not hide it, and therefore raised Ngozi’s suspicion that I had taken sides. Nenadi also knew I was
closer to Ngozi than she was to me, so did not entirely trust me either. This had fatal consequences for
my attempted role as honest broker when the tensions over turf subsequently escalated.
Meanwhile, Ngozi soon became increasingly unhappy in foreign affairs. While she did a good job, it
was clear that her heart was in the ministry of finance. She was essentially trying to run two
ministries at once and as one might imagine, this was causing problems. When the IMF came for
consultations, she got them to come to the foreign affairs ministry instead of finance.
“Listen,” I said to her one day. “You are not the minister of finance, so when the World Bank and
the IMF teams come, tell them to go see Nenadi. When they are done, whatever is outstanding –
do it within the framework of the economic team. Do not ask delegations to the finance ministry to
come to you in the ministry of foreign affairs. It will cause unnecessary problems.”
When rumours started circulating in Lagos media circles that Ngozi was transferred out of the finance
ministry so that Obasanjo would be free to do some dodgy financial deals in preparation for the 2007
elections, I got worried. I poked around and got reliable feedback that it was media people linked to
one of her brothers and media aide Paul Nwabuikwu who were spreading these rumours. At an event
in her honour in her hometown of Ogwashi-Ukwu, I berated her brothers Chichi and Chude for it,
reminding them that there is nowhere in the world that being foreign minister of one's country
becomes a situation for mourning or complaining. I counseled that unless these stories stop, they
would ultimately get to Obasanjo, who was already upset with us in the aftermath of the collapse of
his designs for a third term, and would direct his venom at Ngozi and the rest of the team. They
denied all involvement but agreed with my assessment.
It appeared no one listened to my appeals because a similar allegation appeared in an article in The
Economist shortly after. The final straw occurred when Ngozi was in London negotiating the write-
off of our modest London Club debts. She made that trip unbeknownst to Nenadi. She just took the
team she needed from the finance ministry, obtained Obasanjo's permission to travel as was usual,
and went to London, in her capacity as chair of the economic team. Nenadi may have complained to
Obasanjo about being kept in the dark. On the spot, Obasanjo decided to remove Ngozi as chair of the
economic team – right away, without any discussion, consultation or notice, as Ngozi was in the
middle of the crucial negotiations. All of the major newswires carried news of the firing of Ngozi
from chairing the economic team and in the midst of meeting with her European counterparts;
everyone was looking at their BlackBerries and asking her if she was still authorized to continue the
negotiations. It was no doubt a totally humiliating moment for Ngozi. When I heard about this, I was
distraught and went straight into the president’s office.
“Mr. President, what is going on with Ngozi and the economic team?”
“Nasir, look, she can’t do what she has been doing, acting as if there is no finance minister.” he
said. “We all agreed that chairing the economic team would be for a short period. What she has
been doing is not fair to the finance minister. She should have handled this better. They worked
together with her as minister of state, and that is why I thought it was a good idea to elevate
Nenadi. Why can’t they work out a way to work together? Why is Ngozi behaving as though she is
the minister of both international finance and foreign affairs?”
“I agree that Ngozi could have handled it better, but you could have allowed her to conclude the
negotiations first, Mr. President, and then tell her to handle things differently in future. You
should have given us the chance to work out the interface with Nenadi.” I added.
“No. She has been humiliating the finance minister. I had to deal with the situation.”
Oby and I felt that Obasanjo handled it the wrong way. Oby was so angry with the president that she
did not speak with him for days and constantly afterwards was somewhat withdrawn. I had to work
with her husband, Chinedu, to bring her out of the anger that followed the catastrophic breakup of the
economic team we had all so invested ourselves in building. In a way, Oby had always looked on
Ngozi as the elder sister she never had, and really never fully recovered from the loss and anguish of
that period. Many of us felt this also, though to a lesser degree.
To be fair to Obasanjo, Ngozi truly did not manage the transition well either, but she also did not
think he managed it well, because there was no need to treat her the way it was done. It was clear that
her situation was no longer tenable, and at the end of the day we lost her. She felt thoroughly
humiliated in the international community that mattered to her, and understandably so.
She called Obasanjo from London and informed him of her decision to resign. He did nothing to
dissuade her. She returned to Nigeria, submitted her resignation, packed her things, and just left, at
first for Lagos, then went abroad. She was very angry at the president, at the situation, and at all of us.
