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Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the
problem By Femi Fani-Kayode Posted
Thur Jan 5,2012
Yesterday (4th of Jan. 2012) during a specially convened meeting
of the Federal Executive Council of the Goodluck Jonathan
administration Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, my former cabinet
colleague and good friend, threatened to resign from her
position as Finance
Minister and de-facto Prime Minister and go back to the World
Bank from whence she came if the President dared to reverse his
policy on the removal of the fuel subsidy and if he decided to
re-introduce the subsidy once again.
This interesting show of power, display of strength and
manifestation of a new-found confidence by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
came as a consequence of the fact that the lady knew that the
Nigerian people were bringing massive pressure upon President
Jonathan to reverse that policy and to do so quickly and
expeditiously. My advice to President Jonathan is as follows-
call the good lady's bluff, reverse the policy, make your peace
with the God and the Nigerian people and, if she doesn't resign
after that as she has promised to do, then fire her with
immediate effect. It was this same display of hubristic
arrogance that compelled President Obasanjo to remove
Okonjo-Iweala as initially Finance Minister during his tenure
and then later on to demote her even further by removing her as
the head of the Economic Team in early 2007. It was after that
announcement, which the lady only heard about when she was on an
official assignment as our Foreign Minister in far away
Paris, that compelled
her to resign from the government altogether and go back to the
World Bank.
She could not bear the prospect of having to sit in an Economic
Team meeting in which she did not preside. Such is the manner
and peculiar nature of this otherwise delightful lady. My reason
for suggesting that President Jonathan should accept her
resignation with gladness or to fire her is because, as far as I
am concerned, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala IS the problem. She is the
architect of this government's misguided policy on the untimely
removal of the fuel subsidy and she is it's chief prophetess and
enforcer. All the others in government, including Mr. President
himself, are simply her disciples. Yet the truth is that this
lady serves the interests of the IMF and the World Bank and the
powers that control those two institutions more than she does
the interests of the Nigerian people.
That has always been the case but President Obasanjo controlled
her with a firm hand when we were in power and he used her to
secure a good deal for us on the foreign debt issue because she
knew the system. If the World Bank asks her to jump she will ask
''how high''? This is the woman that is virtually our Prime
Minister today. No wonder we are in trouble. People like this
have very little feeling for the masses and they cannot
empathise with their pain. Even the traditional politicians
empathise more with the ordinary people because they have to
interact with them on a daily basis but these so-called
technocrats do not and they do not really care. All they care
and think about is the full implementation of the economic
prescriptions of the IMF and the World Bank and they don't care
how painful and drastic the implementation of those
prescriptions is. I have tremendous respect for Ngozi as a
person and frankly I happen to actually like her because she is
civilised, well-bred, exceptionally intelligent, warm and
affable. However we have a completely different world-view. Her
world-view is that the ''Third World'' should live at the behest
and by the grace of the Bretton Woods monetary institutions and
she believes in a fully globalised world where the second
slavery (i.e. international debt) holds sway and keeps the
poorer nations of the world in their proper place. My view is
that nations were not created to be broken down into vassal
states which are remote-controlled, punished, enslaved and
impoverished by a few greedy international bankers that run the
IMF and the World Bank.
I do not trust these foreign international monetary institutions
and those that work for them and my vast knowledge of history
shows me that wherever they go in the world they only spread
misery, poverty, unreasonable conditionalities, debt and
wickedness. Their yoke is heavy and they are simply tools of
oppression that are firmly in the control of all-mighty America
and Western Europe. These are the forces and the people that are
causing GEJ to derail. He should stand up to them and he should
not give in to their intimidation and threats. He has nothing to
fear from them because the western world itself is now going
through it's own major financial crisis and it is crumbling.
Nigeria is big enough and strong enough to face them down no
matter what and chart her own course. What they are using him to
do is to impoverish the Nigerian people, weaken them and bring
them down to their knees. They did the same in South America
through the 80's and the 90's and
they are still doing it in Africa.
Even the nation of Ghana, which has a far more stable and
prosperous economy than Nigeria today and which has just
discovered oil, was forced by this hidden hand that controls
their government to remove their own oil subsidy on Christmas
day of all days. What a terrible Christmas gift to the Ghanaian
people. Since then prices for virtually everything in Ghana has
doubled. And we can be rest assured that after the trickledown
effect sets in we should expect the same in Nigeria- everything
will double or triple in price including food, transport,
diesel, kerosene, petrol, commodities, the general cost of
living etc. This is unnecessary, unfair, wrong and
exceptionally callous.
Related
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Okonjo-Iweala did not threaten to
resign, says Aide
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