After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No.

Wole Soyinka

You cannot live a normal existence if you haven't taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.

Wole Soyinka

care taken facts

Only 4 sets of people can vote for the PDP: (1) those who are intellectually blind; (2) those who are blinded by ethnicity; (3) those who are blinded by corruption and therefore afraid of the unknown, should power change hands; and finally (4) those who are suffering from a combination of the above terminal sicknesses.

Wole Soyinka

ethnicity hands people

Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.

Wole Soyinka

safety shadow reality

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Wole Soyinka

criticism absence inspirational

I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.

Wole Soyinka

wake-up everyday people

I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.

Wole Soyinka

skeletons doe forests

Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.

Wole Soyinka

being-yourself positive-thinking inspirational

Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.

Wole Soyinka

wish writing book

When I was a child, for a public/civil servant to be caught in corrupt practices, that individual will be a pariah. He will be a complete reject of the society; he/she could not raise his or her voice to speak in the public. So what happened between that time and now? That time when a public officer, prison or customs officer caught in corruption hides his face in shame amongst his peers, he just couldn't come out publicly. Today, when they come back, they get chieftaincy titles, they are received in grand style, cows are killed, they ride on white horses.

Wole Soyinka

horse practice children

We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.

Wole Soyinka

humanity matter world

Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.

Wole Soyinka

done feelings people

I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.

Wole Soyinka

minorities definitions accepting

Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it's taken on lethal proportions.

Wole Soyinka

taken world thinking

History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.

Wole Soyinka

righteous teach justice

The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns.

Wole Soyinka

anticipate visionaries people

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.

Wole Soyinka

petroleum oil country

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.

Wole Soyinka

talking believe thinking

The man dies in all those that keep silent.

Wole Soyinka

silent dies men

The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.

Wole Soyinka

dip pot hands

It is the human potentials that interest me. I travel and everywhere I go I am amazed at the presence of Nigerians. The intelligence, integrity, productivity, initiative.

Wole Soyinka

initiative interest integrity