‘Nothing good was supposed to come out of me’

A Nigerian man has shared the story of how he rose up out of “abject poverty” as a child, to become one of the leading UK academics in his field.

David Etor, 43, who grew up in Nigeria, only learned to read and write aged 12 and was told as a child that “nothing good will come out of you”, but is now a lecturer in electrical and mechanical engineering at the University of Bristol.

He told the BBC how his family was so poor growing up that his mum would pretend to cook food in a kitchen they shared with others, “to protect our integrity” in front of neighbours.

“I didn’t see a way out,” he said.

‘The poor called us poor’

Speaking to John Darvall on BBC Radio Bristol about the publication of his first book, Etor described growing up in a “compound” with several other families, all sharing a single kitchen, toilet and bathroom.

“It was a very poor neighbourhood. We were particularly very poor that the poor neighbours would refer to us as poor,” he said.

“I do remember that there was a time where my mum would boil water.

“[She would] go back in and out, lift the lid, stir the water, go back into the room [and] come back as though she was preparing food…

“She would come back in with that pot of water after a couple of hours and it will be as though she’s just finished cooking a meal, but it was just water.

“She was trying to protect our integrity.

Etor’s first break came whilst doing a kind of national service in Nigeria, when he realised lots of locals were being hospitalised with food poisoning, because they were trying to preserve things by drying them in fields.

To solve the problem, he designed and built a kind of “solar oven”.

“It worked incredibly well,” he said, which led to an award from the state government and a job.

He then completed an undergraduate degree at Newcastle University and a PhD at the University of Durham, before securing his current job in Bristol.

Sir Steve Webb, the former MP and Pensions Minister, who got to know Etor through the church in Bristol, called his achievements “remarkable”.

“David’s message is very much that people shouldn’t be defined by their upbringing or their background,” he said. “They shouldn’t be written off.”

“I was pinching myself on my way here this morning,” Etor added.

“Nothing good was supposed to come out of me.”