I think not just Nigeria but I think the whole of Africa has to turn back to the rural areas and that's where the majority of the citizens are and that's where the engine of of development has to be found.

When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.

There are people who say that if you are told that your house has fallen you don't ask what about the ceiling or what about the windows. The main thing is that this house, Africa, has fallen. Literature is just one aspect, pick any aspect of the situation.

Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said - or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do.

In the vocabulary of certain radical theorists contradictions are given the status of some deadly disease to which their opponents alone can succumb. But contradictions are the very stuff of life. If there had been a little dash of contradiction among the Gadarene swine some of them might have been saved from drowning.

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.

A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.