I profess acute embarrassment at reading “Ngozi Iweala: Nigeria’s weakest link”, a specious and ridiculous article by Sonala Olumhense, posted widely on the Internet, and also published in The Guardian on Sunday of October 21, 2012. I wondered if Sonala had actually written the misleading and mordant piece himself, or some mischief maker had penned it and ascribed its authorship to Sonala simply to scandalise the man’s name. I have been grieving since confirming that, indeed, Sonala had deliberately pissed on all our heads while he tried to screen the despicable act with the fatuous claim that our drenching came from rainfall! Such disingenuous obfuscation of facts, such misrepresentation and misinterpretation of contemporary developments, such visceral animus against a fellow human being, are vices completely absent from the professional tutelage Sonala and I received as colleagues during the first half of the 1980s, first at The Punch and later at The Guardian.

What has happened to Sonala Olumhense?

We might attempt an answer to the above question by detailing the path of infamy trod by Sonala in his vilification of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Honourable Minister of Finance. Hear Sonala Olumhense: “My conviction that Okonjo-Iweala’s hands at the helm are hands that row in the other direction is indexed on two facts. The first is her key role as one of the economic architects in the Olusegun Obasanjo administration in which she headed the so-called Economic Management Team (EMT). The second is the international advertising given her by her former job as a Managing Director at the World Bank, and her subsequent candidacy for its presidency.” The import of the above statements is twofold: (1) Okonjo-Iweala’s role in the Jonathan administration cannot but be negative because she played a key role in Obasanjo’s government! (2) Okonjo-Iweala’s role in Jonathan’s administration cannot but be negative because, as an MD of the World Bank and as a candidate for its presidency, her professionalism had benefitted from international advertising! What a curious combination of imbecility and insipidity!

Sonala conceded that Okonjo-Iweala “enjoyed a somewhat successful run” in Obasanjo’s administration. But where is the logic or the evidence in his extrapolating that the “somewhat successful run” had degenerated into negativism in Jonathan’s government? Because the central plank of Sonala’s presentation is of rotten wood, he made a laughing stock of himself in the ten blunt points he posited for Okonjo-Iweala’s denigration and decapitation. We should patiently examine Sonala’s ten-points-against-Okonjo-Iweala, just to demonstrate that (1) Casuistry cannot wash with the thoughtful people of this country because (2) The article is, plain and simple, a hatchet job.

Point One: Sonala claims that the flagship reform Okonjo-Iweala headed in the Obasanjo government, the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), “vanished after only a few months, and with all of the funds that were hurled into it.”

This is in dissonance with the facts of the matter because NEEDS did not vanish. NEEDS 1 ran from 2003 to 2007. NEEDS 2: Creating Prosperity through Growth, ran from 2008 to 2011.This was included in President Obasanjo’s handover notes to President Yar’Adua who developed his Seven Point Agenda from it. It is also from the framework of NEEDS that President Jonathan articulated his Transformation Agenda.

Point Two: “In 2001, Obasanjo vowed he would eliminate poverty by 2010, an end towards which he created the Poverty Eradication Programme (involving 13 federal Ministries), which he said would be funded by a Poverty Eradication Fund. Into that was drained, and is still being drained, billions of Naira.”

Why is Sonala Olumhense a study in paucity in this allegation of drained billions? Where was this so-called Poverty Eradication Fund domiciled? Why should an Obasanjo vow to alleviate poverty be deleterious to the solid personal and professional achievements of the Nigerian Finance Minister?

Point Three: “In the negotiations with the Paris Club, one ‘top member’ of the government walked away with a personal fee of N60 billion. That was disclosed by a former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) boss, Audu Ogbeh, who reported the matter to the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission. Ogbeh did not disclose who it was, but the allegation seemed to fit either President Obasanjo or Okonjo-Iweala. None of them has ever challenged it.”

Sonala Olumhense may claim not to appreciate it but “seemed to fit either President Obasanjo or Okonjo-Iweala” amounts to speculation. Sonala should either have pressured bold Audu Ogbe to name names or used his investigative skills to unmask the culprit. Instead he is suggesting that Dr. Okonjo-Iweala should have annexed the jurisdiction of the ICPC in order to be a proficient Finance Minister!

Point Four: “When the Paris Club negotiations ended, it left Nigeria with $1 billion per year with which to implement the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and boost education. In other words, even if Nigeria did not budget anything else for the MDGs, we had a ready $1 billion in hand; a total of $6 billion since then that has not been accounted for.”

The effrontery with which Sonala advertises culpable ignorance is pathetic. The Paris Club did not hand Nigeria $6 billion for prosecuting the MDGs. The debt relief agreement only required the country to plough into the MDGs the $1 billion per year that would otherwise have gone into paying interests on the loans.

Point Five: “As Okonjo-Iweala would recall more than anyone else, following the debt deal her government established an Office of the Senior Special Adviser to the President on MDGs (OSSAP-MDGs), charged with superintending the spending on projects that would help Nigeria meet the MDGs targets. Into that position was appointed Amina Az-Zubair who set up a Monitoring and Evaluation team with the objective of ensuring accountability. That team would subsequently find, scandalously, that Ministries, Departments and Agencies, ‘mismanaged’ most of the N320 billion allocated between 2006 and 2008.”

Dr. Okonjo-Iweala left Obasanjo’s government in July 2006. But Sonala wants her crucified for funds he claimed were mismanaged between the Finance Minister’s departure and 2008!

