Nigeria’s Arunma Oteh, Okonjo-Iweala & Ezekwesili: Is The World Bank In Love!

Editor’s note: The World Bank has announced the name of its new vice president and treasurer who will take up the post in late September — Nigeria’s Arunma Oteh. The team led by the former director general of the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission will be responsible for over $150bn in assets, and work on key collaboration projects with the World Bank’s partners.

‘Sola Fagorusi, the Naij.com columnist, says Ms. Oteh is the latest “valuable acquisition” made by the World Bank, having joined the company of two other Nigerian women whose professional skills were recognised and praised by the world, Obiageli Ezekwesili and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

From left to right: Arunma Oteh, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Obiageli Ezekwesili

By September 28, 2015, Ms. Arunma Oteh, 50, will have become part of the World Bank’s ‘family’. She is expected to resume that day as the vice president and treasurer of the 69-year-old bank. She will be replacing Doris Herrera-Pol who is presently occupying the office in acting capacity.

Joining the club

When Oteh resumes, she will be the only Nigerian and one of the 32 persons at the top-management level of the bank. She is not the first Nigerian to be offered a seat at the World Bank’s elite table, though. She’s following in the heels of Obiageli Ezekwesili, 52, who was vice president, Africa region, for five years until she left in 2012. In the same year Ezekwesili was appointed, another Nigerian, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, 61, was also appointed to perform the role for the bank as managing director, with four vice presidents reporting to her. Before this appointment, she was vice president and corporate secretary.

Prior to their emergence on the Nigerian corporate and political scene, these women were barely known by most, especially those outside the international corporate circles. The World Bank Group is the biggest and most popular of development banks around the world, and working for them is a big deal! The trio of Oteh, Ezekwesili and Okonjo-Iweala seems to have three things in common – excellence, Harvard education and bravado. Perhaps, these are in part responsible for the attraction of the numero uno bank to them. In Nigeria, the World Bank Group reportedly has 29 on-going projects with credits of over 10.5 billion USD targeted at fighting poverty and improving living standards. Recently, the bank committed to supporting Nigeria with 2.1 billion USD for the reconstruction of places in the north-eastern states (Yobe, Borno, Gombe, Adamawa, Bauchi and Taraba) distressed by the undertakings of Boko Haram.

Oteh’s journey to the top

Oteh will be going to the World Bank with an impressive resume. Home-bred, she had her high school education at the Federal Government Girls’ College, Owerri, Imo state, where she is also from. Schooled at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, she finished with a first-class in computer science in 1984. She observed the National Youth Service Corps Scheme at the University of Benin where she lectured fist-year students on introduction to computer science. By 1990, she had obtained a master’s from the respected Harvard Business School where she studied business administration with focus on finance and capital markets. She’ll go on to work at the African Development Bank for 17 years before leaving as group vice president, corporate services. It was after this that she resumed as the director general of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Nigeria in January 2010. By the time her tenure ended in January 2015, she had branded herself as a fearless reformer.

Ezekwesili’s story of success

Unlike her, Obiageli Ezekwesili is a chartered accountant. She’s famous in the international circles, first for being one of the foundation team of Transparency International, a renowned anti-corruption institution, where she worked as director for five years, and secondly ,for her role in starting and supporting what is now known as the longest surviving single-issue focused campaign in Nigeria — #BringBackOurGirls.

Like Oteh, she is also an alumna of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. As vice president for the World Bank, she oversaw project activities, especially around the economy in 47 sub-Saharan countries.

Also in her academic booty are master’s degrees in international law and diplomacy and public policy and administration from the University of Lagos and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She presently works as senior economic advisor, Africa Economic Development Policy Initiative for Open Society Foundation, a role that allows her to counsel a number of presidents in Africa and their economic teams on various reform policies and implementations.

Obiageli has served as Nigeria’s minister of solid minerals development and as minister of education. She is being tipped for ministerial appointment by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

Okonjo-Iweala’s example

Okonjo-Iweala is arguably the leader of this pack of three! She has been Nigeria’s minister for finance twice and coordinating minister of the economy. Like her trademark head gear, she wears her profile proudly anywhere she goes. An economist by training, Ngozi finished her secondary school at Saint Anne’s College, Ibadan, Oyo state, before heading off to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University where she studied economics.

She first got into the World Bank through an internship program, and that stint encouraged her to join the World Bank as a young professional in 1984. She climbed through the ranks while also making time out for a PhD in regional economic development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

By the time the 11th president of the Bretton Woods institution, Robert Zoellick’s, term was nearing completion in 2012, it was Okonjo-Iweala, Jim Yong Kim, a naturalised American of South Korean origin, and Jose Antonio Ocampo, former finance minister of Colombia, were in top contention for the job. Okonjo-Iweala lost to Kim, who was backed by the US, but she went away with the trophy of being the first high-profile candidate to run for the office from Africa.

The trio are a perfect tool for arguments in the hands of feminists who are keen on collapsing the walls of patriarchy in Nigeria.

Unrelenting Oteh

If work experience with the Africa Development Bank is a huge plus in aspiring to a role at the World Bank, then one will expect Dr. Adeshina Akinwumi, 55, former minister of agriculture and rural development but now president-elect of the Africa Development Bank, to speak to Oteh, who spent 17 years with the institution, with intent to understand the intrigues of his new work place.

Two men who will not forget Arunma Oteh in a hurry are Herman Hembe and Azubuogu Ifeanyi, former house chairman and deputy chairman, respectively, of the Committee on the Capital Market. She rattled them in 2012. They were then leading the probe into the operations of the capital market, and Oteh alleged that Hembe demanded a bribe of N44m from SEC for the hearing and also received money from the commission to enable him to travel to the Dominican Republic for a conference which he did not attend. Hembe’s committee found Oteh guilty of some misdeamemour but she was cleared by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Oteh, a member of the Order of Nigeria, is credited to have led Nigeria’s capital market to the global stage. She is the World Bank’s newest ‘acquisition’ from Nigeria.

‘Sola Fagorusi for Naij,com

‘Sola Fagorusi is a freelance writer and social entrepreneur. He holds a Master’s degree in Development Communication and tweets @SolaFagro.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Naij.com.

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