"But it wasn't Authority that worried me really; it never does. It wasn't those officious footlings, either. It wasn't even the four who were mangled. It was the thousands who laughed so blatantly at their own humiliation and murder."
Ikem is witnessing an execution of four thieves. Being a man of common sense and a writer, he worries about this act and he makes a perfect observation of the heart of the issue. It isn't the execution itself that is to blame but the acceptance and laughter by the side of the same people like the ones executed. They are like sheep following the dreadful acts without realizing that it could be any one of them standing there. Even in his lecture after being fired from his position as the editor of Gazette, Ikem sees the heart of the issue in the same way. Responsibility is shared by those committing the act (the government) and the people who accept the actions blindly and without resistance.
"No I cannot give you the answer you are clamouring for. Go home and think! I cannot decree your pet, textbook revolution. I want instead to excite general enlightenment by forcing all the people to examine the condition of their lives because, as the saying goes, the unexamined life is not worth living...As a writer I aspire only to widen the scope of that self-examination. I don't want to foreclose it with a catchy, half-baked orthodoxy. My critics say: There is no time for your beautiful educational programme; the masses are ready and will be enlightened in the course of the struggle. And they quote Fanon on the sin of betraying the revolution. They do not realize that revolutions are betrayed just as much by stupidity, incompetence, impatience and precipitate actions as by doing nothing at all."
In his meditation after being suspended as the editor of the Gazette, Ikem recognizes that the crowd is clamoring for a template for revolution. He refuses to give them one because he realizes the danger in a group of people looking to one person for all of the answers without doing the necessary thought and self-reflection to make such a movement successful. Change will only be possible if the people pushing for change are enlightened, and so he wants to motivate people to go home and think. While many want revolution to be quick, sudden, and passionate, Ikem wants them to see that revolutions can be betrayed by stupidity and incompetence just as easily as they can be betrayed by doing nothing at all. Instead they should prepare, reflect, and think critically about what will come next.
"But the strange fact is that Dr. Castro, no matter what he says, never defaults in his obligations to the international banking community. He says to others, 'Don't pay,' while making sure he doesn't fall behind himself in his repayments."
This quote describes the way the leaders would say anything to get the people on their side. They would act heroic and rebellious to appease the people and doomed are those who follow blindly. As long as they are on top, they don't choose words that will make them get there. Hypocrisy is a very important tool for that.
"My position is quite straightforward especially now that I don't have to worry about being Editor of the Gazette. My view is that any serving President foolish enough to lay his head on a coin should know he is inciting people to take it off; the head I mean."
Ikem offers this answer to the audience during his meditation at the University. It becomes the fodder of the next day's newspaper headline, which claims he is advocating for regicide. It is part of the completely trumped up case against Ikem that leads to his assassination.
"'Yes, really. And the lives of some of my friends. It wasn't Ikem the man who changed me. I hardly knew him. It was his ideas set down on paper. One idea in particular: that we may accept a limitation on our actions but never, under no circumstances, must we accept restriction on our thinking."
In the final chapter, Emmanuel remembers Ikem and what he learned from his example. Ikem was a man who wasn't afraid to think and voice his thoughts about the injustice of what he witnessed. This is the essence of his legacy: change begins with a thought.
The Attorney General was perched on the edge of his chair, his left elbow on the table, his neck craning forward to catch his Excellency's words which he had chosen to speak with unusual softness as if deliberately to put his hearer at a disadvantage; or on full alert on pain of missing a life and death password. As he watched his victim straining to catch the vital message he felt again that glow of quiet jubilation that had become a frequent companion especially when as now he was disposing with consummate ease of some of those troublesome people he had thought so formidable in his apprentice days in power. It takes a lion to tame a leopard, say our people. How right they are!
