Lunch with the FT: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s arrival is announced by the rattling of a suitcase over London cobblestones. She is accompanied by her loyal assistant, the appropriately named Constance, and is trailing something heavy. Unfinished business, I’m guessing.
We are meeting during her last days as minister in charge of Nigeria’s economy, the biggest in Africa. For much of the past three decades Okonjo-Iweala has championed her country’s - and continent’s - interests, earning her place on the global stage as one of the bestknown African officials of her time.
You wouldn’t know it from the slating she has had in recent weeks at the hands of the Nigerian press, where she has been pilloried for her role in a government that has bequeathed a legacy of dwindling revenues, rising debt, corruption scandals and gaping income inequalities. One commentator accused her of having “joined the bandwagon of soiled hands in attacking whistleblowers.” Nigerians can be ruthless at taking down their own.
Weary from an all-night flight, she is nonetheless in defiant form. The original plan was to have lunch in Lagos: cowtail pepper soup, insisted Okonjo-Iweala, who was planning to administer a fiery dose according to how much she wanted me to sweat for my own (often unflattering) accounts of the government she served for the past four years. But events took over - notably Nigeria’s tumultuous election season, and the delicate transition to a new government, which concluded with the inauguration of Muhammadu Buhari <http:// www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/667e70a2-05ee-11e5b676-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl> as president.
So we meet in London, where she is in transit, and head for Momo, a Moroccan restaurant that has become a hang-out at the heart of the capital for Arabs and Africans. The venue also has the advantage of being part run by a big-hearted Algerian called Meriem Talbi Fall, who administers to staff and clientele with authority and empathy, as she might the cast of a family soap opera.
The two women, formidable in their own ways, hit it off instantly on the terrace, where a gaggle of young Gulf Arabs are smoking shishas. It is a sunny day but chilly, so we are shown to a corner inside. Surrounded by north African artefacts, latticed woodwork, and with Moroccan music playing in the background, we could almost be in Marrakech.
Okonjo-Iweala flops down on red cushions. She will be 61 this month and is looking forward to a break after 30 years of working non-stop and, in the past few years, not more than five hours sleep a night. “Every finance minister feels the same pressure,” she says.
African finance ministers are rarely celebrated. But Okonjo-Iweala, at different times, has been an exception. As part of Olusegun Obasanjo’s government between 2003 and 2006, she played a lead role in rehabilitating Nigeria’s image, persuading western creditor nations that an oil-rich part of Africa, notorious for its wasteful ways, was sufficiently on the mend to justify an $18bn debt write-off.
In 2007, she returned to the World Bank, her long-time employer, where she was appointed managing director. She subsequently ran to become the first president of the bank from the developing world but lost out to America’s candidate, Jim Yong Kim.
Her most recent spell in Nigeria, in the government of Goodluck Jonathan, proved more controversial. The country’s economy has achieved much in the past decade, and last year, after a revision of the data, made the statistical leap to become Africa’s largest with a GDP of $510bn. Right now, with the collapse in the price of oil on which state finances and national export earnings still depend, it is in a mess. From the outset, there were jibes about her willingness to lend her reformist credentials to a lacklustre administration. Allies worried that she had put a hard-won reputation at risk. Their concern seemed justified when, in March, the electorate voted en masse to oust Jonathan, Okonjo-Iweala’s boss.
When he returned quietly to a palatial new residence in his remote village in the Niger delta, Jonathan, a former zoology lecturer who rose serendipitously to the top after the death of his predecessor in office, concluded the first constitutional transfer of power in Nigeria’s history. It is this acceptance of defeat which may help redeem him - at least partially - in the history books.
“Everyone was waiting for something to erupt. And it could have,” she says of the run-up to the March elections, when plots to curtail or defraud the electoral process abounded, and Nigeria’s future as one nation appeared at stake.
In the event, millions of Nigerians queued up to vote, for the most part peacefully, in one of the most poignant affirmations of democracy on the continent to date. By a margin of 2.3m votes, they put their faith in Buhari, an ascetic former military ruler who has pledged to stamp out corruption, spread wealth more evenly and restore order to a nation at risk of splitting at the seams.
Although Okonjo-Iweala was on the losing side, she appears genuinely delighted at how these recent events are helping to restore her country’s image, tarnished by the kidnapping of schoolgirls by Boko Haram insurgents and mismanagement in the oil industry.
We agree, as we peruse the menu, that this peaceful political evolution is all the more remarkable because it was not inevitable. She confirms the veracity of an account in the Nigerian media of divisions in the incumbent’s camp on the day results came in. Alleging foul play, government hawks were pushing Jonathan to resist the verdict - which could have tipped Nigeria into a violent confrontation along ethnic and regional lines. In the same room, another group, including Okonjo-Iweala, pressed him to call his opponent and concede defeat.
“The thing is, the president was finally able to show the kind of person he really is - that he really puts the country first,” Okonjo-Iweala says. “He had said before that his ambitions were not important enough for anyone to lose their life and so he did the right thing and went and made the call.”
It is precarious moments like this - when they go the right way - that help to establish the primacy of ballots over bullets in countries such as Nigeria, which have a long tradition of authoritarian rule. Nigerians now know that if they vote for a government that disappoints, they can vote it out four years later, I suggest. With studied loyalty, she flips my supposition on its head.
“People also know that if a person loses on a large scale, they can gracefully walk off with their head held high and support the new team, that it need not be all about antagonism.” She cites the inclusion of Buhari’s advisers in her own team at the recent spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank as an example of the goodwill that helped ease tensions in the interim period since the election. “We have a new lease of life,” she says.
By now the arrival of two glasses of chilled Sauvignon Blanc, sparkling water and an array of starters has helped her shake off the effects of her flight. I dip a crispy prawn into an avocado salsa while Okonjo-Iweala works her way through a soup, nibbling occasionally at the spread of cheese briouat, mackerel and merguez on the brass table.
It is hard to reconcile the warm, generousspirited and intelligent woman at the table with the delusional, hubristic force recently depicted in the Nigerian media. But she has grown accustomed to relentless attacks and springs quickly into defensive posture when we turn to the subject of corruption.
She wants to talk about everything but this - and gets exasperated when outsiders like me dwell on the issue at the expense of other aspects of Nigerian life.
“I feel so alive in my country”, she says, “and I get so sad that the image people have is not of the 99.9 per cent, but of this venal, kleptocratic, power-hungry elite that have colonised the country and refused to let go.”
But industrial-scale corruption was a big factor in the downfall of the administration she served. Report after report showed how billions of dollars were misappropriated in the allocation of fuel subsidies and shaved off revenues from crude oil sales <http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ e337c7a4-f4a2-11e4-8a42-00144feab7de. html>, depriving the country of savings against an eventual fall in prices.
Okonjo-Iweala’s allies believe things would have been far worse were it not for her stewardship and for her battles with criminalised vested interests. She has been on the receiving end of death threats and, in 2012, saw her