Escape of the Scape Goats: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

 It is safe to say that PMB's long awaited war against corruption has suffered a major setback tantamount to a derailment in the face of these two appointments. 

The appointment, particularly by the Bill Gates foundation, has basically validated Ms. Iweala, Nigeria's immediate past Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy internationally and made her almost untouchable through the silent, but unmistakable soft power of these appointments.

It will be a PR nightmare for the Nigerian government to start any case against Iweala who allegedly either stole or looked the other way while others stole billions of dollars after such a high level international validation and especially after the public accusations by self-appointed government corruption spokesmen like Oshimole who leveled accusations against her have been debunked in the court of analyst opinion.

Even if the government pushes forward in charging her, the case will have to be airtight and well-grounded in facts beyond baseless mob accusations and insinuations than before these high-profile appointments. 

It is also politically risky, because no charges against her can be intuitively made without also co-charging alleged co-conspirators who must have signed off on her actions, including Goodluck Jonathan the former ex-president himself. 

It must also be called that Jonathan extracted a promise from PMB that he will not be persecuted by his incoming administration during the post-election euphoria in the interest of peace and to allow PMB assume the presidency without any needless bloodletting. 

While promises can sometimes be broken, it remains to be seen whether PMB will go back on that declared promise. 

Furthermore, the international community by virtue of these appointments will be watching to see the mutation of any kangaroo court formed to charge her and will publicize any sham trial, you can also bet she will be heavily represented by a team of skilled lawyers from overseas. 

Ms. Iweala might also just opt to stay away from Nigeria till after 2019 and it makes no sense to bring down or embarrass a citizen in such a high-profile position amounting to international political hara-kiri, a most unwise course of action for any third world country much less beleaguered Nigeria.

If PMB does not unleash his war against corruption soon enough even ms. Maduekwe, the former Petroleum minister will be similarly scooped up by prospective employers and will enjoy the protections that come with any such position. 

It is very doubtful, even if she is not so protected, that Nigeria will prosecute the wife of a former chief of naval staff. Such an event is very unlikely to happen and goes against the espirit de corps and self-protection that the military clan has provided to itself through its vice grip on power. Simply put it sets a very bad precedent and is against the unstated rules of that group.

It is little wonder that while the present administration of PMB has indicated its intention to probe Jonathan's administration, it has been silent about prosecuting the regime of former military president General Obasanjo.

it is time for the PMB led government to change the national conversation away from a war against corruption, to blocking leakages as promised and getting down to the business of governance, so it's citizens can begin to feel the impact of government Policies sooner rather than later.

By Michael Amakor


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Economics - Another Useless Degree in Nigeria

To those studying Economics hoping for a banking career, please understand that With the increasing sophistication of electronic banking, transfer services, ATM’s and POS machines, the need for bankers will fall and there will be a decline in recruitment in that area. To be more concise, ECONOMICS is one of the growing number of useless courses if the curriculum is not quantitative based and focused on modeling outcomes and forecasting trends based on real time statistics and data.  Here are the jobs available to Economics graduates overseas: 1. Economist  2. Financial risk analyst 3. Data Analyst 4. Financial Planner 5. Accountant 6. Economic Researcher 7. Financial Consultant 8. Investment Analyst  9. Actuary 10. teaching 11. Public sector Based on this list, we can immediately eliminate 2,4,8,9, give some deferential award to 1,3,6 that in Nigeria all lead to 11 in policy roles, with the remaining extract from all defaulting to 10 or finally outside economics in the wo...
Read more

Re-Indoctrination Before Restructuring

Whenever you talk about poor governance, Nigerians always mention restructuring as the catch all panacea to fix all problems and issues. But very few Nigerians really know what type of restructuring is needed or how to secure this much needed restructuring in practice.  Many believe restructuring is about returning to the regional government system predating 1966, and tagging on a few new regions, while others wish to retain the federalist state structure and others wish for tribal governments for each of Nigeria nearly 360 indigenous tribes.  Others talk about super imposing a true federalist structures over whatever system but to ensure regional control of resources, most of that agitation seems to be driven by the south east and south-south zones sitting on crude oil reserves, followed by a devolution of items on the exclusive list to those new federalist units.  Others see restructuring as repeal of the 1999 constitution in its entirety and fashioning a new constituti...
Read more

PRESIDENT BUHARI’S DESTINED TO FAIL PROVINCIAL ECONOMIC POLICIES

Where is Nigeria’s Minister of State, Kachikwu? Apparently, he has been sidelined in favor of Baru searching for crude in the lake chad Basin.  It is not enough that Nigeria has been structured on a ridiculously, uneconomic and wasteful system of drilling in the south and pipelining the crude all the way up to Kaduna for refinement.  Now Buhari has become fixated with finding oil in the north to complete his economic linkage plan after the planned completion of the dry inland port and a railway linking from there all the way to Chad and Cameroon for his Kanuri relative smugglers to prosper selling petrol and other banned items without paying Nigeria excise duties unlike the militarized border around Lagos with the republic of Benin. You can almost feel the gasping for air exasperation of Buhari as he is confronted with yet another failure to find crude and I can hear his iron willed response to keep on drilling to find oil at all costs so he and the north can be rid or done wi...
Read more