This quote provides another window into the ruling philosophy of His Excellency, who likes to dominate people in every way possible, including the ways he speaks with them. Opting for a quieter, harder to hear voice, he believes this enhances his position of power and views the other person in the conversation as the "victim." This quote also encapsulates the evolution of His Excellency as a ruler, from his early "apprentice days" in power where he was less sure of himself, to this moment in time when he is manipulating his closest advisers in the smallest of interactions. This interaction shows how casually ruthless His Excellency can be.
"Later I hear how a concerned neighbor once called the police station—this was before I came to live here—and reported that a man was battering his wife and the Desk Sergeant asked sleepily: "So Therefore?" So, behind his back, we call him Mr. 'So Therefore.' I can never remember his real name."
This quote communicates the normalcy of abuse and society's willingness to accept the abuse of women. The police's response, who is charged with protecting those who are vulnerable, is dismissive of the serious complaint of abuse. Similarly, Ikem's response of turning it into a nickname minimizes the gravity of the situation.
"You see, they are not in the least like ourselves. They don't need and can't use the luxuries that you and I must have. They have the animal capacity to endure the pain of, shall we say, domestication. The very words the white master had said in his time about the black race as a whole. Now we say them about the poor."
Ikem's reflection on how colonizers used the same language to describe the black race as the current ruling elite uses to describe the poor shows how the postcolonial state has adopted some of the same behavior as the colonial state. The object of oppression has changed but the language has remained the same. This quote raises broader questions of the goals and methods of the postcolonial state and whether it has brought meaningful change to the lives of its citizens. It also forces the reader to think critically about the concepts of equality, justice, and governance, and whether it is possible for a governing class to exist without marginalizing some portion of its population.
"Nations were fostered as much by structures as by laws and revolutions. These structures where they exist now are the pride of their nations. But everyone forgets that they were not erected by democratically-elected Prime Ministers but very frequently by rather unattractive, bloodthirsty medieval tyrants. The cathedrals of Europe, the Taj Mahal of India, the pyramids of Egypt and the stone towers of Zimbabwe were all raised on the backs of serfs, starving peasants and slaves. Our present rulers in Africa are in every sense late-flowering medieval monarchs, even the Marxists among them. Do you remember Mazrui calling Nkrumah a Stalinist Czar? Perhaps our leaders have to be that way. Perhaps they may even need to be that way."
This quote is a defense of the lavish spending on the Presidential Guest Retreat, which Ikem and Beatrice disagree with and Chris defends. While the retreat allows His Excellency to escape from the pressure of addressing the basic needs of his people, Chris believes that massive structures such as these are important for nation building. The examples he cites (cathedrals of Europe, pyramids of Egypt, etc.) all have become national symbols of those geographic locations, and they were built on the backs of serfs, starving peasants, and slaves. Chris conflates these symbols with the actual greatness of a country. Do symbols that generate tourism make a country great? Or do policies that improve the citizens' human condition make a country great? Can these two coexist or are they mutually exclusive? The quote wrestles with these larger questions of nation building and governance.
"The prime failure of this government began also to take on a clearer meaning for him. It can't be the massive corruption though its scale and pervasiveness are truly intolerable; it isn't the subservience to foreign manipulation, degrading as it is; it isn't even this second-class, hand-me-down capitalism, ludicrous and doomed; nor is it the damnable shooting of striking railway-workers and demonstrating students and the destruction and banning thereafter of independent unions and cooperatives. It is the failure of our rulers to re-establish vital inner links with the poor and dispossessed of this country, with the bruised heart that throbs painfully at the core of the nation's being."
Ikem is considering his path in public service as a way to fulfill his desire to live an ethical and meaningful life, and he is thinking critically about the many ways that "public affairs" has failed the people it is tasked with serving. Its most basic failing is that it has not reconnected the "inner links with the poor and dispossessed of the country," which were severed during colonial rule. It was an essential promise of the new government, and it has been ignored. While the government has committed many wrongs, the root of all of them is the fact that this link remains severed. The disconnection allows for all of the other deplorable things, like shooting striking workers, to occur.
