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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