The current Director General of the World Trade Organisation, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has said that the concept of fuel subsidy removal isn’t new as she narrated her ordeal with a fuel subsidy cabal.
According to Vanguard, while she served as the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, the removal of fuel subsidies was an idea that many didn’t agree on despite former President Jonathan’s continuous insisting that fuel subsidies couldn’t continue.
In a video that went viral last week, Okonjo-Iweala recounted how she led efforts to stop the distribution of dubious subsidies and how recipients brutally resisted, ultimately leading to the kidnapping of her mother and demand for her resignation.
She continued: “My second example relates to a very specific one in my country, the clean-up of the fuel scarcity regime in 2012 during my second tenure as Finance Minister.”
She stated that Nigeria has a physically demanding fuel regime; the country exports crude oil while importing fuel due to the state of its refineries, which are supported by subsidies for refined oil.
“At the end of 2011, 143 marketers who were importing the product submitted a total of N1.73 trillion, or US $11 billion, as claims for subsidies.
“These sums were horrendously huge in comparison to the subsidies I received in 2006 when I was in office, which was close to $2 billion.
“So, we made the decision to research these claims. We audited around $8.4 billion in claims and discovered $2.5 billion in fraud. That is to say, several of these marketers attempted to fraudulently claim $2.5 billion.
“We made the decision not to consider or pay for these claims with the full support of the President and the Economic Team.
“Affected marketers exerted a lot of pressure…Not just to state that we would not pay, but also to state that we would overhaul the entire system for processing subsidy requests and implement a more transparent, more understandable system.
“They did not respond well to this. These, and well-connected interests, were incensed when we insisted on our stance of non-payment and execution of the new verification system, and they started to blame me personally for this. “There were individual repercussions. Four young men abducted my mother, an 83-year-old retired sociology professor, and held her captive for five days.
“She was afraid to die. When she questioned them about her abduction, they replied, “Your daughter, the Finance Minister, refused to pay oil marketers their dues.”
She stated that in exchange for my mother’s release, the kidnappers asked that she publicly announced my resignation on television and leave the country.
“You can probably imagine how I felt as I sat there reflecting about attempting to do things right. to take my mother’s life in order to carry out a policy that was beneficial for the nation. Some of the darkest days of my life were these ones.
“We all agreed that I shouldn’t cave into the blackmailers, therefore I refused to quit with the help of my father and the President’s unwavering resolve.
“After five days in captivity, during which she was only given water and a half-sausage roll, my mother was able to make a daring escape after a manhunt by security authorities.
“Therefore, despite the well-founded need to clean up and reform a policy, implementation was hampered by the fact that it was carried out in a risky reform environment where the losers and entrenched vested interests had already made up their minds to fight back and stall progress.”
“Not resigning was a very tough and hazardous choice, but it ended up working.
“What if it hadn’t, I think to myself on my bad days. What if they had actually killed my mother, as she overheard them discussing in a phone call with one of the handlers? Could I have justified forgoing policy rigor and resisting blackmailers in favor of putting good policy into place for the sake of my mother’s life? Which option would you have chosen?”
