Second, my earlier article stated that the
minimum forex reserves should have been at
least $90 billion by now and you did not
challenge it. Rather it is about $30 billion,
meaning that gross mismanagement has denied
the country some $60 billion or another N12.6
trillion.
Now add the ‘missing’ $20 billion from the
NNPC. You promised a forensic audit report
‘soon’, and more than a year later the Report
itself is still ‘missing’. This is over N4 trillion,
and we don’t know how much more has ‘missed’
since Sanusi cried out. How many trillions of
naira were paid for oil subsidy (unappropriated?).
How many trillions (in actual fact) have been
‘lost’ through customs duty waivers over the
last four years? As coordinator of the economy,
can you tell Nigerians why the price of
automotive gas oil (AGO), popularly called diesel,
has still not come down despite the crash in
global crude oil prices, and how much is being
appropriated by friends in the process? Be
honest: do you really know (as coordinator and
minister of finance) how many trillions of Naira,
self- financing government agencies earn and
spend? I have a long list but let me wait for
now. I do not want to talk about other ‘black
pots’ that impinge on national security. My
estimate, Madam, is that probably more than
N30 trillion has either been stolen or lost or
unaccounted for or simply mismanaged under
your watchful eyes in the past four years. Since
you claim to be in charge, Nigerians are right to
ask you to account. Think about what this
amount could mean for the 112 million poor
Nigerians or for our schools, hospitals, roads,
etc. Soon, you will start asking the citizens to
pay this or that tax, while some faceless
“thieves” were pocketing over $40 million per
day from oil alone.
You alluded to debt relief in your response and
tried to take credit. Well, your CV is honest
enough to admit that your two achievements in
office as Finance minister under Obasanjo were
that “you led the Nigerian team that struck a
deal with the Paris Club” and that you
“introduced the practice of publishing each
state’s monthly financial allocation in the
newspapers”. You are right about the two
achievements. Let me put on record that Nigeria
would have secured debt relief under anyone as
Minister of Finance. President Obasanjo secured
debt relief for Nigeria. Much of his first term
was used to get Nigeria back into the
international community and to campaign for
debt relief. Before you were sworn in as Minister
of Finance, President Bush visited Nigeria and
both of us accompanied President Obasanjo
during the meeting.
There, Mr. Bush promised to support Nigeria
with debt relief and asked our president to
ensure that he met the conditions of the Paris
Club. Obasanjo mobilized the global political
support and coordinated all of us We had a great
team at work and each member of the economic
team had specific aspects of the conditionalities
to deliver: Bode Agusto was in-charge of the
budget; Oby Ezekwesili held sway at Bureau of
Public Procurement and later Minister of Solid
Mineral, and Education (but specifically tasked
with delivering on EITI and procurement reforms)
; Nuhu Ribadu was at the EFCC fighting
corruption; I was at the Central Bank delivering
on monetary policy and banking reforms; Steve
Oronsaye worked hard to delist Nigeria from the
FATF; Nenadi Usman was in-charge of the
parastatals; El-Rufai held forth at FCT and in
charge of public sector reforms; privatization
programme went on, etc.
Did you know that the IMF wrote President
Obasanjo threatening that there would be no
debt relief if the CBN did not meet some
monetary targets, and do you know the magic
we performed to meet them? Can you tell
Nigerians which of the ‘conditionalities’ that you
personally implemented? With the groundswell of
political support and Nigeria meeting all the
‘conditionalities’, debt relief was assured.
Your major role as stated in your CV was to lead
the team to negotiate the specific terms of the
relief, having fulfilled the conditions. I still
believe that Nigeria should have gotten far
better terms than you negotiated. Of course,
with your eyes on returning to the World Bank
after office, I did not expect you to boldly stand
up to the donor community in defence of
Nigeria. Was there a conflict of interest on your
part?
By the way, can you tell Nigerians why you were
eased out as Finance Minister and you cried like
a baby begging OBJ to still allow you remain in
the Economic Management team — barely few
weeks after the debt relief? Why were you
eventually also removed from the economic
management team if you were so important?
Ironically, President Jonathan has recycled you,
with a bigger title and greater responsibilities.
But the difference is that the team that did the
actual work is no longer there, and the world
has seen that the king is naked.
You are brilliant Madam, but you need serious
help. Having spent all your life in the World Bank
bureaucracy largely in administration/operations,
no one will blame you if your economics has
become a bit rusty. There are firebrand
Nigerians all over the world to draft to service.
It is certainly embarrassing to Nigeria for you to
be bothering World Bank economists to help you
with most basic economic analysis.
Your response on the poverty issue is deeply
troubling. You accuse me of using “2011
statistics on poverty by the NBS to support his
argument, while ignoring more recent figures”.
At least you did not refute the NBS figure as
valid. In the next sentence, Madam went ahead
to note that “as stated in the Nigeria Economic
Report 2014 by the World Bank, poverty in
Nigeria has dropped from 35.2 percent of
population in 2010/2011 to 33.1 per cent in
2012/2013”. Did you notice that you have
quoted two figures for poverty for the same
year as being equally correct? So, for 2011, was
poverty 71% (according to NBS) or 35%
according to the World Bank? To the best of my
knowledge, the last published household survey
by NBS was in 2011. The World Bank does not
conduct household surveys in member states to
determine poverty incidence. So, when and by
whom was the survey that gave the World Bank
figures?
What worries me is that this government is the
first in our history to attempt to manipulate our
national statistics under Okonjo-Iweala. When
NBS published the poverty figures in 2011, she
felt indicted and incensed. She called upon the
World Bank to come and examine the
‘methodology’ and get NBS to ‘review’ its
numbers. Oby Ezekwesili (as VP Africa Region
rejected the call to try to tamper with a
country’s statistics). Once Oby left, the ‘World
Bank’ started talking about ‘new figures’,
without conducting any new surveys. I was told
about it by a World Bank economist, and I
cautioned that it was a dangerous gamble that
would damage the credibility of the NBS. If you
want to ‘review methodology’, you conduct
another survey but you can’t change
‘methodology’ because you don’t like the
published figures. No government in our history
has tried it: even Sani Abacha allowed a poverty
su
. Concluded

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