Point Six: “The Obasanjo government relied for its “credibility” on a phantom war against corruption which was actually Obasanjo’s war against Abacha. At least $2.5 billion was recovered, but it promptly vanished. The only official who ever provided an explanation was Mrs. Nenadi Usman, Okonjo-Iweala’s successor at Finance. In March 2007, Usman “explained” that the funds were given to five ministries: Power, Works, Health, Education, and Water Resources.”

Read carefully. Mrs. Nenadi Usman explained in 2007 that the funds were given to five ministries. She didn’t “explain” the funds were handed over to Okonjo-Iweala. If funds were given to five ministries that mismanaged them, why should the flak be on Dr. Okonjo-Iweala who had since left the Obasanjo administration?

Point Seven: “In a speech after she left office, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala said: “General Abacha looted about $3-5 billion from the Nigerian treasury in truckloads of cash in foreign currencies, in traveler’s checks and other means. Most of these monies were laundered abroad through a complex network including some of the world’s best known banks.”

Wonders will never end. Pray, what is Sonala’s point here? Is it his view that Okonjo-Iweala lied? Should he not have asked Nuhu Ribadu why the Finance Minister’s assertion did not elicit thorough EFCC investigation?

Point Eight: “Nuhu Ribadu, the pioneer chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and a very close friend of Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala, has confessed that the Obasanjo government was more corrupt than that of Abacha.”

Again, dear readers, what might be the sense in this very nonsense?

Point Nine: “In December 2011, Obasanjo indicted Mr. Jonathan’s government of squandering $35 billion of Nigeria’s foreign reserves since May 2007, saying the money may have been “shared.” It has been established that the country’s debt profile rose to N1.21 trillion in Mr. Jonathan’s first year.”

There are a number of issues here. First, Sonala forgot that Jonathan did not become acting President until 2009. Secondly, in Point Eight, Sonala quoted Nuhu Ribadu with approval, meaning that he also held Obasanjo’s administration as the most corrupt the country ever had. If so, why must Nigeria’s testament be authored by the epitome of official corruption? Thirdly, “It has been established…” wrote Sonala. Who was responsible for the establishment? Finally, if Nigeria’s debt profile rose to N1.21 trillion in one year, why didn’t Sonala say from which point it rose? Does this not show that perspective has no place in his inquisition?

Point Ten: “Okonjo-Iweala had Nigerians salivating when she spoke of the forthcoming ‘Transforming Nigeria Document’... The Secretary to the Government, Anyim Pius Anyim, and the Minister of National Planning, Shamsuddeen Usman, have spoken similarly. Eighteen months into the Jonathan administration, there is no such document.”

This clearly shows that Sonala Olumhense has been reeling and groping from a direct hit by a shaft of ennui. He is in stasis. Inertia and lethargy have overpowered him. Were he in a position to lift a limb of objectivity, he would have had the good sense to ask questions. And the National Planning Commission (NPC) would have dutifully told him that Transformation Agenda 2011-2015: Priority Policies, Programmes and Projects of the Federal Government of Nigeria was published within months of the inception of the Jonathan administration. A copy of the 173-page volume would have been sent to him free of charge.

It is unfortunate that it is on the basis of the waffle dismantled above that Sonala Olumhense described Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as corrupt, the reason he called her the weakest link in President Jonathan’s administration. This returns us to the question I asked from the outset: What has happened to Sonala Olumhense? This man has been living in the United States for nearly three decades. But there are countless other Nigerians in that category who excelled, including Akinwunmi Adesina, (the Minister of Agriculture), Mustapha Chike-Obi, (the MD of Asset Management Company of Nigeria), Oscar Onyema (the DG of the Nigerian Stock Exchange) and Uche Orji (the MD of the Sovereign Wealth Fund). Nigerians in the Diaspora who, due to their questionable competence, have not been invited to serve are wrong to perceive Dr. Okonjo-Iweala as their nemesis.

Sonala Olumhense carried into his home ant-infested gays, following which lizards are swarming around him. He forgot the wisdom of the elders, to the effect that the cynosure of all eyes should not dab their face in charcoal. Now, commentators who were toddlers when Sonala and his colleagues were the kings of Nigerian journalism are running rings around him like driven midfield motivators dribbling the hell out of hapless defenders on a soccer pitch.

In Okonjo-Iweala: Why Olumhense’s Fiction Can’t Stick (www.gbooza.com) Sola Olajide Olujimi, a Lagos-based financial analyst, made this telling observation: “The conspicuous failure to mention the anti-corruption successes in the fuel subsidy regime in which the Federal Ministry of Finance under Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s leadership named and shamed powerful people indicted for various offences shows Olumhense hasn’t done his homework. Or it shows how prejudiced and irrelevant he is.”

In Sonala Olumhense: Nigeria’s Media Weakest Link (www.myondostate.com), Omoade Adelani had this to say: “Sonala Olumhense has sunk into the mire. He needs no help. He would rather remain there and make a fool of himself than come out for cleansing. He pretends to understand issues when he does not. He claimed to have the solution to the issues confronting us as a nation, when he doesn’t understand how to place his own intellectual bearing. Instead of using his pen to advance the truth and increase the understanding of his readers on pertinent issues, he would rather use it as a tool of vendetta and gladly hand it to the highest bidder.”

The heart bleeds – for Sonala!



Chuks Iloegbunam is the Editor of PM Review.

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=102954:iloegbunam-between-olumhense-and-ngozi-okonjo-iweala&catid=38:columnists&Itemid=615