Why I wrote book on Jonathan’s government – Okonjo-Iweala

Former Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has revealed why she
wrote the new book that exposes certain things that happened during
the immediate past administration of President Goodluck Jonathan.

Okonjo-Iweala spoke at the event preceding the signing of the book she
entitled, "Fighting Corruption is Dangerous: The Story Behind the
Headlines" held at the Politics and Prose, Washington DC, US.

The event had in audience members of her family, friends, colleagues,
international institutions representatives.

The former Minister explained, "When I set out to write, I knew I was
going to write a book because I wanted to write a sequel to my first
book. You may not have seen it, it is also from MIT Press called
'Reforming the Unreformable: Lessons from Nigeria'. It captures public
policy lessons from the first time that I was in government as finance
minister and all the various reforms that were done with the economic
team that I worked with under President Obasanjo at the time. It talks
about our efforts to get debt relief etc but focused a lot on the
macro economic reforms.

"I thought after a second time in office I will be writing a volume
two which will focus on reforms in the real sector – agriculture,
telecommunications, and power. What exactly were the reforms we did in
those sectors and what were the successes and failures. So, I actually
set out to write volume two but when I sat down, what came out from my
laptop was different. I found myself putting down the story of what
happened to my mother. And that meant that somewhere deep inside … and
as I was doing it I was very emotional, very upset and I realised how
upset I was at what had happened and in many senses still I am.

"So, I wrote that chapter and I showed it to my husband and he said,
well, 'you have to finish, why she was kidnapped?' And that led to the
next chapter and the rest is history. So I ended up writing a somewhat
different book from what I had expected to write and it became this
book about fighting corruption.

"So, one of the reasons was a very personal account of what happened
to me and the reasons why it happened and the stories about the
different ways that people were trying to engender leakages within the
economy just came out. And that became this book. So that was the
first thing, to get out that story. As I was doing it, also all the
explanations for the personal attacks and the other attacks I suffered
during the time within and outside government, this came naturally as
part of the flow.

"Why did these things happened, it all began to make sense. I needed
to make sense of it to myself, I needed to make sense of it to others,
and I needed even to make sense of it to members of the economic team.
And I am very, very happy that today we have Dr. Nwanze Okodegbe,
right here. He was the Chief Economic Adviser to the president and he
was a member of that team. We saw a lot of odd things together. So
explanation as to why this thing happened, that is the first part.

"The second was that there is just so much going on about corruption
in emerging markets around. South Korea, you saw what happened to the
president being jailed for 24 years. Brazil, there was so much noise
about the car wash scandal. Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Malaysia, you
name it, so many examples of emerging markets countries having one
discussion after the other about corruption. And as a development
economist, you know this is something central to the work we do,
something we worry about. And we just talked about fighting corruption
and trying to make sure that resources that should go to eradicating
poverty, providing services for poor people are not hijacked by those
in society who would do that.

"The third reason was just one of giving hope. When you hear about
corruption there are rarely any success stories action, people don't
focus on those who are fighting corruption and what successes they
made. They focus on more salacious aspects. How much people have
stolen, how much they have and what is happening to them. And the
tough fight that is really needed and the people who are doing it are
not talked about.

"In addition to that, there is the tendency to focus as I said on the
more sexy aspects in terms of who was arrested, who did what to whom,
how much did they steal and what is happening. But the tough, tough
work of really wanting to fight corruption of institution building is
not talked about. And I am very convinced as I have said to other
audiences, that the difference between people in my country and other
African countries or the US or Europe is much related. If they had the
same weak institutions that we have, people will also put their hands
on the money. It is because these countries have very strong
institutions that you find fewer leakages. There is corruption
everywhere, whether it is in Europe or the US but the degree is less
with those countries with stronger institutions. That work of building
stronger institutions takes time. And that was partly what we did in
Nigeria, put down some few institutions that helped to block some
leakages.

"So I also wanted to put that down and draw people's attention to the
fact that it is the hard work that is needed, whether it is
strengthening the judiciary, whether it is putting in place in the
ministry of finance the kind of financial management systems that are
needed in order to manage your finances in modern fashion that doesn't
allow leakages from the budget."