YouSaid · the spoken record

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

lines on the record: 54
first: 2023-11-13
most recent: 2023-11-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“My father was an educationalist. He was very clear. My mother used to say, Oh, let's take the children on holiday. My father would like, I am on holiday, I'm in the UK. I'm not at home in Nigeria. But myself, my two siblings, it was made very clear to us that there's one thing that can't be taken away from you, which is your education. And for me particularly as the only girl, middle child, my parents were pretty clear. And my father did chart the classical male father career that he thought I would take. I was going to do medicine. And then I took a turn and guess what made me take a turn? It was the 1989 sort of the beginnings of the end of Thatcherism. And I was asked if I wanted to come out and get involved in election campaigning and all those kind of things. So very quickly started doing all those things going out.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, my parents are in a sense your classical immigrant parent. They found themselves here. They came here from Nigeria to study. My father, electrical engineering, my mother initially teaching and nursing and specialized in pediatric ophthalmology. One of the most famous high hospitals, Morphills High Hospital. I grew up on the children's ward of Morfield's eye hospital and I saw my very first eye, so to speak, at the age of about six or seven. And, you know, our mother insteeped in us the value of our eyes. And in fact, my mother used to tell me off as every good Nigerian mother does with her eyes. Somebody would say, but I never saw your mother talk. I go, she did. She used her eyes. And I knew when she was calling me stupid. I knew when she was telling me behave yourself. I knew when she was saying you're doing okay. She was minimal with her words, but her eyes spoke volume as well. They both believed in education.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Except for the Rwandan genocide. Last year set aside Ukraine was the worst year in terms of human suffering and deaths. And we can name Ethiopia, Myanmar, Sudan, which you're familiar with. And this year, I think it's gone further in the wrong direction because just astonishing figures around children, for example, the most innocent of people now being caught in the crossfires of great power politics and in revenge and in pain. And the idea that this is what we're dealing with in the 21st century when my generation was told that we would be the generation that would turn things around, there's a sense of failure, to be frank, a sense of hopelessness, a sense where the horizon looks bleak and dark and the sense in which you don't know. to go but I cling on to hope as well which is why I do what I do”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It hasn't panned out in the way that it was described to me. I left school when I was told that I was the generation of the future. The era after the end of the Cold War where key institutions and one that I aspired to work at the United Nations, the ideal of we the people and dealing with peacekeeping, peacemaking, that these institutions were ripe to respond to conflicts, they were ripe to respond to peace building and also that these were institutions that were entrusted and there was trust at the center of them. I think today I look at a world that is going in the wrong direction. I have struggled with the numbers that we're seeing since the end of the Cold War. We've never seen figures like this.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source