By Chief Lawson A. Omokhodion

President Goodluck Jonathan now has a complete team to implement the famous transformational agenda he promised the Nigerian people, even though many of his Ministers hardly know the meaning of transformation.

Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a celebrated apostle of the Breton-Woods Institutions and one of the Managing Directors of the World Bank was sworn in as Finance Minister and Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy on August 17. She was immediately made the Co-ordinator of the President’s Economic Management Team (EMT); a team which could not be constituted because Okonjo-Iweala was yet to assume duty.

Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

The current situation means that critics should be prepared to ignore the first 81 days of non-performance of the federal government and begin a true assessment of the President’s first 100 days from the first day of Okonjo-Iweala’s assumption of office.

For those who love Nigeria, we have to wait and pray that the next three months can bring relief and democratic dividends. The President is relying rather heavily on the new Finance Minister’s capacity to perform miracles in a convoluted Nigeria where performance must navigate the maze of corruption and impunity.

Based on the job definition President Jonathan has assigned to the Finance Minister, she will be seen as the face of this government and indeed the Prime Minister.

Nigerians are enthusiastic about Okonjo-Iweala, as Finance Minister, and they think she has the silver bullet to create economic growth, sustainable development and a new found prosperity.

As the Finance Minister takes her seat in the government critics believe that she needs to put on the cap of a team player, a politician and a technocrat to achieve any measure of success. She will be greatly challenged by a Nigeria that is so different from what she left way back in 2006. She will see naked show of power.

She will face Governors who just steal money. Other Ministers will challenge her. Politicians will frustrate her. Advisers will deceive her. She will encounter civil servants who are simply contractors. In this jungle, she cannot work without a road map.

The person in power and in charge of the federal government is the President himself and he cannot abdicate his visioning role to his Finance Minister. The phrase “Transformational Agenda” was coined by President Jonathan and he knows what he means by it.

It was not the coinage of Okonjo-Iweala. Therefore the President’s team will be driven by the picture of Nigeria in the next four years and beyond that is painted by him. The President must carry the can, the buck stops on his table and the misdeeds or achievements of his government cannot be appropriated by one minister or a group of ministers.

So from the outset, it should be clear that Okonjo-Iweala works for President Jonathan and he calls the shot. Just as the Finance Minister is important so also are other functionaries of government who together must form a flexible, nimble and mobile team of achievers, if the politicians would let them.

The President’s job therefore is to remove the obstacles in the way of these ministers and functionaries, protect them from undue distraction by the politicians and take the political heat on their behalf.

The question many critics do ask is whether President Jonathan can face his PDP colleagues and tell them to leave his boys and girls alone to do their work. In Nigeria, it never takes a long time to test the resolve of any President because of the many issues that arise on a daily basis.

As we wait for the first test to come, critics are mindful of the conflict that may arise by the encroachment of one party on the job of another and the possible reaction that may follow in view of the ethnic balance in the President’s team.

Similarly, as Okonjo-Iweala tightens her belt to begin the race she must first ask herself if she has a strong political base and whether she has the support of her people. Nigerians do not accept political orphans as their mouthpiece; and leadership acceptance is a voluntary submission by the people. Is the system set up by President Jonathan capable of working with ambiguities?

The economy of any nation is managed from two perspectives – the Fiscal policy and Monetary policy. The fiscal policy perspective that determines the expenditure and taxation policy of government is the role of the Finance Minister.

The utilisation of resources, their management, the use and abuse they are put into, the introduction of welfare programmes, the regime of subsidies that government must allow, creation of job, reducing unemployment, raising industrial capacity utilisation, initiatives for funding government programmes and other areas that concern the way the government spends and gets money is the business of the Finance Minister.

On the other hand the monetary policy perspective concerns itself with monetary aggregates in the economy; interest rate regime, foreign exchange rate and inflation rate. And in Nigeria the banking system, their dos and don’ts, their goings-in and goings-out are determined by the monetary authorities.

Once the CBN Governor gets the nod of the President to execute an initiative, the Finance Minister will only concern herself with managing the fall-out from that approved initiative.

The CBN Governor has a mandate defined by law, the CBN Act and today, there is a CBN Governor that is confident, self assured and an experienced banker. It must be clear that the Finance Minister must refrain from going head to head with the CBN Governor.

Once the Finance Minister is aware that the CBN Governor is independent and cannot report to her; then the inbuilt conflict in their official relationship can be managed in an atmosphere of sincere and genuine exchange of ideas.

In a developing economy like Nigeria, such collaborative understanding and the need to subject fundamental government economic initiatives to extensive discussions within the context of the EMT may do the economy a lot of good. At strategic management levels conflicts must arise but what is the content of the bag of tricks Okonjo-Iweala is coming with?

When she was the Finance Minister under ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, Okonjo-Iweala was rather ordinary. Only two initiatives can be credited to her. The first was that she caused to be published monthly allocation to the three tiers of government; a laudable practice that was discontinued in July 2010 when it was time to steal Nigeria’s money once again by government officials. The second initiative in her name was the carting away of the nation’s precious $12 billion to pay foreign creditors and thus making Nigeria ‘’a debt free nation”, which conferred no advantage.

She did not do much about the local creditors to government. Many critics believe that the $12 billion paid at once to foreign lenders could have turned Nigerian cities and villages into a construction site of sorts, building roads, railways; refineries; bridges, schools, hospitals, factories etc, instead of just giving away our money to the OECD countries on account of controversial external loans.

However, judging by the way the federal government frittered away the excess crude accounts days before the 2011 elections and the tales of economic plundering Nigerians have been told under that government, Okonjo-Iweala must have saved us from the greed of our ruling politicians who could simply have distributed the $12 billion as additional revenue under the monthly federation accounts allocation committee (FAAC), where the various governments get free money.

However, Okonjo-Iweala cannot absorb herself from blame regarding her unusual silence on the poorly conceived and disastrously executed banking consolidation exercise of 2005 under the former CBN Governor Chukwuma Soludo, whose shaky foundation was blown open by CBN Governor Sanusi.

At the age of 57, Okonjo-Iweala is three years way from the statutory retirement age at the World Bank. This time around it is a final good bye to the World Bank. It is curious to note that she has not asked for her salary to be denominated in the US dollars as was the case in 2004.

Meanwhile, she comes with the mindset of the World Bank schooled under the principles of the” Washington consensus.” She needs to be debriefed and made local as quickly as possible but must be made to retain the positive values of hard work, integrity, honesty, transparency, fairness and justice.

She should look at the way money is wasted in government jobs in Nigeria. How come budgetary allocations to projects are simply embezzled by government officials leaving projects abandoned? Why do contractors find it so easy to compromise the federal ministry of works and other ministries? How come Permanent Secretaries and Directors in the Ministries have companies competing with other contractors for jobs within their ministries?

How come a road built in year one cracks up in year two whereas all monies have been released to the contractors?

* Chief Lawson Omokhodion was the Managing Director of Liberty Bank. He is now a consultant in Lagos.