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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of resisting negative stereotypes and the potential for economic growth.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala highlights the need for Nigeria to challenge its reputation for corruption and to actively work towards economic progress. The quote reflects a belief that nations can shape their identities and futures by rejecting harmful perceptions and taking proactive steps towards improvement.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about national development at a conference.
When I became finance minister, they called me Okonjo-Wahala - or 'Trouble Woman.' It means 'I give you hell.' But I don't care what names they call me. I'm a fighter; I'm very focused on what I'm doing, and relentless in what I want to achieve, almost to a fault. If you get in my way, you get kicked.
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.
The best way to help Africans today is to help them to stand on their own feet. And the best way to do that is by helping create jobs.
When you save the life of anyone, a farmer, a teacher, a mother, they are contributing productively into the economy.
Investing in women is smart economics, and investing in girls, catching them upstream, is even smarter economics.
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.
You don't need to invade a place or install a new government to help bring about a positive change.
Fathers' sharing in the birth experience can be a stimulus for men's freedom to nurture, and a sign of changing relationships between men and women. In the same way, women's freedom to give birth at home is a political decision, an assertion of determination to reclaim the experience of birth. Birth at home is about changing society.
All significant breakthroughs are break -βwithsβ old ways of thinking.
To change bad habits, we must study the habits of successful role models.
Women will change the nature of power, rather than power changing the nature of women.
The only way to get change is not through the courts or - heaven forbid - the politicians, but through a change of human consciousness and through a change of heart. Only through the arts - music, poetry, dance, painting, writing - "can we really reach each other.
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