Scape Goat Appointees - The Curious Case of Okonjo Iweala

Nigerians as usual are looking for a scapegoat political appointee to hang for the economic downturn and empty treasury that will be inherited by the incoming administration of GMB for all the wrong reasons in its historical and blind blame game series after the exit of every administration. 

Nigerians should not be deceived by the bogus title, Coordinating Minister of the Economy that was foisted on Dr. Okonjo Iweala, instead ask yourself what power does she have to check the excesses of the executive. 

For starters, did she ask the National Assembly to allocate and pay itself almost 3% of the yearly federal budget in a third world country like Nigeria, that 3% is even a conservative estimate when you consider the operating expenses of state and local governments officials.

Besides advising the executive and using moral suasion what can she really do to check mate a leadership that is unwilling to prune down it’s recurring expenditure albeit painful by trimming down its public service, cutting back on its welfare programs, reducing subsidies, and other unpopular measures to bring its expenses in check.

Is she responsible for the profligacy of the executive who buy presidential planes at federal and state level and sponsor pilgrimages, award dubious and over- valued contracts for payment approved by the presidency?

Did she ask Boko Harem to escalate its activities? Are Nigerians aware how costly war is. Are Nigerians aware that this unforeseen escalation of this war calls for extra budgetary allocations more than billions of dollars with no end in sight made worse by a defense complex that is wasteful and corrupt as well. 

Does she have the power to charge military officers with fraud after they have forced the country to give them an open-ended check to fight Boko harem.

Did she ask the militants and other miscreants to keep on sabotaging our Pipelines and tripling the cost of repairs and decreasing our crude oil sales even during this period of falling prices at the same time? 

Did she ask the U.S. to stop buying our crude oil forcing us to look for other buyers at a reduced cost in weaker non-US currencies? Furthermore, does she have control of oil prices that have dropped from the low $70's to the upper $30's.

Does she have control of the oil cabals who through their activities further reduced the monies accruing to the state that was estimated in the budget through piracy and other nefarious activities.

Did she ask the state governments to maintain their bloated civil services and recurrent expenditure, better still does she have the power to refuse to bail out these state governments on the orders of the executive that the APC governors are trying to get GMB to do in-spite of the fact that he is not in power yet.

Like every finance minister before her, she could recommend, but did any of the state governments curtail their borrowing to finance their corrupt and wasteful expenditure and better still can she refuse a directive from the presidency that the federal government pay the interest or pay the loans outright for these recalcitrant states. 

Is obtaining fraudulent waivers for export or import or crude oil and other things anything new in Nigeria, and with the number of independent parastatals is it not possible that not all were approved at her desk.

Did any of these politicians ask her about the inflationary pressure their spending would have on the consumer price index. Little wonder the value of the naira was further devalued during this season or do Nigerians want to revert to a fixed instead of floating exchange rate, if you do please tell her.

Along those lines did she ask our politicians and elite to spend and conduct business in dollars instead of Naira. How long did we expect the naira to survive such an assault and pressure?

Did she tell the customs service to allow smuggling to thrive, did she ask them to be so inefficient to allow ships to queue up and congest Nigerian seaports forcing the country to pay huge non-budgeted demurrage charges?

Did she ask Nigeria not to create strong laws governing campaign-financing the lack of which allowed incumbent federal, state and local governments to tap and funnel the statutory allocations of various Parastatals into their election campaigns.

Perhaps all she is charges? guilty of is not resigning after she realized she was not in control of our finances, but then again very few Nigerians have resigned for those reasons, so it is a matter of debate, why should she be one of the first ones.

Finally, Nigerian universities and academic programs are presently unranked and most Nigerian graduates are substandard and generally do not have the quantitative skill or experience to understand how the real world of international finance and capital financing really works. So, do you select as your Minister of Finance, a world-class economist who understands the intricacies of international and institutional finance or chose a 2nd rate economist not respected internationally, take your pick.

On the other hand, the argument about the non-appointment of a world-class former IMF economists makes sense when you consider that the entire economic team she is working with maybe substandard and not qualified for the job at hand across all levels including at the state and local governments. 

It also makes sense not to have a technocrat of that experience and exposure if they are to be undermined by an inept and weak leadership that is unable to check the Excesses of its officials or make the tough decisions. 

All critical and mature Nigerians should be congratulating her for managing and keeping the state afloat in the face of this institutional, systemic and leadership corruption in Nigeria today instead.

It is instructive that she served the previous administration of Obasanjo and was able to build our reserves and pay our debts only for it to be squandered or depleted by ongoing events during the current administration, whether it was due to corruption or complicated international financial events or profligate spending is debatable and Material to this discussion. 

At the end of the day, Nigeria will become bankrupt and insolvent if it continues with business as usual and does not reign in its fiscal and monetary policies no matter who is the coordinating minister of Finance and the economy. 

By Terhemba Osuji