posted                      

quote:

---

Iweala to come home and serve as Finance Minister. Let me tell you, I was nearly converted to an Obasanjo fan. I loved that appointment and I looked forward to whether or not they would give that prodigiously competent lady the political insulation to deliver. But that was completely meant to be an ephemeral excitement. They made Iweala finance minister and proceeded to deplete her ministry of the crucial departments including budget control! Obasanjo played 'wayo' with World Bank vee pee! I could not believe it. Ah! Obasanjo failed me again!

They have double-crossed the well known economist already, what those of us who wished she got the job in the first instance should do now is to declare a prayer and fasting for her sake. And I mean that....... Laolu Akande

---

posted                      

quote:

---

However, what right thinking people thought and what President Obasanjo had in mind did not seem to have a meeting point. The President transferred the Budget and Planning function to his office. The very areas in which the lady's technical input would have come in most handy, was snatched away.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/politics/p224072003.html

---

posted                      

quote:

---

Iweala’s Precarious Ministerial Chair!

In his battle against corruption, President Olusegun Obasanjo wants to move forward but doesn’t know where the way forward is. This has made his anti-corruption crusade ineffective, as people are wont to generally describe it. It has become a sort of failed initiative in a country where corruption has become a free enterprise, as the scourge grows in leaps and bounds by every passing day. The president thus would seem to have missed the road, not knowing where the forward direction is; right or left. But if the alleged resignation of Dr. (Mrs) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (now allegedly withdrawn) as Finance Minister was anything to go by, it would seem the economics Amazon has finally shown Obasanjo the way on how really to fight corruption with sincerity of purpose.

Though the resignation saga was denied, I still would believe the newspaper’s story, which it actually stood by, given the ease by which the present government finds it convenient to cover up lies in attempt to walk out clean from embarrassing situations. Examples abound in the past in such antics from “leaders we can trust”. The newspaper has insisted that Dr. Iweala was actually begged to rescind her embarrassing decision – and that was it. The most topical issue on the state of the nation is corruption and Iweala’s action has been saluted as the only way to sanitize the government into tackling corruption headlong as against the lip service hitherto paid to it. Not only has corruption graduated into a high profile, monumental grade, it has become a kind of merchandize among the highly and lowly rated, including police top shots.

It is ironical to discover that corruption is so highly pronounced under this government than in that of Abacha from whom billions of looted money were recovered. It therefore stands to reason that more than the volume of Abacha loot may have to be recovered from this government when it closes shop in 2007, its claim to characteristic piety notwithstanding. It took just two days in government for Iweala to discover how corruption stinks in the system in alarming proportion. She was said to have expressed critical opinion about the corruption - prone economic policies of government which has root in the president’s severance of the Budgetting and Planning Departments from the Ministry of Finance where she was to be minister. She saw that as making her an impotent minister without those departments to complement her official resposibility, as it normally should be. That system, she opined, would be a handicap in her normal duty of monitoring and having effective control of budgetting and planning. She hinged this on CBN’s previous indictment of government over its budgetary indiscipline which was seen as being responsible for the woeful state of the economy.

She was also said to have picked holes in the level of transparency in the system which compels textile importers from the Eastern and Northern states to abandon their airports and make Lagos ports the clearing area. With a PDP helmsman calling the shots at the Lagos port, political observers are quick to raise suspicion about how true accountability would be fostered on the system. She reportedly added that “there was not enough transparency in the government to support and sustain an effective overhaul of the system, ensure accountability and fight the inherent corruption in the system,” among other lines of protests. The crux of the matter is that Iweala has exposed what other ministers before her knew but were afraid to oppose in the desperation to keep their jobs. It so happened that in the history of Nigeria’s bread and butter politicking, no minister has been honourable enough to resign his/her appointment on principle, nor in the present civilian dispensation be bold enough to look Obasanjo in the face. Iweala broke that jinx and demistyfied Obasanjo’s dictatorial totalitarianism.

Before now, Obasanjo has been perceived as the God-sent redeemer to tackle this corruption scourge and eradicate it. And he has never been short of preening in self-glorification over that “mission” at every opportuned talk-shop forum. But Iweala’s protests and accompanied resignation was a presage that something was indeed faulty about Obasanjo’s make-belief anti-corruption crusade. She blew the lid open off the can of such pretexts, in a manner that would have shocked her corruption-prone cabinet colleagues who would have drawn the conclusion that “this strange woman has come to put sand in our garri,” by her resolve to block all the conduit pipes through which misapproriated funds are salted away from government treasury.

She has opened the veil of deceipt from those “tough” but insincere talks sermonized toi would-be ministers “about how committed the government was to fight corruption,” during the party-time on anti-corruption tutorials. But Iweala’s bold resignation action has become a wake-up call which created a new frontier that would make us to disbelieve government’s time-worn, deceptive propaganda about an unenforceable, window-dressing anti-corruption crusade.

