David-West warned Okonjo-Iweala on World Bank
The one-sided choice of Jim Yong Kim on 16th April 2012, as the World Bank president, by President Barack Obama of the USA, resulting to Nigeria's Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, being dropped, has further exposed America's democracy, as shenanigan's, where Kim, a health expert, was preferred to Okonjo-Iweala, a renowned economist.
But Professor Tam David-West had warned Okonjo-Iweala when the nomination came and she was double-dating between her finance ministration and the impressive job at the World Bank. She refused to listen to the wise words of the university don who knows that it was a thoughtless risk that she was embarking on and had asked that she reassigned because of her unforeseen imperiousness to the country's economy.
David-West knew that the end comes when somebody no longer talks with himself or herself in proportion to discipline and caution on a job. And the ignominy that Okonjo-Iweala got at the World Bank would have been averted if she had genuine thinking and calculation. She had said that she was confident of getting the job, but later told the world that the World Bank presidency will not be decided on merit as the institution prepared to make its appointment. This is the same way she told the world that Nigeria will never remain the same economically if the fuel subsidy removal faced impasse. But it later faced it, with the government coming down from the astronomical N141 it hiked fuel to N97, yet Nigeria did not fall.
Before Okonjo-Iweala started singing lullaby to console herself by saying that, "You know this thing is not really being decided on merit”, David-West had seen that the World Bank presidency would go to the USA candidate, because the organisation was founded by the country, at the Bretton Woods conference, during the close of the Second World War. Having known enormously the American politics, he had told the world that he would not say that the US is headed by a black man, because he does not see Obama as a black man. He further said that the candidature of Okonjo-Iweala was not a serious challenge for the job. And she later consoled herself when she lost, saying: "So we have won a big victory. Who gets to run the World Bank – we have shown we can contest this thing and Africa can produce people capable of running the entire architecture.”
This is an example of the many things David-West had seen that came to pass. But due to overzealousness over a job, without self-discipline, people like Okonjo-Iweala fail to understand the West. Like David-West would say: “Degrees and certificates do not make one a good leader.” Today, Nigerians can see that David-West was prudent in his arithmetic of World Bank being nothing but conduit through which poor nations around the world are milked dry. Suffice it to say that the G8 nations and their World Bank are partly to blame for uninterrupted dishonesty that warps Nigeria and other African countries.
How come that except those persons suggested by the nations of the West no other nation will clinch to lead the bank? Are they hiding something that may expose their eagerness in controlling the world at all cost? When David-West saw this and said it, Okonjo-Iweala perhaps dismissed him with the wave of her back hand.
People like David-West are taken serious at last, because they see beyond the immediate thought of people like Okonjo-Iweala, who did not take into cognizance that there was no way Obama candidate would have failed, because this is an election year in the USA. Who wants the Republican to have a whip to despise the Democrats, the later being Obama's party, if Okonjo-Iweala became the World Bank President?
It is imperative to say that David-West was not blind in his critiques and is not a cynic of Okonjo-Iweala, who sees inferiority complex and self hate for her ministerial job for the coveted bank job, thereby making what was supposed to be a spectacular outing, a subdued one. Did she win any international acclaim for herself?
It is not guts to jump with two legs at once. Okonjo-Iweala's conspicuously consciously outing to defeat and destroy Barack Obama was her marooned mindset of the lowest order. People with such mindset kill any organization they are entrusted to care, even the World Bank. This shows that she was not rational in her dealings and was not in the good book of the West because she would have contrived to have Obama nominate her as she has done to President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria. The worse is that her domineering attitude did not allow her to withdraw the moment she noticed that Obama had nominated someone else.
David-West would be laughing today that he said it, as the World Bank chose Korean-born American health expert Jim Yong Kim as its new president, instead of the much sirened money expert manager Jonathan would say that Nigeria has got. This will also remind Nigerians that David-West was clairvoyance that Washington's grip on the job will ever leave the developing countries to be followers if they do not wake-up from slumber.
Moreover, it is a challenge to Jonathan that Kim, 52, won the job over his widely respected finance minister, with the support of Washington's allies in Western Europe, Japan, Canada and some emerging market economies, including Russia, Mexico and South Korea, whereas he was subsidizing fuel to please the International Monetary Fund (IMF). How come the decision was unanimous unlike the previous World Bank elections? Kim will assume his new post on July 1?
David-West would tell the Federal Government that even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity, because the government has failed to realize that every step of life shows that much caution is required. Sadly, Okonjo-Iweala did not proceed with caution and was simply not clever enough to do some of the kinds of engineering things that she was supposed to do, showcasing her thoughtless talks about doing things. This was the same way that David-West's voice resonated on Tuesday, 03 January 2012, when he illustrated the rushed increase in the price of petrol as a coup by President Goodluck Jonathan against Nigerians, and irresponsible, anti-people and anti-God. With the failure of Okonjo-Iweala, David-West was right when he described the government as unreliable because it had told Nigerians that the increase in the price of petroleum products will not take effect till April 2012, because it's still consulting. It's the same way Okonjo-Iweala boasted that the job at World Bank was her's, but she was later butted out. Was she given money by donours to run for the position? David-West would say that Jonathan like any other head of state in a democratic system is aware that government is merely a trustee for the people to whom sovereignty belong.
Odimegwu Onwumere, Poet/Author, Media/Writing Consultant and Motivator, is the Coordinator, Concerned Non-Indigenes In Rivers State (CONIRIV); and Founder, Poet Against Child Abuse (PACA), Rivers State. Mobile: +2348032552855. Email: [email protected]