Okonjo, Nigeria’s Wahala by Abba Mahmood

Most people assume Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is an Economist. Very few people know that she read urban and regional planning which makes her a town planner primarily and not an Economist. She came from the World Bank with the discredited and outmoded theories of the Bretton Woods institutions that have consistently failed every nation where these theories were applied. Ngozi Okonjo – Iweala was not satisfied with being Finance Minister, she added a nebulous title called ‘Coordinating Minister of the Economy’ effectively taking over the duties of the president and especially the constitutional duties of the vice president, as well as putting her hands into the affairs of virtually every federal ministry.

No one would have cared if there was good performance. But the tenure of Okonjo – Iweala has seen the greatest plundering of Nigeria’s assets and resources. She dabbled into every aspect of the nation’s life, including going to Chibok to lay the foundation for classroom reconstruction when the community already had a school built by their state government and were only waiting for the federal government, which has the sole responsibility for security constitutionally, to help bring back their abducted girls, now more than a year in the hands of terrorists.

Today, the power sector has been privatised but the government also gave those private companies billions of public sector money in the name of intervention. Power outage is getting worse by the day, meanwhile conclusively proving that the electricity companies were sold to those lacking technical or financial skills to raise efficiency. There are no jobs for thousands coming out of schools annually. And, to make matters worse, while the oil price was very high, there was no saving by the government, instead the savings by the previous governments were depleted very fast, with virtually nothing to show for it. The most scandalous aspect is that Okonjo just told the world that since January 2015 she has been taking loans to pay salaries and contractor obligations! Where is the money the government has been earning?

Just as I was writing this piece, my attention came to a caption: “How Okonjo – Iweala misled Jonathan” over a N24.56 billion Federal Government Housing Fund which appeared on the front page of Nigerian Pilot newspaper of Wednesday May 13, 2015. The story went on: “Come May 24, 2015, the Series 3 Bond will be maturing with obligation on the federal Government to pay a whopping N24.564 billion to Note holders; and failure to do so at maturity, will lead to the call of FGN Guarantee that backed the transaction… but instead of worrying and seeking ways to avert the foreseeable danger, Okonjo – Iweala was said to have misled the President to approve the payment of a debt she approved under the Obasanjo presidency in 2006 long before Jonathan became president… Okonjo – Iweala advised the president to instruct FMBN to pay the debt, a development that poses grave danger to the liquidity of the primary mortgage finance institution”.

“It was learnt that one Sunny Ayere of Dunn Loren Merrifield Limited, who happens to be the Lead Arranger and Adviser to the Bond, was an “Okonjo – Iweala boy.” He was compensated by the minister with his appointment as the managing director of a hurriedly created Nigeria Mortgage Refinancing Company, NMRC, a secondary mortgage institution ostensibly established to take over the activities of FMBN ‘to cover up the mishap in the 2006 / 2007 FG – guaranteed mortgage- backed Bond transaction”, the paper continued with the story.

“Another associate of the minister is the Managing Director of Aso Savings, Hassan Usman, who was said to have covered about 87 percent of the transaction. On Okonjo – Iweala’s recommendation, he was compensated with a board seat at both Assets Management Company of Nigeria, AMCON, and one other juicy federal government owned company…. Beyond the foregoing , one source advised that … DMO, and not the ministry should now assume the lead in resolving the saga rather than trying to undermine the agreements that gave rise to the transaction in the first place’’, the paper concluded.

Okonjo is a Nigerian disaster that has already happened. It has turned out that she has been highly overrated. Her period as finance minister will be remembered as the worst in the history of Nigeria. She has mismanaged every sector and the economy is anything but coordinated. In fact there is no synergy or any coordination, but ad hoc arrangements and unending experiments with the lives of the people. She releases money at will to the sector or ministry she preferred. In 2015, for instance, the ten northern states that are affected by desertification were given only five hundred million naira but Bayelsa, the president’s state was given ten times that amount from the ecological fund, just because of boot licking and sycophancy. It is shameful and disappointing to say the least. Very soon, we will know the difference between armed robbers and pen robbers and know which is worse. History is on the side of the oppressed.