I think the epicentre of terrorism whether you call it cesspit or whatever you want to call it, shift, if you asked me a while ago, I would have said Somalia, Somalia has quietened a bit - and I think the epicentre right now is in Northern Nigeria.

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 never know who's influencing me at any time. I mean, I can take a play by Brecht and adapt it, I'm consciously adapting that play, or, as I've done with the Greek classics, Euripides and Oedipus, and I'm consciously adapting that play. Whether it influences me or not, I think it's the critics, the analysts who have to decide that. Me, I don't feel that I'm under the influence of any such sources.

Nigeria is so peculiar and dramatic. Even talking about the potentials before we talk about the negativities, Nigeria is a nation for perpetual study. I think in Nigeria, it is the potential which hits people and makes them believe in Nigeria. It tends to make them react when they see potentials being wasted and it is a tragedy to see potentials wasted. But paradoxically, it is a realization of the existence, that positive, that keeps many Nigerians and even foreign people going.

In European and American society, many pundits started to lament the death of literature; looking at youth who were getting more and more attracted to sitcoms - hard, adventure films and said, our children are no longer reading, or else they're reading cartoons.

People say human nature is a very vague expression, people tend to say human nature is corruptible anyway and it comes from a theological point of view, goes back to the Garden of Eden, that there is always this corrupt gene waiting to be activated that we inherited from the very beginning. I don't believe in that theological excuse.

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.