Achebe, Banda, Okonjo-Iweala among 100 top global thinkers for 2012
Tuesday, 27 November 2012 00:00 Editor News - National
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Chinua-Achebe

FOR their sterling contributions to their societies through political engagements, the formulation of economic policies and condemnation of corruption and other obstacles to development, two Nigerians have made the list of 100 top Global Thinkers for 2012.

The two Nigerians are the Finance Minister and the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the renowned author of Things Fall Apart Prof. Chinua Achebe. Another African on the list is Malawian President Joyce Banda.

The list was drawn up by Foreign Policy. Foreign Policy, a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel was originally, a quarterly.

According to Wikipedia, the magazine under Editor-in-Chief Moisés Naím (1996–2010), changed from an academic quarterly in the 1990s to a bimonthly glossy, winning the 2009, 2007, and 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. The topics it covers include global politics, economics, integration and ideas.

On September 29, 2008, The Washington Post Company announced that they had purchased Foreign Policy from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Foreign Policy publishes the annual “Globalization Index,” and “Failed State Index.” Its report “Inside the Ivory Tower” provides an annual comprehensive ranking of professional schools in international relations.

Banda, the Malawian President, occupies the 22nd position on the list. According to Foreign Policy, Banda made the list for “for stepping in - and up - to fix a broken country.”

When Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika died of a heart attack in April, it wasn’t immediately clear what would become of his vice president, Joyce Banda who had fallen out of favour with the increasingly autocratic president who sacked her from his political party in 2010.

Even Mutharika’s wife publicly derided Banda - a longtime grassroots advocate for women, children, and the poor- scoffing: “She will never be president. How can a fruit seller be president?”

After two days of tension in the wake of Mutharika’s death, however, Banda proved the first lady wrong, becoming Africa’s second-ever female president.

Governing Malawi, where an estimated 75 percent of its more than 15 million residents live on N160 or less a day, presents enormous challenges.

But in just seven months, Banda has largely shown the world how to take charge and work to turn around a troubled country.

Within days of taking office, she dismissed key members of Mutharika’s administration, including the police chief in power when 19 Malawian demonstrators were killed at a 2011 opposition rally.

By devaluing the Malawian currency by more than a third, Banda also secured a much-needed $157 million International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan in June, a first step toward rebuilding Malawi’s debilitated economy.

So far, all signs suggest Banda could become a new model for African leadership, shedding the strongman syndrome and getting down to business to help the poor. She has cut her own salary by 30 percent and put the late Mutharika’s $12 million presidential jet and most of his fleet of 60 luxury cars up for sale. “I can as well use private airlines,” she said. “I am already used to hitchhiking.

“I must demonstrate to Malawians that we are in this together,

“I must be the first person to set an example.”

For Okonjo-Iweala who is 51st on the list, she was chosen “for showing Africa how to break the resource curse.”

As a candidate in this year’s unusually public race for the World Bank presidency, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala seemingly had it all: an MIT education, high-level experience with both the bank and the Nigerian government, the potential to be the first woman and first person of colour to run the institution, and the support of everyone from the African Union to the Financial Times. She just didn’t have the one thing that really mattered: a United States passport.

But though she may have missed out on her chance to run the bank, Okonjo-Iweala is arguably as influential in her role as the powerful finance minister of Africa’s most populous country and one of its fastest-growing economies.

In a previous stint in the position, she successfully negotiated to wipe out millions of dollars of international debt, and since reassuming the post last year she has cut spending and helped establish a sovereign wealth fund to manage Nigeria’s oil riches.

Her driving idea: African countries can’t hope to develop economically until they get their institutions in order.

Although she enjoys a potent mandate from President Goodluck Jonathan, Okonjo-Iweala has seen her reform efforts consistently meet opposition from the ‘godfathers’ - the powerful officials who benefit from the oil wealth in Nigeria’s notoriously corrupt political system. Her efforts to end a popular but economically disastrous fuel subsidy have also so far been slow going. “It has not been easy, and the struggle is still ongoing,” she told Reuters this year.

“You make progress; then you get courage to make more.”

If she can succeed in helping one of Africa’s most pivotal countries overcome the infamous oil curse, it might have a much more lasting impact than anything she could have accomplished back in Washington.

Achebe who is the 68th top global thinker on the list was selected “ for forcing Africa to confront its demons.”

A giant of contemporary African letters for more than half a century, Achebe is still best known for his 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart, which drew on oral traditions to tell the story of a Nigerian village transformed by colonialism and Western-imposed Christianity.

He also achieved renown for his withering critiques of depictions of Africa by European writers, demanding a literature that traveled well beyond the Heart of Darkness clichés to reveal African realities, while urging Africans to be the ones to tell their own stories.

True to that appeal, this year brought Achebe’s own powerful memoir, There Was a Country, an account of his life during the 1967-1970 Biafran war. Achebe had taken the Biafran side in the conflict, which left more than one million people dead, and served as a roving international ambassador for the breakaway government, narrowly escaping Nigerian attacks on multiple occasions. His book makes the case that the Biafran war - Africa’s first civil war to generate major international media attention - was a harbinger of African conflicts to come, from Rwanda to Congo to Sierra Leone, all of which have their roots in the arbitrary drawing of borderlines during colonialism, were exacerbated by natural resources, and proved the inability of the international community to stop the bloodshed.

“Nigeria was once a land of great hope and progress, a nation with immense resources at its disposal,” writes Achebe, today a professor of Africana studies at Brown University.

