You can just about count the Nigerian reformers with serious clout on one hand. Fewer still, if any, match the conviction and determination of finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Her influence is not drawn from patronage by Nigeria’s elites, whom she has occasionally incensed with unpopular but necessary reform, but she has the support of President Olusegun Obasanjo – proven after a resignation threat caused a presidential U-turn.
A former chairman of the World Bank Development Committee, Dr Okonjo-Iweala is an intellectual heavyweight who studied at Harvard and has a PhD in regional economics and development from MIT. It is this that partly underpins her absolute conviction in the policy direction she is taking Nigeria. So far she has overhauled the budgeting and expenditure processes; halted spending of windfall gains from higher than expected oil prices; slashed the budget deficit and introduced unprecedented levels of transparency and disclosure in the national accounts. She has also prepared legislation to hold ministers and state governors accountable to spending plans and limits. Now she is targeting the bloated and wasteful public sector.
