Sixty thousand Nigerian children die every month before they reach the age of five. While the country gets $2 per citizen in aid each year, debt repayments to the outside world amount to $12 per head. Corrupt government officials have in the past stolen billions of dollars, a fact which has compounded Nigeria's reputation as one of the most corrupt countries on earth.
Finance minister Okonjo-Iweala regularly throws these facts at her audiences around the globe. She is as prepared to face the desperate situation of many Nigerians as she is to praise the strengths of her country and express her pride to be a part of it.
Favoured by some as a candidate for Nigeria's 2007 presidential elections, Okonjo-Iweala is setting a strong precedent for African leaders to show self-confidence and knowledge in managing financial affairs. After two years in office, she has an astonishing record of achievements to her name. "I'm a fighter," she says. "I'm very focused on what I'm doing, and relentless in what I want to achieve ... If you get in my way you get kicked."
Okonjo-Iweala was born in Nigeria and as a teenager experienced the horrors of the Biafran war. Her family lost everything, and she still remembers carrying her three-year-old sister for four miles to receive treatment against malaria during the war. At 18, she went to the US to study economics at Harvard, after which she pursued a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1981.
The following year she joined the World Bank's Young Professionals Programme where she pursued a career for over 20 years, covering the Middle East, east Asia and Africa. Rising through the ranks, Okonjo-Iweala became the World Bank's first female vice-president and corporate secretary. "Women are the finance ministers of their own households," she said in a recent speech in London. "No wonder we women are given the challenging role of managing finances!"
Dreaming
The first time the minister became involved in Nigerian politics was in 2000. President Obasanjo asked her to sort out Nigeria's debt records, which were scattered across seven offices nationwide at the time. "The president told me his dream was that one day he would ask, 'How much do we owe and what did we last pay?' And someone would push a button and it would be printed out," Okonjo-Iweala explained to MIT's magazine in August. "By the time I left six months later, he had his dream."
The president was so impressed by her performance that he asked her to return to Nigeria as minister of finance. In 2003, Okonjo-Iweala left the World Bank to join Obasanjo's cabinet, leaving her four children and husband behind in Washington DC.
Nigeria has a population of 130 million, with an average per capita income of $300 and a life expectancy of 45 years. Although the country exports oil, revenues per head amount to little more than 50 cents per day. Oil extraction by large multinationals in the Niger delta has resulted in severe social unrest, as the local population has suffered environmental destruction, rather than receiving any benefits.
Military rulers exploited Nigeria's wealth for decades, and the country is still ranked as the third most corrupt country by Transparency International. Since Obasanjo's re-election as president in 2003, the situation appears to be changing for the better.
Anti-corruption drive
Okonjo-Iweala and her team of 13 ministers have put together a programme to focus on anti-corruption, fiscal discipline, trimming the public sector and encouraging business. The team is taking senior members of the government and powerful vested interests head-on, 130 top officials have "retired" or been dismissed because of inefficiency or corruption, and hundreds of fraudsters have been arrested for financial crimes.
"On the anti-corruption and transparency front, everyone knows that we have a huge problem. But our development partners acknowledge that we have been more willing and resolved to deal with corruption," says Okonjo-Iweala.
The minister's drive to change international perceptions of Nigeria and the strong impression her work made on the international community contributed to the successful debt relief for Nigeria this year. In June, the Paris Club of sovereign debtors agreed to write off $18 billion of Nigeria's outstanding $31 billion debt. Arguing that the debt had been knowingly lent to illegitimate, corrupt regimes in the 1980s, Okonjo-Iweala convinced the G8 leaders that debt relief was necessary.
The minister's anti-corruption efforts have included the multinational companies extracting Nigeria's oil, which she accused of unwillingness to help create transparency. In a BBC interview this March, Okonjo-Iweala said: "Since I started asking companies that complain of people asking for bribes to tell me who these people were, only one company has volunteered a name."
Since 2003, Nigeria is at the forefront of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global initiative to ensure that oil, gas and mining revenues contribute to sustainable development. This year, a bill was passed forcing oil companies to have annual revenues and tax audits.
Nigeria's GDP growth stood at 6% last year and is expected to rise to over 7% in 2005. Inflation is under control and windfall oil revenues have created an unexpected budget of 10% of GDP surplus. The challenge now is how to spend the money wisely.
Prudence
Okonjo-Iweala advocates prudence: "We should not get carried away and we should remember that we had this kind of boom in the 70s and we started doing projects left, right and centre and the oil price crashed. Let's be moderate," she told reporters after a government discussion on the budget in August. Overly expansionary fiscal policy is the central risk to Nigeria's economic stability identified by the IMF.
But in a country where 20% of children do not attend primary school, 50% of the rural population lack clean water and infrastructure needs are enormous, fiscal prudence comes at a price. Clearly, Okonojo-Iweala prefers to raise money for development by reducing corruption and public debt, rather than spending revenue. In 2004, the newly established Economic and Financial Crimes Commission seized $700 million in assets and reduced corruption in government contracts has saved around $1billion.
The challenge to overhaul Nigeria's finances and to set the country on a path of economic development remains enormous. The country's infrastructure and public utilities rank among the worst in the world after decades of neglect and mismanagement. "The next big push," says Okonjo-Iweala, "is to provide legislation to lock in reforms."
Under president Obasanjo's current and final term, she has another two years to implement her plans. What happens after that is an open question. Okonjo-Iweala, who emphasises that in a country with over 374 spoken languages, the consolidation of democracy is the most important task, is being touted as a possible presidential candidate herself. Her plans have yet to be unveiled. "I must be a masochist," she told a South African reporter in August, "Why am I going through some document at 3am? Why am I not with my children in Washington?"