Nigeria Is Being Held Hostage By Tiny Powerful Corrupt People – Okonjo Iweala

Former Nigeria Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said that majority of Nigerians are honest and hardworking people but are being held hostage by tiny powerful cabals, especially those in the oil sector of the economy.
Okonjo-Iweala, who spoke to a correspondent of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) against the background of her new book, titled: “Fighting Corruption Is Dangerous,” said: “one thing you need to know is that majority of Nigerians are honest and hardworking people. But Nigeria is held hostage by small minority of people.”
He narrated how her mother was kidnapped and held for five days by four men that advised her mother to tell her (Okonjo-Iweala) to pay oil marketers their accumulated debts as condition for releasing her (her mother).
The former minister said that the kidnappers held her mother for five days and: “I got a call from them. They did not ask for money, contrary to what many people thought. They said I should go to the television and radio (houses) and publicly announce my resignation and go back to the US where I was working and from where I came. But the key thing was that when my mother asked the four men why they took her, they said because your daughter did not pay the oil marketers their money. And that’s where we found out it had to do with oil marketers.”
Okonjo Iweala, who was once Managing Director of the World Bank, insisted that the fight against corruption must be sustained, adding that it is dangerous to back out.
She said that there is no need for the leadership to give up the fight against corruption, asking: “why should we give up? That is what they (corrupt people) want; they want everybody to give up.
“When you try to fight corruption, they attack you viciously and then get away with it. Like what I said in my book, we mustn’t give up.” [myad]