Nigeria finance minister rebuffs critics with cake


Nigeria's finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala brandished a sponge cake in Parliament as she sought to rebuff critics who say the country's strong economic growth has failed to lift millions out of poverty.

Using the cake to represent the GDP and likening Nigeria to a household, she urged the country to focus on the government's plan to become one of the world's top 20 economies by 2020, which she said would be crucial to solving its other problems like high unemployment and poverty. It would mean doubling the current growth rate to 13%, she said.

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Foreign bond and equity investors are taking a growing interest in Africa's second biggest economy, and President Goodluck Jonathan's decision to bring Okonjo-Iweala back to Nigeria from her world bank job in 2011 was well received.

But she has had a mixed reception at home, with some politicians complaining she is too aloof and technocratic.

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Despite a decade of 7% economic growth, poverty in Nigeria has worsened, official figures show, leading critics to say its oil dependent economy is merely enriching the few.


The minister is trying to win support for moves to increase Nigeria's external debt, tapping into markets that offer much cheaper funding than at home, where monetary policy is tight.

Source: http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/nigeria-finance-minister-rebuffs-critics-cake-5462611

An economic system that will reduce poverty will not be based on paper growth, growth figures in Nigeria has not impacted on the public in creating opportunities which is the yard stick of measuring growth. The Minister wants us to believe we are growing when our ten year old child has refused to crawl talk less of walking. People lose jobs with no new ones to replace them, NYSC graduates are coming out yearly with no vacancies for them yet Jonathan brought Sanusi Lamido who made cutting the head the antidote of a terrible headache! leaving thousands of families stranded when bread winners lose their pay and these same banks were sold in dubious circumstances to their kinsmen.
Madam Finance Minister's definition of growth is strange from our own perspective as a developing economy. The developments we have experienced over the past 14 years of democratic rule have all come through opening up of opportunities first in the financial sector with new generation banks and telecommunications through Obasanjo's GSM which have impacted other sectors positively. The government needs to open up other closed sectors that will further create a million or more jobs. Permit me to say that the President will do himself good in opening up areas like electricity , railways, and look into some crucial areas like state police services, refineries,and garner political will to achieve higher derivation for Niger Delta states and in fact all the states say like 50-50 sharing resource income with Federal. This will be a lasting legacy that will help states look into creative drives for their economies.
If Mrs Iwealla wants to use Nigeria as a proof of her know how on developing economy, her dimension will not engender any good for the ordinary man on the street; her systems are aliens to our world in developing world.
The cake system is funny because why did she not use apu or amala? all those economic theories will only breed a master- servant society,It is targeted for failure until it is designed to lift the common man.

Ok, we dey wait till 2020.