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Nigeria Ministerial Nominee: Excerpts from Ngozi Okonjo Iweala’s Screening at Nigeria’s Floor of the Senate

Wednesday, 06 July, 2011

Nigeria is critical towards tackling challenges of building a sustainable economy especially achieving the VISION 202020. While Nigerians have been very strong in their views about the selection of the Ministers by President Goodluck Jonathan, it is therefore, expected that experience and expertise should take prominence over political interest.

Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, who was a Finance Minister in Obasanjo’s regime, was praised for fighting corruption and negotiating the cancellation of nearly two-thirds of Nigeria’s $30 billion Paris Club debt.

The World Bank Managing Director laid out her vision pledging she would help create jobs and ensure the country lives within its means if approved as cabinet minister in the current President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.

Her views:

I am really worried about the issue of making sure our budget is not eaten up by recurrent expenditure. The budget recurrent is now 74 percent and not much is left for capital expenditure. How we invest in capital if we’re spending all our money on recurrent expenditure?
‘Can we run a budget that is not negative? Absolutely. We can do it. We have been able to do in the past’ she explained that in the previous administration she served, the goal was to put in place a sensible fiscal policy that would enable us have a reasonable fiscal deficit’.
For Nigeria to get over her economic challenges certain issues must be addressed and these, according to her, are: creation of job for the teeming unemployed youths; improvement of decayed infrastructure; disciplined financial controls, and support for key areas of the economy including agriculture, construction and real estate.
Another concern was that Africa’s biggest oil and gas producer was seeing its foreign reserves fall despite high oil prices, although she said that was partly due to a policy of supporting the naira (the country’s currency); a stance she would not seek to reverse in the immediate term. ‘If we want to re-value the Naira, this may not be the time to think about it, I think we should wait until things are more stable’. She added.
On Islamic Banking- ‘we need to look at non-interest banking without emotions. It is another form of banking. We just need to unpack the elements of this system of banking in order to understand it’.
On viability of non-interest banking model in Nigeria –‘from evidence, it seems to be functioning relatively well in various parts of the world, and with proper implementation, it should also work in Nigeria’.

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