My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.

It is not fair to those who fight corruption that they have to fight the aggressiveness, the impunity of the corrupt.

Society itself is responsible for the degradation.

You go to conferences, and your fellow African intellectuals - and even heads of state - they all say: 'Nigeria is a big disappointment. It is the shame of the African continent.'

The media owes the responsibility to constantly tell the public the truth.

The gods in Yoruba mythology are not remote at all. They're benign, they're malign, they are mischievous, like Eshu for instance, tricksters, rascally, fornicators, that's a similarity to Greek mythology, for instance, you know. They're not saints, they're not saints. They're powerful. It's why they're not tyrannical. Of course, a number of them are also very, you know, benevolent, you know, there are saintly virtues to be found in them.

I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.