The alleged Iweala resignation has slammed another new dimension on ministerial appointments in the country. While some jobless opportunists, political hangers-on and men of doubtful integrity beg, lobby and in most cases buy their ways or employ the use of juju to get ministerial appointments, Iweala has noteworthily reversed the trend by conversely making herself to be begged for ministerial offer. In government’s desperation to stave off the shame and embarrassment caused by her resignation, it took top shots in the president to placate her into rescinding her decision. It was even alleged that her father had to be flown to Abuja to help in the begging spree. And pronto, the president was said to have panickly acquiensced to her demand that the severed departments be restored back to the finance ministry.

Iweala soon found out that the yanking off of the two departments to Obasanjo’s custody was aimed at facilitating a regime of one-man show which hitherto had prevented transparency and which had caused money to disappear into private pockets in the past. The NNPC was similarly cornered by Obasanjo, only for corruption to thrive in that sector. In the last orchestrated ministerial retreat, Obasanjo repeated what we have been hearing since 1999 about how the ministers should shun corruption. But the populace is not amused by that level of deceipt, having found out that corruption, instead, of abating, has been growing wings with nobody getting punished for the reported billions of looted funds. Obasanjo has been accused of, too many things which do not portray the good image of someone with a strong conviction about how to curb corruption. There was, among others, the alleged COJA double-contract award which make people to feel that was the norm in Aso Rock; the 900 million dollars unaccounted-for oil refinery repair money and the overpriced GSM tariff.

All along, it has appeared as if our battle to curb corruption is a long struggle with more than one battle, premised on actions and stories that can not stand up. That is why Iweala’s alleged resignation is an idignation which would have created a sombre atmosphere within the presidency, engendering a mood of panic among prospective looters in government circles, whose looting intentions would have been frustrated through her action. Iweala has warned those who care in government circles that example is better than precept.

All said and done, Iweala, by returning to government, is perching on a precarious ministerial chair for as long as she remains on the seat. This is because her resignation would have wounded Obasanjo’s pride in a manner that he is not likely to forgive or forget. He has a wide range of capabilities to retaliate and rubbish the woman’s image on the cause of her tenure over her action which has deflated the baloon of Obasanjo’s self-righteousness, as a member of Transparency International,who is running a government which Iweala has described as non-transparent. At a point in time, she may find it parlous to work with the president who may be nursing a pay-back day for the Economics icon whose action has attracted world-wide attention, except this piece would have preempted that.

Globanisation is a reality and the global responses which Iweala’s resignation had attracted would have accounted for her employers at the World Bank to request for her return to her job without delay, as expression of international support for her action. The government will not feel comfortable at this understanding, going by international stigma her action would have cast on the president, and indeed Nigeria. The Iweala experience has proved that the president does not know the limitation of dictatorial power, which fallout has slammed a string of negative features on our body polity.

© 2003 nigerian-tribune.com

---

posted                      

quote:

---

Chiboy:

I think Idowu Ogbo and his Yoruba clan are applauding the moron for instigating and formenting political trouble in Anambra purely to make the Igbo look bad, wetie style. That's why they call olusegun obasanjo smart. They love his high-handedness in Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu's country - the man and the people that make them look small. At last they can change the coward tag they wear everyday, partly for loosing Ilorin to the Fulani. The way they see it, picking a fight in the mud with the Igbo is more important than cleaning up Lagos streets.

My Yoruba friends, it is not working! Smart and courage mean taking on tough problems and solving them successfully. There are tons of those in BiafraNigeria that can help olusegun obasanjo redeem Yoruba lack of courage, than picking on the Igbo nation. Babangida is still working the streets of nigeria. Any resolution of that particular case under olusegun obasanjo will get the Yoruba the credit they're looking for, not just in Igbo land. There are also economic deveopment and Yoruba management competence issues,......... In the eyes of the world, they'll rank higher in priority.

But, we'll see who wins in the end!

--Amadi O

---

quote:

---

My reference to "Acquiescing" and "Indomittable" is merely my impression of a held opinion by the British gallery. An impression which I put in quotation marks lest I be misinterpreted as you have done.
UkaObasi

---

quote:

---

While your lecture was a very clever and stimulating one indeed, is'nt it rendered totally off mark once the basic premise that informed its uncontrolled outburst is removed? --UkaObasi

---

posted                      

quote:

---

Well your impression is quite wrong

My impression is that the Brits found the Yorubas too educated and gruff to the extent they were not willing to trust them with power and administration of key positions. This explains their comfort with ATBalewa and such Igbo administrators like Nwokedi, at the eve of their departure from Nigeria.

---

quote:

---

Inspite of the sheer volume of anti-Yoruba postings on this board, it might interest you to note that i put immense pressure on myself to control my outbursts, just for civility sake, despite the contrary from most Igbo commentators who see no reason to be civil in their one way approach to their Yorubaphobia.

---