$550m World Bank loan

The cash is a truckload, her optimism is infectious and her zeal this time around is that of a super patriot.
That is the signal coming from Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s finance minister and head of the National Economic Management Team (NEMT). Speaking with the press a few days back in Washington, USA, after the recent meeting of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF), she revealed that Nigeria was on the verge of being ‘advanced’ funding to the tune of about $550 million from the world body.

That is the way to go girl. Considering the fact that the minister moved from being one of the managing directors of that institution to her current job, and more so that this is her second coming to the job plus that the conditions at home today are even more precarious than before, she can use every help that she can muster. It is quite salutary that Mrs Okonjo-iweala seems to be pulling all stops and even more so that her former employers are willing to help her succeed at her new job.

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Great, but money alone has never been the problem with agric in the country

We say that it is great for her to seek to quickly leverage on her clout to access lump sum funding to deploy in some areas of the economy that could earn the government some quick results. She has mentioned sectors such as agriculture, job creation, environmental challenges and the need to catalyse the public, private partnership (PPP) initiatives of the administration. According to her, the Goodluck Jonathan administration has drawn a detailed plan to invest in agriculture. The need to revolutionise Nigeria’s agriculture and wean the economy from its mono-cultural tendencies cannot be faulted. Nigeria, it is well known, has the potential to earn huge revenue from agriculture, if harnessed. This will have positive impact on the economy.

But lack of cash has never been the problem of our agriculture sector, or even that of the larger economy, for that matter. The country has always proposed ample budget for the sector but hardly were funds properly deployed or accounted for. Over the years, the agriculture ministry, like most other arms of the civil service, has been in disarray and surely lacks the capacity to respond effectively to the kind of change needed for quick impact in the sector.

Beyond systemic decay, corruption in the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of government has reached a viral level that would require a special kind of vaccine to cure. We also know that different kinds of banks and development institutions had been set up in the past to re-energise agriculture. Funds, both from home and abroad had also been secured in the past and purportedly invested for the purposes of growing the sector. Most of these efforts, unfortunately, had been lost to severe corruption.

Therefore, in working out a detailed blueprint for investing in agriculture and repositioning the sector, the minister must also think through what needs to be done to re-orientate the workforce and re-instill the culture of work and selfless service in the civil servants.

Indeed, Nigerians need to know in clear, simple terms, the conditions for this ‘advance’ from the IMF. What is the rate and the repayment period? Will the investment by chance pay its way? How will this fund be accounted for and what are the timelines for this investment in agriculture? While we commend the minister and the government for this initiative, there is a lot of work to be done.

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