President Goodluck Jonathan
An obviously rattled Nigerian presidency
has cobbled together an informal committee made up of top
administration officials to provide a blistering response to a former
Vice President of the World Bank, Obiageli Ezekwesili, who has accused
President Goodluck Jonathan and his predecessor of squandering over N10
trillion of Nigeria’s oil savings left behind by former President
Olusegun Obasanjo.
A presidential source familiar with the
matter said President Jonathan administration was especially rattled by
the former minister’s remark, and that he immediately ordered his top
aides to provide a comprehensive response to the former minister’s
claim, considered damaging enough to incite Nigerians against the
regime.
Our source said Mr. Jonathan
specifically instructed his Chief of Staff, Mike Oghiadomhe, to
coordinate the damage control needed to check the fallout of Mrs.
Ezekwesili’s remark.
It was Mr. Oghiadomhe who then
constituted a committee comprising Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Coordinating
Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance; Labaran Maku, Minister
of Information; Sylvester Monye, Special Adviser to the President on
Monitoring and Evaluation; Bright Okogu, Director General, Budget Office
of the Federation and Nwanze Okidegbe, Chief Economic Adviser to the
President.
Also drafted into the team were Olasupo
Olusi, Technical Assistant to the Minister of Finance and coordinator of
the YouWin! Project; and Doyin Okupe, Senior Special Assistant to the
President on Public Affairs.
Our source said the team met and mapped
out the framework for an aggressive response to Mrs. Ezekwesili’s
remark. For a start, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala’s office was mandated to provide
detailed response to all the issues raised by the former minister at
the convocation lecture she gave at the University of Nigeria.
Mrs Okonjo-Iweala then instructed her
aide, Mr. Olusi, to urgently study Mr. Ezekwesili’s speech, and then
provide an ideal response to her.
By Saturday afternoon, the finance
minister’s aide, Mr. Olusi, had completed a draft which was then
circulated to the rest of the team for review.
A final copy of the government’s
response was sent to the information minister on Saturday night ahead of
the press conference he addressed on Sunday afternoon.
After the press conference where he
described Mrs Ezekwesili’s claims as “fallacious”, and betraying a
“surprisingly limited” understanding of government finances, Mr. Maku
also requested the Special Assistant to the President on Social Media,
Reno Omokri, to aggressively confront the former minister on Twitter and
Facebook, our source said.
Mr. Omokri immediately picked up the
gauntlet, using his Twitter handle to tear at Mrs. Ezekwesili and
describing her conduct as resembling that of a wicked stepmother.
Another member of the task force, Mr.
Okupe, began his own part of the assignment on Tuesday. In a statement,
Mr. Okupe accused Mrs. Ezekwesili of grandstanding and deliberately
misleading Nigerians.
“It is obviously preposterous for Mrs.
Oby Ezekwesili to be asking for a National debate on the outlandish and
reckless disinformation she made to incite the Nigerian people against
the government,” Mr. Okupe said. “This was a deliberately calculated,
albeit unsuccessful effort to bring the Jonathan Administration into
disrepute unjustifiably.”
Our sources said Mr. Okupe would
continue on the campaign against Mrs Ezekwesili in the days ahead,
appearing on TV and commissioning opinion articles critical of the
former minister in select newspapers and websites.
Mrs. Ezekwesili, who served as minister
during the Obasanjo administration, made the allegation of financial
mismanagement against the administration while delivering a keynote address at the 42nd convocation ceremony of the University of Nigeria.
According to the former World Bank
executive, the country had about $45 billion in its foreign reserve
account and $22 billion in the Excess Crude revenue Account saved by the
Obasanjo administration, which handed over in 2007 to Mr. Yar’adua.
“Six years after the administration I
served handed over such humongous national wealth to another one, most
Nigerians, but especially the poor, continue to suffer the effects of
failing public health and education systems as well as decrepit
infrastructure and battered institutions,” Mrs. Ezekwesili, who served
as Education Minister in President Obasanjo’s government, said.
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