Chinua Achebe Quotes
Nigera is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.
Achebe, Chinua. The Trouble with Nigeria. Fourth Dimension Publishing, 1983, p. 1.
Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis
WHO is the World Health Organization which is a part of the United Nations. It’s major goal is to provide public health assistance to third world nations. It came under fire for a range of abuses including arrogance, waste of money for flying first class and opulent offices, trying to control the Internet health domain, allowing political considerations to influence public health policies and practices, nepotism and cronyism producing second rate staff “experts,” mismanagement, fraud, waste and abuse, and others. It does some excellent heath work, but like other units of the United Nations is am administrative mess.
Nigeria had an abundance of natural resources including oil. However, they had one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
What makes this quotation memorable is that fact that it was public stated. Presidents have almost never gone into a local area and publicly stated that one of its governmental institutions was corrupt. Moreover, the corruption had not only gone on with the laxity of the state and city officials who had been Republicans and of the President’s own party—Democrats. The speech was, surprisingly to some, very warmly received by a public and political audience who had known of the corruption for years, but finally someone was trying to do something about it.
At the time, Root was a Senator from New York and was trying to eliminate the large number of patronage jobs, most of which were not even real jobs—just payment. These developed the name of “No Show Jobs.”
What was remarkable was that all the Defense Department and military witnesses agreed with Lynch on this point.
Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apart (1958), often considered his masterpiece, is the most widely read book in modern African literature.
