# Itunu Hotonu

Itunu Hotonu (born 18 January 1959) is a Nigerian naval officer and architect.

## Quotes

* You’ve got to believe in yourself.Don’t ever let anybody put you down.Even when it gets really rough ,don’t give up, because somewhere along the line you’re going to get where you need to be.
* Women who want to be up there must work for it.It is not a joke, you must show that you can do it."
** Speech delivered At the 100 Years of the Nigerian Woman Achieving 50/50 by 2020, Lagos.
* As a woman, you already come from a position of disadvantage, not because you are disadvantaged, but the society chooses to decide that you are disadvantaged,they forget that Intelligent Quotient has no gender. All through my career, I always found myself in a room full of men. I was always told I had to be in the kitchen.
** Hotonu advised women about leadershipPunch
* I had a dream to get to the top of my career and nothing was going to let me go off that dream. Sometimes it looked like a distant dream, sometime it would even fade to a dot in the horizon, sometime I would want to give up but the good thing was that I had a lot of supportive people who believed in me, people who, when the going got really rough, said to me, no, you cannot give up.
* You know you meet a lot of men who wonder what you are doing in their territory and you have to spend everyday of your life proving that you should be here. For me there is nothing in this constitution that says I am not a full fledged citizen of this country. I don't see it anywhere, but you have to be resilient enough and claim your place because nobody is going to give it to you.
* Your parents have invested well in you.How wisely you protect that investment is up to you.You must be humble to believe that others know what you do not know. Avoid short cuts and slothfulness. Focus on what you want to do and pursue it. Never abandon your dream no matter how tough.Learn to rise up each time you fall because falling is real. Hard work is the key you need to unlock success.... stand your ground and never let go your dream.
* Mentoring by role models will go a long way in changing these dynamics.
** How to achieve gender balance by Hotonu PM news
* Even if you find yourself as a woman in a man’s world, it is not for you to feel that there’s a battle you are fighting with the men. A lot of us women, we miss it. We think that we are in some kind of war and we have to go out there and fight the men and prove that we can do it, that is not so. Rather, I think we should see ourselves as co-developers in the nation’s progress.
** Itunu addressed gender issues in Military 'Channels Tv
* If you want to stay in the sun, you must be ready to put on sun glasses. If someone tells you, you are putting in more time, don’t listen. Just keep going. Get to the point where nobody can intimidate you. It will be scary sometimes but keep going.
** Itunu talked about how to break boundaries as a woman Tribune
* “We make decisions every moment of our lives. They may be simple ones such as what food to eat or more profound ones such as careers and choice of spouses. Many of our decisions are not based on conscious thought – they are spur-of-the-moment actions – and are influenced by a range of factors including time, emotions and our environment
** Itunu's speech at NIA's President birthday Independent