In the last few weeks, a raging debate is going on in Nigeria about two of President Obasanjo's ministers whose salaries are being paid in dollars. The two ministers are Olu Adeniji and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Olu Adeniji, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who originally worked for a United Nations agency, is receiving a salary of $120,000 per annum, while his counter-part in the Finance Ministry, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is receiving $245,000. Before being tapped as Finance Minister by Nigeria's President Obasanjo, Dr.
(Mrs.) Okonjo-Iweala was a vice-president and Secretary to the Board of the World Bank in Washington, D.C., where she was receiving a salary of about $256,000 per annum, plus good health benefits. Her husband is an neuro-surgeon who had to leave Britain to join his wife in Washington, D.C.
The debate is about why these two ministers should be paid in dollars as against other ministers being paid in the Nigerian Naira currency. Opponents of the salary arrangements cite specific constitutional provisions which stipulate how much officials in different categories of the country's service should be paid, in the Nigerian currency, including President Obasanjo himself.
Ostensibly, some recalcitrant ministers who felt aggrieved by several factors in the new Obasanjo administration, leaked the information to the press and since then there has been an chorus of indignation in the Nigerian media, whipping up flames of antagonism against these two ministers.
Gani Fawehinmi, who many Nigerians regard as the conscience of the nation has, as in his usual stance, rushed to the nation's courts to challenge the salary discrepancy, but the judge threw out the case. Some misguided Nigerians are even petitioning the United Nations Development Fund, through which these two ministers' salaries are being offset under a special arrangement, to provide detailed information on the use of these funds. A large number of commentators and journalists in the Nigerian press have questioned the patriotism of these two ministers, inferring that they should feel privileged to have been selected as ministers to serve their country. They point out that conditions both in the finance sector as well as Nigeria's foreign image have not markedly improved since these ministers assumed their respective offices in 2003 after Obasanjo's reelection to a second term.
There is no doubt that there is something to be argued as to why two ministers should receive their salaries in dollars, while other ministers are paid in the Nigerian currency, which many feel is becoming valueless in comparison to the dollar. After all, the argument goes, each of them is just as qualified educationally as the other, and probably have the same expenses to incur in Nigeria as the others.
But these arguments miss the wider attempt on the part of President Olusegun Obasanjo to make in correcting the abysmal record he set in his first civilian administration, from 199-2003. Then Gen. Obasanjo had ruled Nigeria from 1976-79 as a military man. The most glaring failure on his part was the ballooning of corruption in his first four years in office. Obasanjo, who had campaigned on restoring Nigeria's tattered image abroad, had not only failed to stanch corruption in his administration but had allowed his underlings as well as the country as a whole to degenerate into being continuously labeled the second most corrupt country in the world, just a shade behind Bangladesh the first on the list, by the organization Transparency International. In fact, President Obasanjo was one of the founders of the organization, and a board member before being arrested and jailed by the late Nigerian dictator and tyrant Gen. Sani Abacha, on trumped up charges of plotting a coup d'etat.
No doubt, in his second administration and with an eye on his legacy, since conjecturally he is not allowed to run a third term, Obasanjo has obviously decided that this is not the kind of legacy he would like to leave. In making his ministerial appointments this time around, he has selected as ministers technocrats, who might not even have played any significant role in the political process of electing him during the last election.
As much as they might not be of an avalanche proportion, his decisions in this regard are beginning to manifest some dividends that Nigerians could feel as that of an responsive governance. These technocrats, the El-Rufais, the Akinyulis, the Okonjo-Iwealas and the Adenijis, are making decisions irrespective of the personality. Those who point to their "non-performance" are biased and blatantly ignorant to the fact they are yet to stay in office for one year.
I am yet to see in the salary debate the same vehemence in argument about the disparity that exists between Nigerians and expatriates who are ostensbly brought to do tasks that Nigerians could easily perform, but are paid substantially higher than Nigerians.
A few years back, I wrote an article about how an Chevron executive with a high school diploma from Texas, was dubbed in the New York Times, the "Lord of his Subjects," making substantially more money than the Nigerian who had gone to school in Houston, Texas. Not one Nigerian raised an eye-brow when this was disclosed.
As at present, Nigeria has decided to investigate the Halliburton company, of which the U.S. Vice President, Dick Cheney was the CEO, when that company was alleged to have paid $186 million in bribes to get the gas project contract in Nigeria. Now, let's see for argument's sake. The two ministers' salries are going to mount to $1,460,000 in four years, which is during Obasanjo's second term. If these new incorruptible ministers were in office when Halliburton was negotiating the gas contract, they could have saved Nigeria $186 million, apart from the fact that they would have stopped the bloated contract that Halliburton was given.
Nigerians have a crab-in-the-basket mentality. They would rather see foreigners benefit from their own largesse than allow it to their own kind. I remember in 1990 when I started the achievement awards in America, before the avalance of achievement awards, to show Americans that Nigerians were not just cocaine pushers, con-men, credit card and insurance fraudsters, and requested the assistance of the government through the then Ambassador of Nigeria in Washington, DC. My letter which I had copied to the then Consul-General in New York, was leaked through his office to some Nigerians.
These individuals immediately went into over-drive to oppose an grant of $50,000. They demanded that the Ambassador not consider the award because the money could be better employed in building roads and hospitals in Nigeria. But they didn't question the $10 million annually that the Nigerian government was then paying to an American public relations company without visible result. We had to thank God that companies like AT&T came to our rescue to provide some of the funds needed.
I have not always seen eye-to-eye with President Obasanjo on some of his policies, but what he is doing in his second administration to stench the odor of corruption in Nigeria, needs to be welcomed and examined objectively.
Nigeria needs to attract foreign investors, and to be able to do so, there has to be transparency in governance. Nigerians can't always have their cake and eat it too. We can't accuse Obasanjo of incompetence and then turn around to say to him, no, you can't correct your mistakes. That's a convoluted argument. Those who are calling on these two ministers to resign are an embarrassment. And to question their patriotism is the height of irresponsibility. After all, why are they not questioning the patriotism of the hundreds of thousands of expatriates who are fleecing Nigeria of hundreds of millions of dollars every day? Serving your country doesn't mean that you have to be debased as is being done to the image of Okonjo-Iweala at the World Bank as well as Adeniji's at the United Nations. My question is what has patriotism got to do with being well paid for doing a good job? Nothing, except in the view of jealousy.
Dr. Chika Onyeani, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the African Sun Times, was recently honored with the Humanitarian Award by the New York NAACP.
