As an avid reader, I have read some pretty bad articles in my life, especially from supposed “intellectuals,” but none like the one written by Omolade Adunbi where he deliberately attacked the person of Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, former minister for Finance and Coordinating Minister of the economy.

At first, Omolade’s piece is meant to serve as a critique of Mrs Iweala’s new book, Fighting Corruption is Dangerous, but it doesn’t take long for the reader to realise it is more than that. Vindictive in tone, Omolade takes on the role of the trickster god, trying to persuade his readers that there is a second layer of truths beneath what we find inNgozi Okonjo-Iweala’s book.

He clearly takes some sadistic delight in faulting what has been documented in the book. How is it that Mrs Okonjo-Iweala’s academic history, or his efforts to portray her as an over-privileged persona; a Harvard and MIT-trained woman with highly educated parents, have anything to do with her service to the country?
One would have expected that a man such as he, a lecturer in the University of Michigan, would appreciate her pedigree and see the multiple advantages to the country it presented rather than attempt to deride her academic history and influence.

Also worrisome is Adunbi’s statement discrediting the circumstances surrounding the abduction of her mother and the demands made by the kidnappers. Is Adunbi saying that he was there when Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala received the threats? Was he the one appointed to broker the ‘deal’ between the Okonjo family and the abductors of their matriarch?

Omolade’s conclusion from Iweala’sbook is that she sees every disagreement of her policies as an attack against her person because of her gender, ethnic identity and previous role at World Bank (let’s not forget he has already highlighted her privileged upbringing while trying to paint her as egoistic?). This is either due to Omolade’s ignorance of the harsh realities on ground in Nigeria or his deliberate effort to force his flawed points.

Firstly, Nigeria is a very patriarchal state and every man and his dog knows this. Women are given very limited opportunities and even those that get these opportunities are harassed by their male counterparts. Another reality that Omolade failed to acknowledge is that Nigeria is actually a troubled country. Just because it was said by an achiever who left her job at the World Bank to serve her country does not change the fact. And painting her like a colonial master who is bringing her neoliberal policies to rescue Nigeria does not cut it, because she is Nigerian and she only brought her wealth of experience from one of the biggest institutions in the world to help salvage the dilapidating economy; and one of her rescue missions was her role in the debt relief which he deliberately fails to mention. Finally, Omolade went on to accuse Okonjo-Iwealaof corruption, citing that 32 billion dollars were lost under her in the Jonathan administration and 2 billion dollars illegally withdrawn from the excess crude account, claiming she was part of a monumental fraud in the past administrations. But he couldn’t explain why she hasn’t been charged for any of these and despite being the corrupt, egotistical, self-entitled feminist as he claims, she keeps getting huge international appointments and accolades from the people as well as institutions that matter. I think I would rather listen to these people than a man I had to Google to have the faintest idea about who he is.

Link: https://newsbreakers.ng/the-falsity-of-omolade-adunbi/