Memo to Okonjo-Iweala’s enemies

If you read social media (and biased old media columnists), you would think that nothing good comes out of Naija or that for five years; President Jones did nothing but sleep in the Rock and drink shekpe all day. Just because people have red eyes at dawn doesn’t mean that they drink all night, they […]

If you read social media (and biased old media columnists), you would think that nothing good comes out of Naija or that for five years; President Jones did nothing but sleep in the Rock and drink shekpe all day. Just because people have red eyes at dawn doesn’t mean that they drink all night, they could have been swimming.
Those who subscribe to Naija has never had it so bad as in the last five years have never lived in a country where a litre of petrol costs more than a can of Coke with the docile people on planet earth gingerly queuing to buy it. I mean, the capacity of the Naija to take hardship with only a few murmurs is unparalleled in God’s earth. Yes, they are called the sixth largest producer of the spirit but they pay the highest price for it, both physically and economically in a way that makes non-oil producing nations cringe.
Those who say that the Jones presidency is a parody of jest have never been in bed with mosquitoes or understood what the world looked like before God said – let there be light. Which is why we understand God better than any race or nation on earth. In the past five years, Naija has been without form and void, but come on people; there’s always something to cheer. I mean we have produced unrivalled eggheads that are loved and appreciated across the globe – worth more in weight than the ones KO Mbadiwe’s described as men of timbre and calibre, caterpillar and juggernauts.
One of best loan to the Africa Development Bank for instance is a Jones agriculture minister, the first in Africa to import magic phones that clears farmlands, plants magic seeds, fertilizes, weeds and nurtures it to harvest, then harvest export to international markets. To complete the deal, if memory serves me right, he ordered Bluetooth stoves to cook the meals. Tantalizers and Mr. Bigs may not like the depletion of their customers, but they damn can do nothing about it.
We do not stop there too. Our Harvard-trained and World Bank certified economists do more. Only Soludo and prospective Emirs fault the logic of these economists out of jealousy. If they’re that good ask them to show you their Harvard degrees and reveal their World-Bank resumes or forever keep silent.
Yale University can teach us a thing or two about Bretton-Woods-schooled economists, IMF loans and its stringent conditionalities are cooked from their laboratories. For weeks now, wickedly jealous Naija people at home and abroad have kicked against the governing council of Yale, sending unsolicited petition in a bid to stop the canonization of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, our own Prime Minister from taking her honorary doctor of letters degree in economic mismanagement. Yale conferred on our PM the citizenship of her country, something that the rest of us assume at birth; then citizenship of her continent. If you could count four generations of permanent residency in Saudi Arabia without attaining citizenship you tend to understand this one. And having successfully scaled the two-aforementioned hurdles, Yale says she is now a citizen of the world!  Well yes apparently, Yale does not consult for Animal Farm.
From its vantage position and against all local punditry, Yale concluded that NOI singlehandedly “tackled corruption, created a vision and path to long-term economic stability and built a culture of transparency.” This is the logic that a debtor economy is better than the debt-free status imposed years ago on Naija by an unlettered Wizard of Ota. By the way, Naija now happily owes $21 billion (let Yemi Osinbajo be aware that $21 billion only not $61 billion). Now, this is no mean feat if your exchange rate is nearly N300 to the dollar, America not only knows, but stands to gain by the time the second, third and fourth generation is paying back and Yale ought to know better than the protesters.
This economic wizardry that qualifies one for the award of Doctor of Humane Letters is making over 2,000 unlettered Naija people out of their shell of jealousy and ignorance. As they say in PDP things are getting better; if you doubt, please ask TY Danjuma, Oando, Atlas Oranto, Conoil, Zenon, Capital Oil and those who collect the oil rent we owe them in the name of fuel subsidy.
Only Obote men think they know the Naija economy and its mismanagement better than Yale. With the wisdom of akotileta – squanders home riches for the benefit of the outsider, and with unflagging energy, someone has transformed the economic landscape of Naija – it’s now in Buhari’s hands to agree or disagree.