She expected all of us to also resign as part of our pact, but she forgot the part of the agreement that
required us to consult, to talk, to discuss, and agree together. If Ngozi had talked to us, we probably
would have resigned with her, because by then we were all weary, jaded and tired anyway. This was
the end of 2006, the second Obasanjo term was almost over, and I honestly would have left and taken
an early break. I am fairly certain Oby was jaded and unhappy, and would have left too. All Ngozi
needed to do was to come back to Nigeria and say to us, “Well, because of what Obasanjo has done,”
– which we all would have agreed was humiliating – “I have to resign.” We would have gone along
with her.
I am not sure Nuhu would have resigned, because by then Nuhu, as a policeman, had become closer to
Obasanjo in ways that the rest of us were not, but I know that Oby and I would have resigned. In any
case, Nuhu's resignation would only require him to move from EFCC back to his career in the Police,
which would not have been too difficult to do if he chose to. Unfortunately, Ngozi did not feel the
need to consult us and, therefore, we did not feel the need to blindly follow her. This we suspect has
remained a source of mild bitterness between Ngozi and the rest of us till today
Oby Ezekwesili, “Madam Due Process”, Minister of Solid Minerals and Education
Oby was the first of the core team members that I met. Unlike Nuhu and Ngozi, who were both
introduced to me by someone else, we met accidentally and she introduced herself directly to me. My
lawyer and dear friend, Asue Ighodalo, had mentioned her as his sister and promised to link us up. He
never got round to it. I had just been appointed to run the BPE and was making the rounds of national
assembly committees to convince them on the need for privatization of state-owned enterprises. I was
at the House of Representatives’ Committee on Privatization to make a presentation on our
programme, and Oby was in attendance as a guest. She had come to Nigeria on a project of assistance
to Pre
sident Obasanjo from the Harvard Centre for International Development, where she had been
hired by Jeffrey Sachs directly after graduating from the Kennedy School in 2000. The Centre for
International Development had put up some money for an economic reform assistance project in
Nigeria and Oby was in Abuja directing that project. Oby was also personally close to Obasanjo as
they were the founding directors of Transparency International back in the 1990s.
After I finished my presentation, she walked up to me and said, “I am Oby Ezekwesili,” and presented
me with her business card. It had her name and read Harvard Nigeria Project, Director.
I looked at the card and said, “I am Nasir, and very pleased to meet you.”
“You are a very good man", she said. “Everything you said in the presentation makes sense. This
is great, I did not know that there is someone like you in this administration. When can we meet
and talk some more?” She would later tell me that on that day, she felt like she had found her long
lost brother.
The next evening, we had dinner in her home, and I met her husband Chinedu - a pentecostal pastor,
and her three wonderful boys. [47] We bonded instantly.
Oby got me involved in the "due process" work she was doing, which was basically trying to reform
our broken public procurement system. In her opinion, the biggest problem in Nigeria is associated
with lack of transparency in the government’s procurement of goods and services – every year the
government spent billions of dollars buying goods and services and there was no competitive
bidding, no price intelligence, nothing. A kilometre of road costs half a million dollars to build in
Ghana and more than two million dollars in Nigeria. Why should that happen?
That was the crux of her work. We began meeting regularly, comparing notes, and I appointed her to
the BPE committees dealing with competition and regulatory reform, industry and manufacturing, and
several of the other policy reform committees. When we began the reform of the electricity supply
industry, I got Oby appointed to the board of directors of NEPA. She was brilliant, she had a lot of
value to add, so I used her as a resource and we also became one family. Shortly after, Ngozi came
for her six-month stint in Obasanjo's first term and then the three of us related and became like
siblings.
Since Oby had been living and working mostly in Lagos, and I lived and worked mostly in Kaduna
and Abuja, and because she made her name in civil society, while I had been focused mostly on the
construction industry, I had never even heard of her before Asue mentioned her to me. I think her first
degree was in business education. She was then employed and trained at Deloitte, and qualified to be
a chartered accountant. She later studied international law and diplomacy at the University of Lagos.
After she founded the Nigerian chapter of Transparency International, she was promptly hounded out
of the country by the Abacha regime. While in exile, Oby gained admission into the Harvard Kennedy
School Mason Fellows programme in 1999, the same programme I would enrol in nine years later.
Oby is one of the most honest people I know. When, as FCT minister, I encouraged her to apply for a
plot of land, she did, in her own name. She did not use a pseudonym or the veil of a company like
many others who equated that pretense with being clean. Oby does not play games, what you see is
what you get. Oby is an amazingly talented woman. She is hard-working and focused on problem
solving. She is one of those rare persons who combine skills in numeracy, literacy and oratory. She is
also very forthright and courageous. Oby's only clear weakness is her inadequate ‘people skills’ - she
can be impatient and brusque with people she considers of low standards, either ethically or
professionally.
