I have to thank God that I am not an economist.
Two weeks ago, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala returned to Nigeria to assume duty as Minister of Finance. It was several years after she first served in that capacity and was credited with being responsible for some of the progress made by the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo.
As that government began to lose focus, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala was moved sideways, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which she seemed to have little interest in, after which she left the government to return to Washington DC and a leadership position at the World Bank. From news stories at that time, I know that she endured a lot of personal suffering as a result of her ministerial position in Nigeria. That makes her return to Abuja even more admirable.
I have to thank God that I am not an economist.
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Two weeks ago, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala returned to Nigeria to assume duty as Minister of Finance. It was several years after she first served in that capacity and was credited with being responsible for some of the progress made by the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo.
As that government began to lose focus, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala was moved sideways, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which she seemed to have little interest in, after which she left the government to return to Washington DC and a leadership position at the World Bank. From news stories at that time, I know that she endured a lot of personal suffering as a result of her ministerial position in Nigeria. That makes her return to Abuja even more admirable.
As Nigerians now know, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala will not only serve as Finance Minister, she will coordinate the administration’s Economic Management Team as well.
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This suggests, first, that Mr. Jonathan must have a great deal of respect for her personally, or for her abilities. The obverse observation is that Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala must have identified in Nigeria an emergency situation she believed she must intervene in.
If we have these giant economic problems and Mr. Jonathan has so much faith in the ability of one national to help resolve them and that national reports for duty as Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala has done, the question is: should we be singing Hallelujah?
Certainly not.
I know: Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala is saying many of the politically correct things, such as wanting to create jobs and build infrastructure. But like many of Mr. Jonathan’s promises, these are simply pleasant sounds: the kind Nigeria’s leaders know that Nigerians love to hear.
She has also said some clever things, such as that her government will not offer a new economic blueprint, which, when you think about it, is either meaningless or dangerous.
And then she has said some unpleasant things, such as the government’s plan to eliminate existing subsidies on petroleum products.
What she has not said, sadly, is a bold thing, the bold thing. In my view, our entire prospects rest not on a particular economic thinking or planning, but on finding the audacity to control the open looting of the Nigerian economy. In the absence of that, our future is the same as our past: the Nigerian nation is heading for the front entrance of hell.
Nobody needs an economist to tell him that the Nigerian patient’s failure to get better is due not to bad medication but to a failure to take each and every prescribed medication at all. Everyone knows that Nigeria’s challenge has been, and always will be, how to ensure that public policy is not subverted by the same people who make it.
The difference between Nigeria and Singapore is simply the absence of a leadership courageous and honest enough to insist that our anti-corruption schema be implemented nationally, not politically. The difference between Brazil and Nigeria is simply the absence of a leadership that really wants to see a society in which every citizen matters.
I am trying to describe the insincerity that is the single most prominent feature of public service in Nigeria, where governance is seen not as an opportunity to serve, but to steal. That insincerity is the yawning abyss into which the most celebrated and decorated of public policy in Nigeria is routinely tossed. The will to serve the people does not exist.
In 50 years of independence, this is where we have come unglued again and again. Hopefully, our new Minister of Finance has had time to reflect on her previous sojourn in the same Ministry. Life at that time, as I recall it, was far more hopeful.
That government had a good sales outlook, announcing reforms and an onslaught on corruption. In the end, unfortunately, it was grounded by the banana skin of insincerity on which it stood: the leader did not want Nigeria to develop effective institutions; he wanted to be the institution; he abandoned his so-called reforms, unless where they suited him or injured his opponents; he sabotaged the same programmes he had presented as the answer to Nigeria’s problems; he imposed on the country a crippling leadership of his own choosing.
That leadership would begin with a new sales job: a seven-point programme that was to commence with the declaration of an emergency in the power sector. But not only did he not get as far as pronouncing the emergency, he placed his government in his own pockets while he ailed abroad and could not go to work.
Umaru Yar’Adua’s death yielded Mr. Jonathan who, for over a year, did little more than lean against the wall in a situation that called for hard sprinting and heavy lifting.
Getting a new mandate, Mr. Jonathan, the entire farm now his, has placed the machete in Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala’s hands. But is she smart enough to realize that it has not been sharpened?
Does she have the guts to tell her boss what she knows: that if he truly wants her to chop down these robust tree trunks not only must he step out of the way but must also give her a sharpened weapon?
There is a distinct chance that, unknown to the rest of us, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala is actually fleeing Washington DC, for reasons of her own. In that event, Abuja is the best place in Nigeria to kick off your shoes, if Nigeria it must be.
On the other hand, she may have returned to Abuja with the intention of ruining her name, perhaps having reached the conclusion that when she was last in the neighborhood, she left Nigerians with too high an impression of her.
If that is her thinking, she has timed her mission perfectly: the high expectations Jonathan has created in Nigerian through his avalanche of promises, coupled with popular distrust of lying, conniving governments, will ensure that.
If she has come determined to do a thorough and honest job, the first advice I would give to her is to remember that this government is not hers, and that she cannot expect to succeed any more than the head of government wants her to.
Only the deepest commitment and clarity of minds, motives and means can move Nigeria forward; their absence has denied us a semblance of meaningful development despite the resources we have enjoyed for many years. We lack infrastructure not because we have lacked the resources, but because our resources have not been used to develop them.
And no, I am no economist, but all of the talk about creating jobs is empty political nonsense in the absence of the infrastructure and the security of life and property that will encourage people to invest in the country. A government can manufacture lies, but not jobs.
Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala is welcome back from the West. In a few days, her boss will be heading in that direction, to the United Nations, many of whose employees were killed by a suicide bomber in Abuja last week.
For 50 years, the United Nations General Assembly has provided Nigerian leaders the opportunity to make speeches that little reflect what is going on in Nigeria. This year, because of last week’s bombing, Nigeria’s leadership—or lack of it— will attract greater attention to itself.
Not only will the recurrent treachery of will that keeps us down become more internationally obvious, it will increasingly become the target of youth who can take empty economic policy talk no more.
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