Nigerian Proverbs and Sayings
142 Nigerian sayings collected from Nigeria — 61 proverbs, 77 quotes, 4 short stories. Including Igbo proverbs.
- Nigeria has had the misfortune - no, the fortune - of seeing the worst face of capitalism anywhere in Africa. The masses have seen it, they are disgusted, and they want an alternative.Quote · Nigeria
- Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.Quote · Nigeria
- A chicken eats corn, drinks water, swallows pebbles, yet she complains of having no teeth. If she had teeth, would she eat gold? Let her ask the cow who has teeth yet eats grass.Quote · Nigeria
- If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.Quote · Nigeria
- It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward. We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live.Quote · Nigeria
- A conversation without proverbs is like stew without salt.Proverb · Nigeria
- What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.Quote · Nigeria
- Each of my books is different. Deliberately... I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.Quote · Nigeria
- The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.Quote · Nigeria
- Every morning when I wake up, I make up my mind to solve as many problems, before retiring home.Quote · Nigeria
- A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.Quote · Nigeria
- Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.Quote · Nigeria
- People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your neck.Quote · Nigeria
- A doctor who invoked a storm on his people cannot prevent his house from destruction.Proverb · Nigeria
- If the chicken's egg cracks the palm kernel, the grinding stone is put to shame.Proverb · Nigeria
- The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.Quote · Nigeria
- Even as the archer loves the arrow that flies, so too he loves the bow that remains constant in his hands.Proverb · Nigeria
- He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.Quote · Nigeria
- The frown on the face of a goat will not stop it from being taken to the market.Proverb · Nigeria
- All these boundaries - Africa, Asia, Malaysia, America - are set by men. But you don't have to look at boundaries when you are looking at a man - at the character of a man. The question is: What do you stand for? Are you a follower, or are you a leader?.Quote · Nigeria
- My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don't see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity.Quote · Nigeria
- It is the habit that a child forms at home, that follows them to their marriage.Proverb · Nigeria
- Half education is more dangerous than no education.Quote · Nigeria
- The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.Quote · Nigeria