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| Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala |
So, I set out to answer these questions: by insisting on “oil subsidy removal” by the corrupt administration of Goodluck Jonathan, is Dr. Okonjo-Iweala being stupidly intelligent? Is the revelation by the House Committee report a confirmation of her stupidity? Is the fact that she has remained the Coordinating Minister in-charge-of the Economy a demonstration of how so intelligent she is, yet so stupid?
To critically answer these questions, I had to peruse a collection of studies conducted by some of the best minds in academia and published under the title “Why smart people can be so stupid.” In the book, the editor, Robert Sternberg, an expert in intelligence testing, contends that stupidity is not the opposite of smartness. Sternberg defines wisdom as the ability to apply knowledge to achieve common good and argues that stupidity is opposite of wisdom.
With this premise, I will rephrase the questions above: did Dr. Okonjo-Iweala apply her vast knowledge to achieve common good by insisting in oil subsidy removal? According to John Rawls, common good is defined as "certain general conditions that are...equally to everyone's advantage." It can thus be said that common good is a social system, corporations (like NNPC) and environment that operates in a way that is beneficial to all people. Is there any wisdom in the removal of oil subsidy that is beneficial to 1% powerful, pure evils around Aso Rock, but at the same time compounding the woes of the poor 99%? If the answer is no, then it is stupidity.
I know Dr. Okonjo-Iweala is smart. She had to be in order to have been the Managing Director at World Bank. But according to Sternberg, there are aspects of life in a smart person that actually fosters stupidity. Having successfully overseen the cancellation of Nigerian debt in the past, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala thinks she is so smart that Nigerian economic survival does and should revolve around her. She foolishly believes her knowledge makes her omnipotent and that she can do whatever she wants and get away with it, even in a corrupt system like ours. I can now recall that in 2004 Dr. Okonjo-Iweala had rejected the report of the Transparency International 2004 rating of Nigeria as the third most corrupt country in the world. I wonder what she thinks now or is it all part of intelligent people doing foolish things?
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala once said that “to change something in Nigeria, you must give up something.” While the oil subsidy mess– “the biggest corruption scandals in Nigerian history” - was raging, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala attempted and failed to make a swift return to the World Bank. Was that failed attempt based on the realization of the folly in her decision to enrich oil merchants in Nigeria through subsidy ‘removal’? If so, what has she done? From Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s first experience with Obasanjo’s administration, her redeployment to foreign affairs ministry and the discovery of the fraud in her new ministry should have been enough for her to honorably bow out after an unparalleled performance and achievements at the finance ministry. With the revelation of the committee report, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has been surprisingly silent that I’m afraid she may have been compromised.
When on Thursday, July 1st, 2010, at the 16th Annual Convention and Scientific Assembly of the Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas (ANPA), in Washington DC, I listened to Dr. Okonjo-Iweala say that “in spite of what I had gone through, I will do it again” that night, I saw a woman that relished the challenges and triumphs of working with the Nigerian government. While it was clear to her that “crazy” people and circumstances will stand on her way to implement change, she was, however, stubbornly determined to succeed. Where is that stubbornness in Dr. Okonjo-Iweala? Who has she confronted? Why did she not put her position on the line with the revelation of monumental corruption in the oil subsidy scam? Does it all add up to being foolishly intelligent?
As I conclude this, I think Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s second coming simply exposed her lack of two critical thinking skills – avoidance of my-side bias and avoidance of one-side bias. My-side bias was demonstrated by Dr. Okonjo-Iweala by the egocentrism fallacy that made her foolishly believe that because she is so smart in World Bank, everything about rescuing Nigerian economy should revolve around her. She forgot that the economic dynamics and principles that worked in a functional democracy would not necessarily work in Nigeria with sham democracy.
One-side bias was demonstrated when she stuck with the one-sided argument that ‘oil subsidy removal’ will energize the downstream sector of the oil sector in Nigeria. Her critical thinking skill was blind to the argument from civil society groups and anticorruption campaigners that have always insisted that the petroleum products are not being subsidized to start with, and that corruption and corrupt practices in Nigerian oil industry remains the main problem.
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala should see corrupt ministerial colleagues and other government appointees as threats to her honor and integrity not allies. This second missionary journey she just embarked on is one to bottomless pit, whose boundaries are that of disgust, criminal enterprise and corruption. Anyone who loves Dr. Okonjo-Iweala should inform her that she is presently being used by the GEJ administration as a camouflage while confusion and corruption reigns. I have always wondered why intelligent people like Dr. Okonjo-Iweala and Prof. Barth Nnaji think that they can succeed with incompetent and corrupt Diezain Alison-Mmadueke in charge of ministry of petroleum. If Dr. Okonjo-Iweala thinks she is not being blindfolded and led to the slaughterhouse, I expect her to think again.
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s stubbornness in insisting on oil subsidy removal and her “unsympathizability” to the plight of the poor and the middle class clearly demonstrates lack of wisdom. Foolishly intelligent? Now, she is left feeling like a fly, a silly childish fly that walked wide-eyed into the spider’s parlor decorated with corruption and fire-breathing monsters, plundering the national wealth.
Churchill Okonkwo
Churchill.okonkwo@gmail.com
reverse is the case, intelligently stupid.
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