The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

Just think of the work you've set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can.

If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.

Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.

People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them.

When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day.

I try as hard as possible not to be pessimistic because I have never thought or believed that creating a Nigerian nation would be easy; I have always known that it was going to be a very tough job. But I never really thought that it would be this tough. And what's going on now, which is a subjection of this potentially great country to a clique of military adventurers and a political class that they have completely corrupted - this is really quite appalling. The suffering that they have unleashed on millions of people is quite intolerable.