehyde sort of fixation, but it becomes dead, sitting there forever, frozen. So, I'm not a great one for these modernist, post modernist, post colonial labels. I think they serve certain purpose. You do need some kind of sign post here and there, but it can also become an end in itself.

The market literature, which was particularly strong in Igboland, in Onitsha, today it is no longer strong. It is one of the victims of the civil war, that market was actually destroyed and at the end of the war a new Nigeria has struggled to come into being and I believe that what is probably going to replace the market literature might be the video, which they have taken to in a big way, creating dramas. So that may be the next thing way we will see coming out of the local basic level in our society.

There is no story that is not true.

As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look.

It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.

Women and music should not be dated.

I've had trouble now and again in Nigeria because I have spoken up about the mistreatment of factions in the country because of difference in religion. These are things we should put behind us.