I'M NOT PURSUING ANY PERSONAL AGENDA, SAYS OKONJO-IWEALA

The Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has denied pursuing any personal or Igbo agenda in the President Goodluck Jonathan government.

The minister disclosed this at the weekend when she delivered a paper titled: “Values, Mindsets and Culture” at the Ola Ndi Igbo symposium which took place in Lagos at the weekend.
Okonjo-Iweala, who was apparently worried by the allegations that she was pursuing an Igbo agenda in the government of President Jonathan, insisted that all appointments into most federal government’s establishments were strictly carried out on merit.
She denied having any hand in the appointments of some Igbos into top positions in the Jonathan government, maintaining that such persons got their appointments merit.

The minister said: “There is something ethnic and I am going through it now. If you check on the internet there are articles saying that Okonjo-Iweala has gone ethnic but I believe in merit and competition and I don’t really care what part of the country you come from as long as you can do your job and that has always been my tenet. So, actually Igbo don’t find that I am that convincing because I think in Nigeria, we need to have a culture of merit. But by the way, when you think of merit and competition Igbos don’t do badly and that is a problem, we do rather well. Somebody said everybody in the financial sector is Igbo then they began to list people like the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Director-General of Stock Exchange, Director-General of Securities and Exchange Commission, Director-General of Debt Management Office, myself and Sovereign Wealth Fund.

“Of course, they said because I am Igbo the person in charge of Sovereign Wealth Fund is also Igbo. He won completely by open competition and merit and the other top person there, Mrs. Stella Onyejekwu, got the job completely on merit. We should be proud of the president because despite of everything he insisted that merit prevailed and that those who got the job should be allowed to take it. The president should be commended because there was so much pressure on him. I said to somebody could you check the employment history of some of these people when they were saying that everybody in financial sector is Igbo because I am there. They got there independently on their own merit and most of them got there before me.

“Somebody wrote an article on this saying that I have come there to prosecute an Igbo agenda and then I saw another one saying this a big lie what has she done for the Igbos? She is there with Jonathan prosecuting a South-south agenda so I thought that was wonderful. So my point is, I don’t give a damn. If the people got their on merit they deserve it and we will stick with it as long as we know they didn’t get it through the back door,”Okonjo-Iweala said.

Okonjo-Iweala also called on all the Igbo leaders to do something about the negative perception given to Igbos, noting that something drastic should be done to change the wrong notion that every Igbo has a price.

“We don’t support each other, let’s be very clear about that. We don’t, so we need to change because of  the way others perceive us. Let me just tell you when I was in Obasanjo’s administration, I was in the midst of some northerners who were having a conversation and I think they forgot maybe because they think I came from the US. The conversation was quite free and their perception of the Igbo was that any Igbo person is for sale. You just name a price; there must be a price that will get that person to do something even if it’s killing a fellow Igbo person. They will do it for a price. That day, I felt like crawling under the table but I was brave. After they finished, I said “well, I just want to remind you I am Igbo and not everybody has a price but they said Ngozi no it is not you we are talking about. We know you don’t have a price. I said: ‘no, I am not talking about myself. I mean that 99 per cent of Igbo people don’t have a
price. They are honest people doing their jobs. So this is the perception and I think we need to do something about that now. How? It begins with you. It begins with the individual, if you decide to maintain those Igbo values of honesty, integrity, dignity,” she said.

Source: Thisday