Educating our young girls is the foundation for Nigeria's growth and development.
Interpretation
Investing in the education of girls is crucial for the overall progress of Nigeria.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala highlights the vital role that educating young girls plays in the advancement of Nigeria as a nation. This quote emphasizes that when girls are given the opportunity to learn and grow intellectually, it not only empowers them but also drives societal progression, economic stability, and sustainable development for the entire country.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech advocating for educational reforms in Nigeria.
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 felt Nigeria didn't have to succumb to the image of being a corrupt country; we didn't have to let the economy stagnate.
Do you wish to learn? There are books that can teach you anything, and there is no cheaper form of education, nor one whose effects are more lasting. My education came from books, and they have been my companions by many campfires, in bunkhouses, ships' forecastles, in hotels and on planes. No matter where you find me, I am never far from a book.
Instead of becoming a great shikari, as my mother and stepfather might have wished, I had become an incurable bookworm and was to remain one for the rest of my life.
Immerse yourself in the curriculum of grace.
The foundations of any subject may be taught to anybody at any age in some form.
It's not who you're going to sit beside at school that matters now: it's what resources will your school have.
Every city should make the common school so rich, so large, so ample, so beautiful in its endowments, and so fruitful in its results, that a private school will not be able to live under the drip of it.
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