Okonjo-Iweala said she was
accused of refusal to disburse operational funds.
According the her, the accusation
sent her and her team into panic mode.
In 2014 there were public
complaints by the military hierarchy to President Goodluck Jonathan about the
inadequacy of funds to fight the anti-terror war in the North East.
A lot of the criticism was
directed at the Federal Ministry of Finance under Okonjo-Iweala.
Okonjo-Iweala said this in
Washington DC at a signing event for the launch of her book ‘Fighting
Corruption is Dangerous: The Story Behind the Headlines’, held at The Politics
and Prose.
She said, “I remember a time when
the Army said, and it is in the book, that the Ministry of Finance was
withholding resources and therefore they were not able to fight Boko Haram, and
it was in the papers.
“People in my ministry panicked
and said you have to do something because that is a really serious charge. And
I had to go out to the media and give all the figures of all we had disbursed.
“So, other people not just me
suffered a lot. So, we have to be willing. If you don’t have willing people who
are ready to fight, then you can’t even have the strengthening of the
institutions. If you strengthen the judiciary and you don’t have strong
incorruptible judges, what is going to happen?
“If you don’t have people who
will put their neck on the line to say we shan’t discuss this or we can’t do
that, or we can’t allow the sources from the budget to be used for certain
things, what will happen?
“So I’m just encouraging people,
especially from developing countries, to have the will to fight, and those in
the international community to have the will to put up instruments and back
those people.
“Let them know that if they need
to run out, they have somewhere to go. So, if you want to start up something
that is a project for you, start a fund to support these people. Let’s find
institutions, anyone that will house the fellowships that will support these
people.”
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