Leadership Quote by Chinua Achebe

Achebe’s line lands like a verdict disguised as a shrug: Nigeria “is what it is.” The phrase sounds fatalistic, almost weary, then snaps into accusation. He uses the plainest possible grammar to do something ruthless - strip away alibis. No colonial scapegoat, no abstract “system,” no mystical national character. Just leaders failing a job they were supposed to do.

The intent is corrective, not merely condemnatory. Achebe is insisting that nationhood is not a vibe; it’s a set of decisions made by people with power. By framing Nigeria’s condition as a leadership problem, he presses responsibility upward, where budgets, police orders, patronage networks, and ethnic bargaining actually get shaped. The subtext is that ordinary Nigerians may be burdened by history, but they are also held hostage by a political class that treats the state as private property.

Context matters: Achebe wrote through the optimism of independence, the violence of the Biafran War, and the long hangover of military rule and corruption. Coming from a novelist, the line also carries a storyteller’s impatience with excuses. It rejects the comforting literary move of making Nigeria a tragic character doomed by fate. Achebe is basically saying: the plot can change, but only if the protagonists stop lying, stealing, and performing governance as theater.

What makes it work is its moral simplicity. No ornament, no policy blueprint - just a hard standard (“what they should be”) that invites the reader to ask the most dangerous question in a young democracy: who benefits from things staying exactly as they are?