Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Jonathan’s Ministers: Winning Honour Abroad In Season Of Strife

Breaking News: Abba Moro to head ILO. Stella Oduah set to be appointed
C.E.O. of Airbus.

As you can see, Jonathan's ministers have so much international
respect and renown.

If wishes were horses, we would be a nation of polo players.

On 10/5/15, olugbenga Ojo <olugbenga.ojo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you Prof.
>
> If the mentioned people are good what about the remaining ones. Although as
> they used to say "until proven guilty"; the arrested Dieziani is one of the
> ministers that work with the administration the writer is praising. What I
> know is the fact is that our people needs ORIENTATION and attitudinal
> change!!! I know that many of our people would always work against good
> policies for them to have their ways and make it all to be business as
> usual BUT we all need to support whoever is ready to change things. Yes;
> Adesina, Oteh etc might be good in their own rights but our peoples'
> attitude and culture of working against good moves and policies to make
> things work need to be dealt with- and sincerely it is many of these
> powerful people that are always behind those actions.
>
> We should all accept the fact that we are all Nigerians and put aside the
> issue of ethnicity and also be realistic with ourselves. Let whoever work
> against the progress and greatness of the country be punished if that will
> make things work and serve as deterrent to others. We have voted for PMB
> and he is in so lets support him instead of criticising him un-necessarily
> on the basis of ethnicity. If he did not perform as we wanted, the next
> four years we show him the door. If President Jonathan had performed
> nobody will have mouth to condemned him talk less of campaign against him.
> With the arrest of Dieziani abroad can we now say those who had been
> clamouring for her removal during the last administration and arrest were
> only crying wolves. The Refineries that were bad then are now working. Am
> very sure we have not seen nor heard of it all
>
> I pray God help us
>
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 8:55 AM, Segun Ogungbemi <seguno2013@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I find your appraisal of Jonathan administration interesting. The issue
>> is: out of 36 or more ministers you singled only two as good ambassadors
>> and gave his government a pat on the back. Is that how to grade? Habba!
>> Prof. Segun Ogungbemi
>>
>> On Oct 5, 2015, at 5:53 AM, Olusola Daniel <olusoladaniel316@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> ON March 28, 2015, when Nigerians voted to send former President Goodluck
>> Ebele Jonathan packing from Aso Rock, the popularity of his
>> administration
>> was apparently at the lowest ebb. No thanks to a virulent campaign by the
>> opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), the Jonathan administration
>> was
>> successfully defined as clueless, corrupt and inefficient. President
>> Jonathan could not muster sufficient weaponry from within his arsenal to
>> counter the APC narrative.
>>
>>
>>
>> In fact, President Jonathan's image makers were thrown off the balance,
>> as
>> a well-coordinated APC machine defined their principal as a man not to be
>> trusted with a second term. It is well documented that those in charge of
>> the President's public communication were at a loss with regards to how
>> to
>> respond to the barrage of criticisms that sought to obliterate the
>> Jonathan
>> Presidency. Jonathan's communicators then decided to choose the easiest
>> strategy, which did not require any critical thinking. They chose the
>> strategy of matching insult for insult, and even went on to offer
>> damaging
>> tirades, where genuine criticisms were being made by citizens.
>>
>>
>>
>> Consequently, on the public relations front, Team Jonathan lost the
>> initiative, largely due to poor strategy. On the other hand, there are
>> the
>> leading lights in the administration, whose contributions could have been
>> highlighted to put a lie to the narrative that the Jonathan government
>> was
>> all about missteps, cluelessness and inefficiency.
>>
>>
>>
>> In the agricultural sector for instance, no one could assail the giant
>> strides that were made by Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina whose meticulously
>> implemented blueprint, the Agriculture Transformation Agenda (ATA)
>> resulted
>> in the steady reversal of Nigeria's import dependency in the rice sector.
>> Adesina's strident push for a values chain led agricultural sector helped
>> in no small measure to give the initiative to farmers. The Growth
>> Enhancement Scheme (GES), in spite of its imperfections sought to put
>> agriculture inputs in the hands of farmers in a timely and cost efficient
>> manner. Unfortunately, the administration failed to drum up what was
>> obviously its strongest point.
>>
>>
>>
>> After the exit of the Jonathan government, one of the ministers that has
>> received the most vilification is former Minister of Finance, and
>> Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala. Governor Adams
>> Oshiomhole of Edo State has refused to let the woman be. He has continued
>> to unleash torrents of criticisms of her time at the Ministry of Finance.
>> Okonjo Iweala's handling of the nation's finances, especially the
>> movement
>> of funds at the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has been
>> scrutinized with unfaltering conclusions. She has fought back vehemently,
>> defending her name and her big reputation.
>>
>>
>>
>> Former Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),
>> Arunma Otteh, is another figure in the Jonathan government that got a lot
>> of bashing from the National Assembly. Otteh refused to take attempts by
>> compromised members of the National Assembly to dim her star. She fought
>> back, and in the process, the National Assembly refused to allocate any
>> funds to the SEC under her. Boxed to such a tight corner, Otteh ran SEC
>> with zero allocation for the whole of 2014 and still continued to achieve
>> milestones in the Nigerian capital market.
>>
>>
>>
>> Interestingly, the trio mentioned above have gone on to receive more
