The statement ended with a prayer, which I know that many of us would have said amen to. Even with that amen, are we sure that our country is not reeling under another debt overhang today? I will draw heavily from the text of Obasanjo’s broadcast in writing this article. It is over 11 years since the Obasanjo administration got us the $18 billion debt relief. Obasanjo left office in 2007 and since his exit, we have had two other administrations – the late Yar’Adua’s and the Jonathan’s. The late President Umoru Yar’Adua, as we all know did not have the time to attend to affairs of state because of his health, so he may not have gone on a borrowing spree that will harm the country.
But the same cannot be said of his successor, former President Goodluck Jonathan, who was in office for almost six years before his loss in the last election to President Muhammadu Buhari. A key figure in the Obasanjo and Jonathan administrations was Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the renowned economist, who left the World Bank to serve her country. Okonjo-Iweala played a key role in the negotiations that led to the writing off of our debt. And Obasanjo acknowledged her role in his broadcast by describing her as ‘’a woman of indomitable character and courage’’.
If I know Obasanjo well, he will not think twice today before withdrawing that accolade. Why? It is the same Okonjo-Iweala that should have led the campaign for savings in the wake of the debt relief in which she played a central role that did otherwise under Jonathan. In the opening of the June 30, 2005 broadcast, Obasanjo enjoined us to savour the cheery news of the debt forgiveness ‘’and draw bitter lessons from the profligacy of the past’’. Did Okonjo-Iweala, the architect of the debt relief, draw such lessons? The answer is no. Speaking on ‘’Inequality, growth and resilience’’ at the George Washington University in the United States (US) last Thursday, she said our country is in dire straits today because her boss, Jonathan, lacked the political will to save!
Under Obasanjo, she said the nation saved $22 billion, which came in handy during the 2008/2009 global meltdown. Obasanjo, she said, was able to save because he had the political will to do so. ‘’This time around, and this is key now, you need not only to have the instrument but you need the political will. In my second time as finance minister, from 2011 to 2015, we had the instrument, we had the means, we had done it before, but zero political will. So, we were not able to save when we should have. That is why you find that Nigeria is now in the situation it is in, along with so many other countries”, Okonjo-Iweala said.
In one word, Jonathan failed the nation when we needed his leadership most. It is not that the money was not there; the money was there because oil was selling like hot cake then – between $120 and $140 per barrel – and there were no problems whatsoever with production. It was Okonjo-Iweala’s duty to ensure that we saved for the rainy day because life goes up and down like a yo-yo. The oil that was selling for $140 per barrel when she was in government is today hovering between $38 and $40 per barrel. If I were Okonjo-Iweala, I will cover my face in shame. She should not be seen or heard talking at all because it was her duty to get the then president to save for the rainy day.
She was a super-minister – the minister of finance and coordinating minister of the economy – all roled into one. What was she coordinating if she could not get Jonathan to do what was expected of him? To reduce what happened then to Jonathan’s lack of political will shows that she did not appreciate the enormity of her responsibility as a super-minister. The issue is Okonjo-Iweala should admit that she failed as finance minister. Their administration, as she noted in her US lecture, put us in the mess we are in today because of its ineptitude. She worsened her case by trying to explain it away later that governors were the problem. Were the governors our president or Jonathan? Why didn’t governors stop Obasanjo from saving when he was president?
I return to the Obasanjo broadcast again because what Okonjo-Iweala did relates to what he warned the nation against 11 years ago. ‘’We can identify bad governance, abuse of office and power, criminal corruption, mismanagement and waste, misplaced priorities, fiscal indiscipline, weak control…These all took place in this country, before our very eyes, and at times in active complicity with many of us…We often forget that stolen and wasted funds were money meant for growth and development especially education, health, roads, water, electricity and other social services’’.
Okonjo-Iweala saw evil being perpetrated against her country and she kept quiet instead of raising an alarm. Of what benefit is her statement today that we could not save for the rainy day because of our former president’s lack of political will? Her statement cannot remedy the situation; so she should keep what she knows to herself and not add to our problems. She and her cohort have done their worse. I just hope that we will not be infected by the Okonjo-Iweala disease of keeping quiet when we should speak out when things are going wrong.
As Obasanjo said in his broadcast: “We pray to God that we get beyond this debilitation and develop a collective conscience that is anchored on transparency, accountability, probity, value-for-money and due process’’. For Nigeria, may it yet be morning on creation day
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