K. O. Mbadiwe

Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe (1915–1990) was a Nigerian nationalist, politician, statesman, and government minister in the Nigerian First Republic and a Biafran Roving ambassador during the civil war.

Quotes

• They come as come to become”;Nigeria is at the juncture where it must reach “an accord Con-cordial” with itself, its fate and its future.
  • [1]
• If you want to achieve greatness, then you must be ready to finance greatness.
  • [2]
• Logic and illogicality can never meet. If you want the Presidency, that is the logical sequence. If you throw in any other thing, it can never meet, and illogicality and logicality will produce tautology.
  • [3]
• Let finance jam with finance, when one irreducible minimum confronts another extreme irreducible minimum on another side, the net result is cataclysm and catastrophe.
  • [4]
• When the come, come to become, the unbecome, must become.
  • [5]
• When the come comes to become and we all come to close combat, we shall come out.
  • [6]

• The British must leave because they have given us only puny education.
  • K. O. Mbadiwe arguing that colonial education was inadequate for Nigeria's aspirations.

• Let all cementers cement all cementables!
  • K. O. Mbadiwe displaying his characteristic flair for political rhetoric.

• I am a man of timber and calibre.
  • K. O. Mbadiwe describing himself during his political career.

• I have grown beyond timber and calibre into a political juggernaut.
  • K. O. Mbadiwe responding to admirers who referred to him by his famous slogan.

Quotes K. O. Mbadiwe

• Mbadiwe's ambition for himself to lead Nigeria and for his nation to set it on the path to greatness faced insuperable difficulties. In a country of widespread poverty, high illiteracy, and a grossly underdevelopedprivate sector, there were fierce ethnic and regional conflicts for the control of governments and resources, leading to massive corruption and serious instability.
  • K. O. Mbadiwe

• Mbadiwe struggled in upholding his flair for national integration when the East seceded.

However, he never wavered in his belief in Nigeria’s national unity even when the Biafrans lost the war.

• Nationalism in Nigeria prior to the time of Mbadiwe was the phenomenon that prepared the ground and later opened up a great avenue for nationalists (during the time of Mbadiwe) to indulge in open organizations, cross-organizations, rigorous nationalist rhetoric and anti-colonial campaigns-- all of which won political independence for Nigeria on 1 October 1960.
  • [https://www.academia.edu/105424330/K_O_MBADIWE_AND_NATIONALISM_IN_NIGERIA_1951_1967 K.O. MBADIWE AND NATIONALISM IN NIGERIA, 1951-

1967]

External links

• The Guardian – Echoes of K. O. Mbadiwe
• iNigerian – KO is OK with Ambassador Plenipotentiary & Extraordinary