>> responsibilities at the international level, through prestigious jobs and
>> appointments. Adesina in September resumed as President of the Africa
>> Development Bank (AfDB), after he was elected in April. At the time he
>> was
>> vying for the position, he got the support of then President-Elect,
>> Muhammadu Buhari.
>>
>>
>>
>> Elected by the Board of Governors, on the recommendation of the Board of
>> Directors, the President of the AfDB is the Chief Executive and conducts
>> the business of the bank. The President is also the legal representative
>> of
>> the Bank. The AfDB President is also the President of the Fund as well as
>> the Chairman of the Board of Directors. He determines the organizational
>> structure, functions and responsibilities, as well as the regional and
>> country representation offices. He proposes to the Board of Directors the
>> appointment of the Vice-Presidents who assist him in the day-to-day
>> management of the Bank Group. He was previously Vice-President (Policy
>> and
>> Partnerships) of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). He
>> was also Associate Director (Food Security) at the Rockefeller Foundation
>> in New York, where he worked for a decade (1998-2008) in senior
>> leadership
>> positions, including as Regional Office Director and Representative for
>> Southern Africa.
>>
>>
>>
>> Adesina was Principal Economist and Social Science Research Coordinator
>> for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Principal
>> Economist and Coordinator of the West Africa Rice Economics Task Force at
>> the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) and an Assistant
>> Principal Economist at the International Crop Research Institute for the
>> Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). From 2008 to 2010, Adesina was the President
>> of the African Association of Agricultural Economists. He is the first
>> Nigerian to head this key African development finance institution.
>> Although
>> the Federal Government's Rice Waiver Policy under Adesina's watch has
>> been
>> heavily assailed, with talks that Nigeria has lost hundreds of billions
>> due
>> to this policy, it is clear that institutional weaknesses caused the
>> abuse
>> of the policy. What was supposed to be a policy to encourage agriculture
>> in
>> the country, was serially abused, with attendant loses of revenue for the
>> country. A diagnosis would show that the problem was systemic with
>> institutions like Customs and the Ministry of Finance, getting caught in
>> a
>> web that short changed the nation.
>>
>>
>>
>> On her part, Adesina's colleague and head of the Economic Team during the
>> Jonathan Presidency, Okonjo-Iweala, has landed two key international
>> appointments. The first is to serve as chair of the 28-member board of
>> the
>> Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI). GAVI is
>> international
>> public-private partnership committed to saving the lives of children and
>> protecting people's health by improving access to immunisation in
>> developing countries, including Nigeria. The second international plum
>> job
>> Iweala got is to serve as Senior Adviser, at Lazzard, a 167 years old
>> global investment firm.
>>
>>
>>
>> As for Otteh, her appointment as World Bank Vice President and Treasurer
>> is no mean feat. According to the World Bank, the Nigerian will manage
>> and
>> lead a large and diverse team responsible for managing more than $150b in
>> assets. Her top priorities will be to maintain the World Bank's global
>> reputation as a prudent and innovative borrower, investor and risk
>> manager,
>> manage an extensive client advisory, transaction and asset management
>> business for the Bank. Otteh will also be engaged, in her capacity as one
>> of the World Bank's key representatives, with outside stakeholders
>> including global private sector financial institutions, the financial
>> media
>> and the sovereign debt and reserve managers in client countries, as well
>> as
>> ratings agencies. She is also mandated to collaborate extensively with
>> the
>> Finance Partners throughout the World Bank Group, in expanding shared
>> approaches, in particular around innovative financing for development and
>> for key new projects.
>>
>>
>>
>> Considering the enormity of these international responsibilities put on
>> the shoulders of these three Nigerians, there is no doubt that the
>> international bodies involved have a lot of confidence in the abilities
>> of
>> these compatriots. Ironically, these were the same people that were
>> vilified so much at home on the basis of some of the policies they sought
>> to implement for the betterment of the country. Was it the case that
>> there
>> was a gross misunderstanding of their intentions or the government as a
>> whole was not just good at communicating its intentions?
>>
>>
>>
>> While policy choices and preferences can attract divergent views from
>> different stakeholders, it seems the case that the travails of some of
>> those who served in the Jonathan government come directly under
>> generalised
>> nature of criticism. So the logic has been the Jonathan government is not
>> good; invariably all his Ministers are of no use. The warped and faulty
>> nature of that logic is being exposed by these high profile jobs that
>> these
>> same heavily condemned Nigerians are getting. And to add that with smart
>> national image making ideas, these Nigerians, politics aside, would be
>> used
>> as poster materials to market the country and revamp its image. There is
>> no
>> taking away the fact that these Nigerians are great achievers, whose new
>> positions would further burnish the image of the country.
>>
>>
>>
>> In the end, the moral of these global recognition for hitherto vilified
>> Nigerians is that divergence of political viewpoints, should not result
>> in
>> character assassination. In all political discussions, the overall
>> interest
>> of the nation should at all times inform the choice of the narrative. The
>> Nigerians in question must have made one policy mistake or the other; it
>> is
>> however not the best approach to throw away the baby with the bathe
>> water.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/2015/10/jonathans-ministers-winning-honour-abroad-in-season-of-strife/
>>
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