Travelling as a Nigerian was exciting.

Travelling as a Nigerian was exciting. People listened to us. Our money was worth more than the dollar. In 1961 when the driver of a bus in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia asked me what I was doing sitting in the front of the bus, I told him nonchalantly that I was going to Victoria Falls. In amazement he stooped lower and asked where I came from. I replied, even more casually: "Nigeria, if you must know; and, by the way, in Nigeria we sit where we like in the bus." Back home I took up the rather important position of director of external broadcasting, an entirely new radio service aimed primarily at our African neighbours. I could do it in those days, because our politicians had yet to learn the uses of information control and did not immediately attempt to regiment our output. They were learning fast, though."
-Chinua Achebe