By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
It’s not for nothing that she is fondly referred to as Ngozi Wahala in many enlightened quarters.
Truth is they no longer make women like her anywhere on planet earth.
No, I have to be more precise: they no longer make men and women like Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the about-to-be re-elected Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO). There is absolutely no limit to celebrating this one woman who can bravely put in her head where men are too afraid to even put their fingers.
Little wonder all of the men and women across the globe failed to put in any papers whatsoever to contest her WTO DG re-election. There used to be a certain man called Donald Trump who thought he could stop the charge of Ngozi Wahala.
Poor Donald T, he had to be separated from his gravy train as the then American President so that our very own Auntie Ngozi could get installed as the DG of WTO! As I write now, The Donald has been re-elected as American President but he has no portal to stand on to stop the unstoppable Ngozi.
As the first woman, and first African, to head the WTO in its then 73-odd-year history, Auntie Ngozi is nonpareil.
The gele she fashionably ties on her head and her Ankara gears have become global fashion statements. In a clear case of “monkey see, money do,” most women are now copying the donning of Auntie Ngozi’s gele-headgear without going the full dimension of feeding their heads with books because, it needs to be stated that Ngozi Wahala’s head contains more books than a large bookshop!
Ever since she left as Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, the regimes that followed have set the world record of making Nigerians poorer every year for the past many years! A tear for the land that calls itself Giant of Africa!
Even amid the poverty scrambling my poor brain, I can still remember when Auntie Ngozi was awarded African Finance Minister of the Year in 2014 by African Investor, the leading investment and communications group advising governments, international organisations and businesses on capital market and foreign direct investment.
She has since taken her prodigious skills to the world stage, whence the grand WTO election and unopposed re-election achievement, while Nigeria is still trapped in the mires of the return of kwashiorkor and relentless poverty and hunger.
Born on June 13, 1954, Okonjo-Iweala has garnered more achievements as an iconic economist of worldwide renown that can last most men several lifetimes.
Even with her personable mien, she exudes royalty as the daughter of Professor Chukwuka Okonjo, the mourned Obi of Ogwashi-Uku, Delta State.
She was educated at Ibadan International School, Harvard University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she took a Ph.D. in regional economic development. Married to Prof Ikemba Iweala, a neurosurgeon native of Umuahia, Abia State, the couple is blessed with four children who have esteemed university degrees that read like the manual of higher education and intellection.
Her son, Uzodinma Iweala, in 2005 published the celebrated child soldier novel Beasts of No Nation.
Having distinguished herself as the Vice-president and Corporate Secretary of the World Bank Group, Okonjo-Iweala in 2003 answered the call to national duty from President Olusegun Obasanjo who appointed her Minister of Finance.
She negotiated with the Paris Club in 2005 to pay a portion of Nigeria’s external debt, to wit, US $12 billion, in return for an $18 billion debt write-off. Before her intervention, Nigeria was paying about $1 billion every year on debt-servicing.
To stem the tide of corruption, she initiated the watershed publishing in newspapers of each State’s monthly financial allocation from the federal government.
It was to her credit that Nigeria obtained her first ever sovereign credit rating (of BB minus) from Fitch and Standard & Poor’s.
In Nigeria where government appointees hardly ever resign their posts, Okonjo-Iweala did the impossible when she resigned as the Foreign Minister after her transfer from the Finance Ministry by then President Obasanjo in 2006.
The then World Bank President, Robert Zoellick, in October 2007 appointed her to the post of Managing Director of the bank.
She became reappointed the Minister of Finance with the added responsibility of the Coordinating Minister for the Fconomy in 2011 by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
Her candid advice to free-spending Nigerian State Governors to save the crude oil earnings against a future crash was kicked aside, and Nigeria is paying the price today.
She waded through storms such as the protests over fuel subsidy removal, a matter that has turned sordid in these sad days of Nigeria where the then leading protester has raised fuel price to a staggering N1400 per litre!
Not even the kidnapping of her beloved mother by kidnappers who demanded her resignation from the government could deter her.
Okonjo-Iweala is the multivalent author and editor of books such as Chinua Achebe: Teacher of Light (with Tijan Sallah); The Debt Trap in Nigeria: Towards a Sustainable Debt Strategy (co-edited with Charles C. Soludo and Mansur Muhtar); Reforming the Unreformable: Lessons from Nigeria; and Fighting Corruption is Dangerous.
Let me end by stressing that Ngozi Wahala is sorely needed here in Nigeria to save our dear country from the bad economics of woe of the touted master strategist.
Death comes on fast wings to a woebegone country that spurns the rescue mission of unstoppable Ngozi Wahala.
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is a renowned poet, journalist and author
