ON THE TROUBLE WITH NIGERIA
The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are hallmarks of true leadership
No one can do much about the weather: we must accept it and live with or under it. But national bad habits are different matter; we resign ourselves to them at our peril.
Does it ever worry us that history which neither personal wealth nor power can pre-empt will pass terrible judgment on us. Pronounce anathema on our names when we have accomplished our betrayal and passed on? We have lost the twentieth century; are we bent on seeing that our children also lose the twenty-first? God forbid!
ON CULT OF MEDIOCRITY
Nigeria on the other hand is a country where it would be difficult to point to one important job held by the most competent person we have. I stand to be corrected
ON CORRUPTION
Keeping an average Nigerian from being corrupt is like keeping a goat from eating yam
ON USE OF SIREN
“In all civilized countries the siren is used in grave emergencies by fire engines, ambulances and the police in actual pursuit of crime. Nigeria, with its remarkable genius for travesty, has formed a way to turn yet another useful invention by serious-minded people elsewhere into a childish and cacophonous instrument for the celebration of status†  ON IGBO QUESTION  “Nigerians of all other ethnic groups will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo”
ON FALSE IMAGES OF OURSELVES  “I know enough history to realize that civilization does not fall down from the sky; it has always been the result of people’s toil and sweat, the fruit of their long search for order and justice under brave and enlightened leaders
Joe Igbokwe Lagos