Oby is also one of those who could speak to Obasanjo in any manner she wanted, and Obasanjo was
very tolerant of her. She says it like she sees it, is straight to the point, sharp, and gives it as much as
she can take it, and she would give it to Obasanjo. Obasanjo was alleged to have told someone that in
his cabinet, there were two people who, any time they raised their hands to speak in cabinet meetings,
his heart would go into his mouth because he did not know what to expect: Oby and myself. I swear I
am not one-quarter as bad in that respect as Oby. She really had no political guile at all. When it
became clear that Obasanjo was plotting for a third term, she did not hesitate to go straight to the man
himself.
“Why have you allowed the devil to take you over? This third term attempt will fail!”
That is the sort of person she was. Tony Anenih, who was the project manager of the third term
campaign, had a TV commercial produced to promote the idea that a third term was good for Nigeria
because some of Obasanjo’s ministers had laid solid foundations which needed to be built upon. The
very first advert featured Oby in a very positive light: Oby had done procurement reforms and saved
Nigeria two and a half billion dollars in three years; she was a task master, a hard worker, a true
patriot. Most people would be flattered, but not my sister! Oby called up the heads of both the AIT
and the NTA and warned that their commercial was broadcast without her permission and that she
was vehemently against third term. She further warned them that should they put her name or picture
anywhere near any third term propaganda ever again, they could expect a very public lawsuit to be
brought upon them. The television stations pulled the commercials and called Tony Anenih to explain.
Chief Tony Anenih could not confront Oby directly so he called on Andy Uba, who allegedly
controlled the purse strings for the campaign and was also from Oby’s home state of Anambra.
“Did you call NTA and AIT to stop the advertisement of the party?”
“Yes. I did”
“You are a minister of this government,” he continued.
“You are very silly to say that, Andy. Who told you that you could use my name to propagate your
evil thinking without even so much as the respect of asking my permission?”
Oby dropped the phone but was not done. She went straight to Obasanjo and complained bitterly
about the incident.
“Tell the third term people to never ever mention my name in any of their schemes…”
“Who? What did they do? – I did not know.”
“You know! And you know that I am totally against what those vultures are doing with you in
that stupid campaign.”
None of us would go that far. We would dissent but there would be no such confrontation, but Oby
did that. That was Oby. She in fact often acted like a moral conscience for President Obasanjo and
was truly like a daughter to him. Her no-nonsense attitude earned her a lot of enemies within the
administration, some of whom are as angry as, or even angrier, than my enemies. There are certainly
worse flaws to have.
Oby,always took her obligations seriously. She completed her Kennedy School degree on a partial
scholarship. She was already in exile when she applied and was admitted, but she was broke. At the
end of the programme, when she went to work for Jeffrey Sachs, she owed about $40,000 to $50,000
in student loans. With her Harvard job, she began to pay off part of it, came back to Nigeria, and
continued to pay the balance. She told Obasan
jo, “Mr. President, when the project is over, I need to
go back to the US to continue working for Jeffrey.” By then, Jeffrey Sachs was planning on moving to
Columbia and had offered her a job. Instead, as her project neared its end, Obasanjo offered her a job
to be his special assistant on budget monitoring and price intelligence, to continue the due process
work she had articulated. But Oby still owed about $40,000 in student loans. Obasanjo assured her
not to worry about the debt, he would take care of it. He never did.
One day, I found Oby in her office crying. She told me about the student loan and Obasanjo's promise.
If it was another person promised, Oby would have been at the forefront of asking Obasanjo to pay
up, but she could not speak for herself. I went to the president and told him, “You have to pay this
money – you promised.”
“Well you know I do not have the money either.”
Obasanjo was always claiming he had no money.
“No, you must do something Mr. President,” I said.
Two days went by and Oby still had not heard anything about her loan problem. I went back to
Obasanjo.
“You have to do this, sir,” I said. “And I am not leaving until you give me $40,000 to pay into her
account and liquidate this debt, because debt collectors are calling her, harassing her and
distracting her from doing her job.”
If I had it, I would have paid off the loan myself, but I did not have the money at the time. Obasanjo
agreed and said he had some money. He gave me $10,000 and told me to give it to Oby.
“No, sir, please give it to her directly,” I said.
Oby took the $10,000 and made a partial payment. Nothing else was heard of the balance up until we
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