Fighting Corruption Is Dangerous: The Story Behind the Headlines (The MIT Press)

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At the end of the war, Okonjo-Iweala went to the US to study economics at Harvard and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), married her childhood sweetheart and, at the age of 25, began working for the World Bank, rising steadily up the institution’s hierarchy, travelling widely, and only leaving when invited to be finance minister of Nigeria in 2003. A country that wants to truly fight corruption needs to build system and also carry out institutional reforms. Corruption can't be successfully fought by randomly breaking into people's homes in the dead of the night in a gestapo way. The current and subsequent Nigeria government should build on the foundation that has already been laid by NOI. Popular abroad but under-appreciated at home, Olu Fasan explores the conundrum that is Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala after her recent public lecture at LSE. Thompson, Denis F. 2018. Theories of institutional corruption. Annual Review of Political Science 21: 495–513.

Needless to say this unearths a lot of what is meant when people say that Nigeria is a difficult country to run and by all accounts yes it is. Previously, Dr Okonjo-Iweala twice served as Nigeria's Finance Minister (2003-2006 and 2011-2015) and briefly acted as Foreign Minister in 2006, the first woman to hold both positions. She distinguished herself by carrying out major reforms which improved the effectiveness of these two Ministries and the functioning of the government machinery. She had a 25-year career at the World Bank as a development economist, rising to the No. 2 position of Managing Director, Operations. As a development economist and Finance Minister, Dr Okonjo-Iweala steered her country through various reforms ranging from macroeconomic to trade, financial and real sector issues. The presidential adviser gave me the I told you so look, as if this wouldn’t work until you got this woman involved.” The consultant was correct. She thwarted what appeared to be a rerun of the 2013 catastrophe, in which Mozambique was saddled with hundreds of millions of dollars in debt in exchange for a decommissioned tuna fishing fleet. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, recently appointed the first woman Director General of the World Trade Organization. The incoming chief of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has a reputation for shaking up the guardians of wealth and power that will come in handy in her new role.Family: Married to neurosurgeon Dr. Ikemba Iweala. They have four children and three grandchildren.

In Fighting Corruption Is Dangerous, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has written a primer for those working to root out corruption and disrupt vested interests. Drawing on her experience as Nigeria’s finance minister and that of her team, she describes dangers, pitfalls, and successes in fighting corruption. She provides practical lessons learned and tells how anti-corruption advocates need to equip themselves. Okonjo-Iweala details the numerous ways in which corruption can divert resources away from development, rewarding the unscrupulous and depriving poor people of services. There are so many one sided narratives of events that transpired in this period and as happy and grateful to NOI as I am for this work, we certainly do need more accounts and points of view of significant things that happened during the administrations of both presidents. The objective is to stabilize the budget when prices are low. I like her pointers on tactics for resisting pressures to run down the fund in when petroleum prices are high. I could teach a practical course on economic management of developing countries with Reforming as the text”. Although she is inarguably a skilled banker and political operator, trade diplomats are after all a cult. She must convince the trade ministers — who are traditionally oppressed by the figures of finance ministries," he said.The senior Naval Chief that took two Middle East ship building company representatives to President Jonathan. His intent was to defraud the country. Nigerians deserve to know his name.

All the while, the Treasury’s income, which is largely derived from oil, was being squeezed — on the one hand, by large-scale theft from pipelines and state firm accounts; on the other, by multibillion-dollar fuel subsidy fraud. For Anthony Chiedo, “Systemic corruption could be fought with right policy mix and strong political will. The author demonstrated deep sense of understanding of Nigeria economy both from Micro and macro-economic point of view. This, I think, was aided by previous experiences she gathered while working on other growth and development assignment in the past. I also noticed practical expression of unequal level of patriotism which made her to continue her fight against corruption amidst obvious threat to her life and that of her family and friends. It takes high powered brevity and integrity to soldier on in the type of environment the author expresses in this book. In all, reading this book has helped empower me morally and academically to carry on with a similar assignment I was assigned to undertake somewhere even though at smaller scale. The author deserves an accolade”. Established in 1962, the MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design. The book is a self-defense but not a self-congratulatory one. Much of it emphasizes the never-ending struggle that reformers have in attempting to plug the state’s leaks. There are ghost workers and pension frauds, collusion between contractors and civil personnel in phony debt, and ongoing arm wrestling with legislators and state governors to avoid waste.

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Books outlive authors. Facts not completely spelt out by an author in biographies, memoirs and other books of this nature may end up being distorted later in the future long after the author is gone. It would have been very good if the identity of some individuals NOI clothed with anonymity were unveiled. The world, especially Nigerians, deserve to know who they are so that posterity can rightly place them on the appropriate side of history they deserve to be. Few of such individuals as mentioned in the book include:

As you read the book, it becomes clear why corruption is so entrenched in the developing world and why, despite this recognition and the determination by some policymakers, so little is done about it in so many places.She can be really firm and bold, maybe scary to some people, but at the same time she’s still her[self]. A woman who makes us laugh. She has jokes,” said Ada Osakwe, an economist who worked with Okonjo-Iweala in government. The IGC ( @The_IGC)aims to promote sustainable growth in developing countries by providing demand-led policy advice based on frontier research. We direct a global network of world-leading researchers and in-country teams in Africa and South Asia and work closely with partner governments. Based at LSE and in partnership with the University of Oxford, the IGC is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). She also noted her challenges with the media especially Sahara Reporters. She referred to a research which shows that, of forty-one articles that Sahara Reporters published about her in twenty-five months, only one was positive. Her conclusion is that she could not be this bad and that there must be bias against her. Every Nigerian need to read this book. I recommend it for every school as a necessary reference in social studies.”The proliferation in the new media has given rise to a new wave of information dissemination such that a lot of lies and half-truth become easier to peddle. Those who will read this book will learn to filter better what information is making the rounds. Anything short of such censorship will cause many to fall victim to miscues from political propagandists.”I have been enlightened and I look forward to starting a campaign with this book as a study material for educational development that will lead to exposure of corruption and the need to institutionalize the structures of society for the common good.”Once again, thanks to Dr Ng. Helpful Report”. Continent Latest news, analysis and comment from POLITICO’s editors and guest writers on the continent.