“But the Biafran war changed the course of Nigeria. In my view it was a cataclysmic experience that changed the history of Africa.”

Not unexpected: Achebe Igbo, Okonjo-Iweala Igbo. The only group that really matter in Nigeria
The rest, especially Yoruba, na dagbo thinkers

Thinkers of 2012?
Exhuming old disunifying episodes of your nation's history is not thinking - it is called "attention seeking".
Conducting a subsidy campaign that brought mass pain to the masses and death of 19 innocent civilians is not thinking, it is called "heartless".

No wonder Nigeria is in the doldrums - the West would endorse those who sing in tune with them (not their fault by any measure), even if they disregard the welfare of their own people (and that is the fault of people like Okonjo-Iweala).

As for Banda, they praised her for devaluing her country's currency by one-third so as to get a $157 million loan. Can anyone say SAP circa 1990 in Nigeria? It doesn't work at the end of the day.

All these people have done very good things, but the first two have not shown that they know what Nigeria needs by their acts in 2012.

As for Banda - I say good start so far in Malawi, but be careful of Greeks bearing gifts!!!

Why will mumu people always want to bring controversy. They have said what they see neutrally and some bigots are here condeming it. Anyway, you disagree with ordinary ground as it does not count

koruji: Thinkers of 2012?
Exhuming old disunifying episodes of your nation's history is not thinking - it is called "attention seeking".
Conducting a subsidy campaign that brought mass pain to the masses and death of 19 innocent civilians is not thinking, it is called "heartless".

No wonder Nigeria is in the doldrums - the West would endorse those who sing in tune with them (not their fault by any measure), even if they disregard the welfare of their own people (and that is the fault of people like Okonjo-Iweala).

As for Banda, they praised her for devaluing her country's currency by one-third so as to get a $157 million loan. Can anyone say SAP circa 1990 in Nigeria? It doesn't work at the end of the day.

All these people have done very good things, but the first two have not shown that they know what Nigeria needs by their acts in 2012.

As for Banda - I say good start so far in Malawi, but be careful of Greeks bearing gifts!!!

No wonder they call you a Dagbo thinker.

nanomole: Not unexpected: Achebe Igbo, Okonjo-Iweala Igbo. The only group that really matter in Nigeria
The rest, especially Yoruba, na dagbo thinkers

Must everything be tribal?
I am igbo but this is sickening.

Chima_Adeoye:
No wonder they call you a Dagbo thinker.

You are the nitw1t here. The man gave an excellent analysis here, to which, obviously you don't have any reasonable response yet you are running your mouth like tap water. Learn how to read and analyse, it sure do helps.

Great citation and endorsement for these tireless folks, and global thinker - Achebe and Okonjo Iweala.

Hopefully, their effort to transform Nigeria will yield the necessary result.

Nigeria must surely confront it's two greatest demon

- Wasteful subsidy of Petrol Pump Price, and
- The attempted genocide of Igbo via brutish Biafran War

We must keep working at it, and must support them in their bid to transform Nigeria.

Obviously you are afraid of real thinkers.
I should just endorse these self-serving citations because of what...
Take off your sentimental "hats" and see the truth.
If those three are the "great thinkers" Africa can produce in the 21st century then we are travelling in reverse.

This falls in the same category as Nigeria once displaying cocoa beans at an international tech. expo!!!

Chima_Adeoye:
No wonder they call you a Dagbo thinker.

Subsidy is one of the two greatest demons Nigeria faces?
Are u kidding? Corruption, comatose educational system, insecurity are what?

PointB: Great citation and endorsement for these tireless folks, and global thinker - Achebe and Okonjo Iweala.

Hopefully, their effort to transform Nigeria will yield the necessary result.

Nigeria must surely confront it's two greatest demon

- Wasteful subsidy of Petrol Pump Price, and
- The attempted genocide of Igbo via brutish Biafran War

We must keep working at it, and must support them in their bid to transform Nigeria.

koruji: Subsidy is one of the two greatest demons Nigeria faces?
Are u kidding? Corruption, comatose educational system, insecurity are what?

Yes subsidy is. 90% of the corruption in Nigeria is tied to the subsidy on Petroleum product. The subsidy also account for why enough money is not available for the comatose education system. The insecurity in the ND and up North are all tied to who control the center, due to the same subsidy money. Subsidy lush fund also account for the bloated civil service and dilapidated infrastructure.

So take it or leave it, the death of subsidy will stem corruption and other vices.

All you have listed here are CORRUPTION-related. Subsidy is simply one of the large vehicles for the real disease of corruption.
Remove subsidy and there remain many hundred of ways for stealing that money in Nigeria.

What happened to the funds from the part-removal of subbsidies last year?
On the way to the accounts of government officials - that's what.

PointB:


Yes subsidy is. 90% of the corruption in Nigeria is tied to the subsidy on Petroleum product. The subsidy also account for why enough money is not available for the comatose education system. The insecurity in the ND and up North are all tied to who control the center, due to the same subsidy money. Subsidy lush fund also account for the bloated civil service and dilapidated infrastructure.

So take it or leave it, the death of subsidy will stem corruption and other vices.

Only few of them are truly thinkers, the miserable rest are better categorized, substantially, as being politically famous. Some like Achebe are renown globally for falsehood, bitterness and bigotry. In another subcategory, others are renown for pure stupidity. One of the listed "thinkers" contested for an election with only one outcome: defeat. Thinker indeed. There are many of such worthless lists that prop up on yearly basis.