Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria, is full of promise. But fulfilling that promise is often a struggle.
Plagued by corruption and mismanagement, the resource-rich country has a poverty rate of over 50%.
Maternal
mortality is shockingly high and more than half of Nigerians don't have
access to electricity, according to the World Bank:
Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala is the country’s finance minister and the former World
Bank official has been lauded as the reformer Nigeria needs. But she too
isn't immune from Nigeria's problems – her own mother was kidnapped for
a terrifying five days before being released.
President
Goodluck Jonathan promised to address corruption in the country.
Nevertheless, a former governor – an ally of Jonathan – has been
convicted of embezzling million in public funds and has since been
pardoned.
“Nigeria does have a problem with corruption and so do
many other countries,” Okonjo-Iweala told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in
an interview that aired Tuesday. “I don’t like the fact that when people
mention the name Nigeria the next thing they mention is corruption.”
Technology could be the answer the problem, Okonjo-Iweala believes.
“We
must build electronic platforms. We must distance people from the
money. These things were recommended by the world bank and IMF,” she
told Amanpour. “We are doing them.”
President Jonathan is calling for
the judiciary, the legislative and the executive arm to meet together
about this issue all together for the time first Okonjo-Iweala said.
“Because
even if you catch somebody, if they go to courts and they are let off
lightly the president can’t do anything about that. The judicial system
also has to be strengthened,” she said.
“This is a country of 170
million people; 99.9 percent of them are honest, hard-working citizens
who just want to get on with their lives,” Okonjo-Iweala said, proudly.
“And they want a government that delivers for them.”
Oil should be Nigeria’s saving grace, but oil leakage causes a significant drain on the economy:
“We are still a poor country,” she admitted. “We can’t afford any leakage.”
On
top of that, there is immense oil theft, which Okonjo-Iweala puts at
150,000 barrels stolen a day. She compared the situation to Mexico,
which sees tens of thousands of barrels stolen each day. “We need them
to treat this oil like stolen diamonds. The blood diamonds,” she said –
calling on the international community for assistance. “Make it blood
oil. Help us so those people don’t have a market to sell this stuff.”
Nigeria is also plagued by problems with its electrical grid:
When
the country’s president last appeared on CNN, he told Amanpour, “That
is one area that Nigerians are quite pleased with the government, that's
a commitment to improve power. It's working. So if you are saying
something different, I'm really surprised.”
That interview caused
an uproar in Nigeria, with many of the county’s very active social
media citizens taking to Twitter and Facebook to voice their
frustrations with the power grid and President Jonathan’s comments.
Okonjo-Iweala said the power problems all come down to previous government’s lack of investment.
“If
you've neglected a sector for that long, you've not invested, you've
not even maintained your basic facilities, it's not going to happen that
fast. It takes time,” she said.
While Nigerians often complain
of power outages – telling CNN they often have to use generators to
watch the news channel – Okonjo-Iweala maintained there has been
improvement.
“That month, when you interviewed the president,"
she said, referring to Amanpour's previous interview of Jonathan, "the
polls showed, independently, scientifically that they are in technical
partnership with dialogue. That 54 percent of Nigerians felt there was
some improvement,” she told Amanpour.
“Nigeria is not the only
country. Almost every developing country has a problem with power, as
you know. India has it. South Africa has it. South Africa is far better
off because they've invested much more.
But many developing countries, even China, they are struggling with keeping up with infrastructure,” she said.
Okonjo-Iweala said that the administration has accepted that the government is not the best place to run the power sector.
“If
we want this country and this economy to do better, we just have to get
out. And Nigeria is pursuing one of the most sweeping privatization
programs in any country in the world,” she said. “We are selling off
everything.”
