Okonjo-Iweala Delivers Speech At MIIT Hooding Ceremony
Nigeria’s former minister of finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has stated that she reduced domestic corruption in the Nigerian government during her tenure.
Okonjo-Iweala made the comment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2016 Investiture of Doctoral Hoods in the USA where she was the guest speaker.
Herself an MIT graduate, Okonjo-Iweala urged the newly minted doctoral graduates to solve ”the world’s toughest challenges.”
Popularly called the REFORM ECONOMIST, the Delta-born minister has a degree in regional economics and development from MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
According to her, the intellectual tools and systematic analysis she imbibed in the MIT helped her to reducing domestic corruption as a government minister in Nigeria and tackle the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s.
Okonjo-Iweala outlined a list of pressing global issues that will require a concerted public effort, now and in decades to come: sustaining economic growth, reducing economic inequality, limiting climate change, providing global access to water, tackling new health problems, and managing the global shift to a more urban-oriented society.
Discussing her own professional experiences, Okonjo-Iweala recalled thinking, “If I made it out of MIT with this degree, surely I have the ability to solve these problems.”
“They are real challenges,” Okonjo-Iweala told the graduates, but she added, “Every challenge presents an opportunity.” Okonjo-Iweala served at the World Bank for 21 years, as a development economist, vice president, and corporate secretary, before becoming Nigeria’s finance minister in 2003. In 2007, Okonjo-Iweala returned to the World Bank as managing director.
She served as Nigeria’s finance minister for a second time from 2011 to 2015, and is currently a senior advisor at Lazard, the global advisory and asset management firm.
The media was awash recently about the comments attributed to Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala about the lack of savings during the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
Many misinterpreted the comments of the former World Bank managing director to mean she indicted her former boss. But Okonjo-Iweala’s comments were aimed at Nigerian governors who have positioned themselves to be Nigeria’s most powerful political group overtime.
Ever since her exit as Nigeria’s finance minister, Okonjo-Iweala’s status has risen astronomically on the global stage. Apart from her current job at Lazard, she chairs the board of global health care organisation; Gavi and she is a board member of African Risk Capacity, a specialized agency of the African Union that focuses on sovereign disaster risk solutions.
