Nigerian Proverbs and Sayings
142 Nigerian sayings collected from Nigeria — 61 proverbs, 77 quotes, 4 short stories. Including Igbo proverbs.
- It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity. This has never been clearer than in the view of Africa from the American media, in which we are shown poverty and conflicts without any context.Quote · Nigeria
- Eneke the bird says that since men have learnt to shoot without missing, he has learnt to fly without perching.Proverb · Nigeria
- You can't put money meant for the right course of action in the hands of criminals, rogues and thieves and expect to see positive changes or results.Quote · Nigeria
- Morning Sunrise: A FolktaleA Nigerian short story by Cecilia Sinclair. A man in one of the villages had a very beautiful daughter. She was so lovely that people called her ‘Morning…Short story · Nigeria
- The mouse that makes jest of a cat has already seen a hole nearby.Proverb · Nigeria
- Nigera is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.Quote · Nigeria
- 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.Quote · Nigeria
- As I have always affirmed, nobody’s ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian.Quote · Nigeria
- No sane person sharpens his machete to cut a banana tree.Proverb · Nigeria
- What the old man sees sitting down, the young man cannot see standing on a tree.Proverb · Nigeria
- The one who gives thanks for the gift of yesterday will receive another gift tomorrow.Proverb · Nigeria
- People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.Quote · Nigeria
- Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.Quote · Nigeria
- When the laborer is praised, his cutlass begins to cut more keenly.Proverb · Nigeria
- Preparing cocoyams for planting does not mean that they are already planted.Proverb · Nigeria
- The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.Quote · Nigeria
- Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten.Quote · Nigeria
- A rat cannot call a cat to account for what the cat has done.Proverb · Nigeria
- Rat no dey born rabbit.Proverb · Nigeria
- Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Rwanda has indicated that however thin the hope of a community can be, a hero always emerges. Although no one can dare claim that it is now a perfect state, and that no more work is needed, Rwanda has risen from the ashes as a model or truth and reconciliation.Quote · Nigeria
- We live by hope, but a reed never becomes an Iroko tree by dreaming.Proverb · Nigeria
- If one were to remove every smoking wood from a fire and condemn it as bad, one would be killing the fire itself.Proverb · Nigeria
- One's own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs, which is intimately connected to humanity in general. What happens in Darfur becomes an assault on my own community, and on me as an individual. That's what the human family is all about.Quote · Nigeria
- I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.Quote · Nigeria