How do I feel when I am invited to a congregation of scientists? I feel quite at home. When they break into their cultic scientific argot, I know when I'm not wanted and step out for a drink.

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

Boko Haram represents the ultimate Fatwa of our time. The question is does the sect's Fatwa represent the articulated position of the majority of Muslims in this nation? My reading over the last few years is an unambiguous no. We are undergoing an affliction that many could not have imagined about a decade ago. Let us confront the ultimate horror now. To remain inactive at this moment is to betray our children and to consolidate the ongoing crimes against our humanity. We must take the battle to the enemy...We sent our children to school; we must bring them back to school.

I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we'd never smelled the fumes of petroleum.

We wasted a lot of creative energy in that immediate post colonial era, when there was a struggle between, you know, the Cold War between the capitalism and communism. Many writers just wasted their energy and their talent because they want to be ideologically correct and of course all they produced was propaganda.

One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.

For me, a writer is already being the deuce of his mission, his occupation to society.