HADIZA SULEMAN

Nigeria’s former Minister of Finance and coordinating minister of the economy, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been out of office for the past nine months but she has not disappeared from the headlines. For the past few months, she has been the target of attacks by notable members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and their sympathizers who blame her for every imaginable economic policy of the Goodluck Jonathan presidency they perceive as wrong.

With equanimity, she continues to soak in every attack directed towards her performance in office. She has been relentless in defending the economic policies of the past administration and refuses to accept charges that the government either deliberately encouraged graft or it was not decisive in curtailing it.

The bulk of the allegations of mismanagement has come from Edo state governor, Adams Oshiomhole who continues to portray her tenure in bad light, even being personal sometimes in his attacks. The woman who presently chairs GAVI, the global vaccine alliance, has not only stood up to Oshiomhole’s deliberate antics of distracting her, she has been able to beat the loquacious former trade unionist into submission with elevated responses and incontrovertible facts.

Lately, a human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, entered the fray by trying to connect her to the fraud allegations buffeting the Office of the National Security Adviser. In a petition he wrote to the International Criminal Court (ICC), Falana had urged the ICC to prosecute and arrest Okonjo-Iweala for failing to “prevent systematic and widespread corruption” in the previous administration.

He described as “criminal” the transfer of recovered $322 million loot of Sani Abacha, former Nigerian dictator, to , Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), the former national security adviser. According to Falana in the petition which he sent to Fatou Bensouda, prosecutor of the ICC, “the failure of a former Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to prevent widespread and systematic corruption including the re-looting of the Abacha loot amounts to complicity under the Rome Statute, and therefore fits the legal requirements of a crime against humanity”.

However, the former Minister of Finance who also doubles as Senior Advisor at the financial advisory firm, Lazard, has denied any wrong saying the money was transferred to the former national security adviser after receiving approval of Goodluck Jonathan, the former president and after securing guarantees that the money would be properly accounted for.

In a statement by her media adviser Mr. Paul Nwabuikwu, she described Falana as an “integrity challenged charlatan”. She revealed that Falana was desperate to link her with the $2.1bn arms scandal because she “hurt the interests of his corrupt sponsors” during her time in office. “It is sad that a person who had earned some prominence as a human rights lawyer now tramples on the human rights of others as a political jobber,” she said.

The statement said it was “extremely insensitive” for Falana and his sponsors to
level false accusations against Dr Okonjo-Iweala who went through a searing personal ordeal for her principled fight against corruption. It said Falana and his sponsors are engaged in “media harassment, cyber bullying and intimidation against innocent persons” for political and pecuniary gain, and urged Nigerians not to give in to Falana’s self-imposed Chronic Cerebral Amnesia (CCA)”.

Beyond the usual media attention that Falana craves, it is difficult to understand the real purpose of this latest outburst. Since the victory of the APC last year, he has gone to great lengths to pander to the interests of the ruling party. Last October during the nomination of ministers, his name had featured as a possible nominee for the position of Attorney-General and Minister of Justice but he was disappointed by President Muhammadu Buhari. He has also not given any further indication that he will pursue the matter beyond the publicity the petition attracted.

Okonjo-Iweala who has spent 25 years at the World Bank, most recently as a managing director, started her career at the World Bank in 1982. She served twice as Nigeria’s finance minister in what is now Africa’s biggest economy from 2003 to 2006 during which she led the country’s successful debt relief negotiations, and again from 2011 until May 2015. GAVI, the prominent international organization which she chairs, is focused on increasing access to immunization in poor countries around the world.

Published here: http://www.peopleandpolitics.com.ng/2016/02/ngozi-okonjo-iweala-still-holding-her.html