President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan seems to have proven beyond reasonable doubt the truth captured by the familiar adage that whatever a man can do, a woman can do, even better. Nearly all the women in the President’s cabinet have performed excellently and shown to the rest of us that Nigerian women may, after all, hold the key to the nation’s leadership problems. Curiously, the good performance of women in the Jonathan administration has been a major source of displeasure to Nigerian male chauvinists and those who, for other reasons, simply do not like the person of President Jonathan. For them, especially members of the opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), it has been witch-hunting galore, conspiracies and fantasies of omissions and commissions by our female public officers.
In Nigeria, it is now the habit for those who want to whip up public sentiments to trump up charges that a public officer has stolen billions of naira of public funds. Whether true or false, with or without any foundation, the allegation sticks and the onus is placed on the accused to defend his or herself and not for the accuser to prove his allegations. This has been the case with hard-working Nigerian women such as Stella Oduah who, until recently, was Minister of Aviation; Arunma Oteh, Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); Evelyn Oputu, Managing Director of the Bank of Industry and, of course, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, the Minister of Petroleum Resources.
Led by Dr (Mrs) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, these illustrious women have been pivotal to the successes recorded by the Jonathan administration. The general belief is that they have been major targets of attack solely because they are women. True, since her appointment as Minister, Okonjo-Iweala has been engaged, virtually, in a running battle with the opposition members of the National Assembly; Oteh, Oputu and Oduah have each been maliciously accused by the opposition APC of fraud, mismanagement and outright stealing of public funds.
After the orchestrated attacks that led to the dropping of Oduah as Minister from the Jonathan cabinet, a new battlefront was immediately opened, this time, directed at the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, another visionary and hard working Nigerian woman. For those who may not know the background of Alison-Madueke, it is worth stating that she had a sound education, with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Howard University in the USA and an MBA from Cambridge University in the UK. Before becoming Minister, she worked with Shell Petroleum Development Corporation where she was appointed the first female Executive Director in Nigeria. This was the formidable profile that earned her the appointment as Minister. It was on merit and nothing else.
Diezani Alison-Madueke has held three critical ministerial positions in the Government of the Federation. She was first appointed Transport Minister in July 2007, then Minister of Mines and Steel Development on 23rd December, 2008, before being sworn-in as Minister for Petroleum Resources on 6th April, 2010. Without underrating her achievements in the first two Ministries, it is in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources that Alison-Madueke has made the greatest impact. From the outset, her commitment was to transform the nation’s oil and gas industry through a series of reforms.
It was under Alison-Madueke’s watch at the Petroleum Ministry in 2010 that President Jonathan signed into law the Nigerian Content Act passed by the National Assembly, the objective of which was to increase the participation of indigenous businesses in the petroleum industry, as against its domination by foreign operators. Alison-Madueke has never been lacking in courage or political will. She stood firm in introducing the controversial policy of removal of government subsidies on fuel prices. And, she was fearless in arguing that petroleum subsidy “poses a huge financial burden on the government, disproportionately benefits the wealthy; encourages inefficiency, corruption and diversion of scarce public resources away from investment in critical infrastructure.”
The reason for going into some of the details of Alison-Madueke’s profile here is to make it easy for the public to judge the honesty and sincerity of those now throwing stones at the Minister in the name of patriotism. Given her enviable background, commitment and record of achievements in public office, it is difficult to understand why she is being persistently witch-hunted by some Nigerian men and women. Something, definitely, must be wrong, not with the Minister, but with her traducers.
Many of Diezani’s antagonists did not have the benefit of a proper education. Indeed, some of them are stark illiterates who did not go through any formal schooling. They have, therefore, grown up, afflicted with an inferiority complex. Here is a woman with a proper family upbringing, one of the few to have ventured into the male-dominated field of architecture; studied in some of the world’s best universities and rose to the rank of an Executive Director in a major oil company, before being appointed to lead yet another male-dominated Ministry of Petroleum Resources. Anybody without proper education cannot but feel a sense of inadequacy in the presence of such a Minister. That is what inferiority complex means. Those afflicted by this syndrome are usually aggressive to anyone perceived to have had a more favoured upbringing.
It is a fact that many of those now bent on pulling down Alison-Madueke have cases of corruption hanging on their necks. Indeed, those seeking equity must come with clean hands, which makes it ironical that those who are heavily polluted by corruption, are pointing fingers of guilt at a woman judged by most Nigerians to be cultured and sound in both learning and character.
The attempt to pull down Alison-Madueke, through all sorts of trumped up charges – excessive expenses for the charter of one or two or three planes for personal trips – won’t work. The Minister is not new to unfounded allegations by mischief makers who had tried even worse ones in the past, but failed. In 2008 and 2009, the Senate of the Federal Republic directed its relevant committees to investigate allegations of financial infractions against Alison-Madueke, none of which ended in a law court because the allegations were found to be baseless. Diezani Alison-Madueke, you have no reason to worry; small minds will always remain small minds.
Mrs Josephine Babatunde sent this piece from Lagos viaJosephine.babatunde70@yahoo.com
