I'm trying to tell you that there's a new wave on the continent. A new wave of openness and democratization in which, since 2000, more than two-thirds of African countries have had multi-party democratic elections. Not all of them have been perfect, or will be, but the trend is very clear.
I know what it means to go to the stream to fetch water... what it means when people are poor and don't have enough to eat. It's not enough to say you know about poverty. You have to live it.
No one can fight corruption for Nigerians except Nigerians. Everyone has to be committed from the top to the bottom to fight it.
One in four sub-Saharan Africans is Nigerian, and it has 140 million dynamic people - chaotic people - but very interesting people.
I felt Nigeria didn't have to succumb to the image of being a corrupt country; we didn't have to let the economy stagnate.
