Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former
finance minister, says the Nigerian youth give her hope.
Okonjo-Iweala, a board member of
Twitter, said this on Monday while speaking at an event organised by the
African University of Science and Technology (AUST) in Abuja.
The university hosted Jack
Dorsey, chief executive officer (CEO) of Twitter incorporated, and his team
The former minister said if she
wakes up feeling depressed she only needs to talk young people whom she said
give her hope every single day.
While making a case for the
youth, she asked Dorsey to note the talents the country has.
“What gives me hope every single
day, is when I listen to our young people. If I ever wake up feeling depressed,
I just need to talk to some young people, even my young children who are in
their thirties,” the former minister said.
“I want to turn now to Jack, to
Parah, to all of you who have come to honour us in the country, I want to say
thank you so much for what have done, it is a fantastic team. It is because we
felt so energised, we are seeing what they are doing in San Francisco and all
over the world. Now that you have been to Nigeria, to Lagos and Abuja.
“You have seen what can be done,
my plea is that we have young entrepreneurs here, we have young engineers here,
this institution (AUST) is about creating young engineers for Africa.
“We are not trying to force you
into anything but we are saying that you have been introduced – we like having
you interact and engage, and give courage and hope to our young people so they
can use their skills on Twitter platform and other platforms to create jobs not
just for themselves but for others.
“Let me end by urging our young
people, don’t wait for people to create jobs for you, create jobs for
yourselves and for others and you have got a platform to do it.”
Speaking earlier, the Twitter CEO
said most of what has made the social media application viable was not created
by them.
Dorsey said it was inspiring to
hear stories of what the application has been able to achieve in Nigeria.
“Twitter, we have been around for
just, well over 13 years. It has not felt much as a company. Most of what has
made Twitter viable was not created by us,” he said.
“We didn’t create the “@” symbol,
we didn’t create the hashtag, we didn’t create the retweets, we didn’t create
the thread. We create the service that people came and built their own models
and products on top of.”
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