Re: Dear Mrs Okonjo-Iweala: A rejoinder to Sonala Olumhense
The problem I have with Mr Sonala Olumhense’s articles on the Coordinating Minister and Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the general absence of verified facts and the basing of opinions on gross inaccuracies.
For instance, Mr Olumhense writes that $2.5 billion of Abacha money was recovered during Dr Okonjo-Iweala’s time as Finance Minister under President Obasanjo and that the money disappeared implying some involvement in the disappearance by the Minister. This is absolutely false. First, the amount recovered was $500 million, not $2.5 billion. The recovered amount was channeled into rural projects and programmes as per the agreement with the Swiss government which repatriated the funds. A combined team of Nigerian and Swiss NGOs with the World Bank later verified the use of this money on the ground in the projects cited and they certified the money had been accurately utilized.
The World Bank had written about this in a 2007-2008 Handbook on stolen Asset Recovery where the case was cited as a best practice example of how to deploy returned proceeds of looted assets. Readers of Mr Olumhense would benefit more if his passionate writings on Dr Okono-Iweala are supported by a bit more research as opposed to sweeping, unverified statements.
A second inaccuracy in Mr Olumhense’s article is the claim that NEEDS was to be the last reform agenda of Nigeria. Who on earth made such a claim? The idea that a country needs one magical reform startegy to take care of all current and future challenges is strange. It simply doesn’t make sense. Every country continues to reform as circumstances change – the name may change but the process of reform is and should be continuous. President Obama is currently reforming the health and immigration systems in America. The United States, like many other countries, has never stopped reforming. Why should Nigeria?
I suppose I should thank Mr Olumhense for finding something positive in anything Dr OkonjoIweala has said, as he did on her comments on corruption in her TedxEuston talk. But if he listened to the talk carefully, he would have noted that most of the examples of political corruption were from Nigeria.
But unlike some of those that talk about corruption, Okonjo-Iweala has not stopped at talking. The clean-up of the fraud in the subsidy payments regime to oil marketers for which she paid a heavy personal price in the form of the abduction of her mother by paid kidnappers in November 2012 is one clear example. The sole demand of the kidnappers for the first three days of the abduction was that the minister should resign and leave the country for spearheading the clean-up. Her 83-year old mother was held for five days and it was only the intervention of the Almighty God in answer to the prayers of well-meaning Nigerians that brought her back, alive. Where was Mr Olumhense at this time? How can he claim that this woman is not at the forefront of the fight against corruption? Thank God her mother is stil alive to tell her traumatic tale and nobody should make light of that sacrifice.
Another example is the cleanup of the pension fraud with the establishment now of a new institution under the Federal Ministry of Finance – the Pension Transition Administration Department to ensure that pensioners under the old defined benefits scheme are not defrauded anymore. The department is a practical response to an issue that many of us feel very strongly about – the terrible experience that many senior citizens have to go through just to collect their pensions - and serious work is going on to ensure that fix this long-standing problem in a sustainable way.
On the NNPC oil accounts issue, Mr Olumhense seems to have forgotten that Dr Okonjo-Iweala has called for an independent forensic audit to establish the facts of any unaccounted for money and ensure that all every Naira that is owed the treasury is returned to the Federation Account. This is the best way to proceed given the conflicting claims by Mr Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and the NNPC. After all the speeches and comments like that of Mr Olumhense, the fundamental problem of determining the facts as a basis for action must still be tackled. Is there room for more action on corruption? Of course the answer can only be yes. But action is needed to achieve change. Talk is cheap, action is crucial.
Mr Olumhemse is entitled to his opinion of the status of the Transformation Agenda but his failure to say anything about visible achievements in roads, rail, power privatization, agriculture and job creation programmes like YOUWIN speaks volumes about the bias and lack of balance in his comments. Of course the foundation of a mortgage housing programe for the country, a project with profound positive implications for the overall economic development of the country is beneath Mr Olumhense’s gaze as a professional critic. Like many Okonjo-Iweala critics, he is too apoplectic with contrived rage to see anything good in whatever she does. Their minds – and eyes – are shut to any possibility of any positive contribution. As the minister has always maintained, we face serious challenges at so many levels as a country. But that is precisely why progress should be recognized so that it will act as a beacon for more work to achieve more progress. A climate of total and complete hopelessness, like the one which commentators like Mr Olumhense are working so hard to achieve, is not in the interest of any Nigerian.
Finally, on the issue of the recurrent budget, the Minister has publicly explained the origin of the present imbalance between recurrent expenditure and capital expenditure. The huge salary increase of 53% and attendant pension increases awarded to public servants in 2010 is the major factor. Unfortunately for Mr Olumhense, Dr Okonjo-Iweala was not in office then. Was Mr Olumhense a columnist then? I believe so. Since he is so passionate about the high recurrent expenditure, he should avail us of what his critical analysis of what transpired at that time. If he said nothing then, then he has no moral authority now to lay blame where it does not belong.
Paul C Nwabuikwu, Special Adviser to the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance