I had high expectations for Nigeria – Former Finance Minister, Okonjo-Iweala

Nigeria’s former Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has said she had high hopes for the country, while she was growing up.

The former World Bank director stated this on a panel at the Mo Ibrahim Forum in Morocco.

“When I was 18, the world seemed open, prospects from my country seemed good; we had come out of a war, we were united and rebuilding so it seemed like a place where there was a lot of opportunities because we were reconstructing the country, there were a lot of jobs.

“I had very high expectations of a country where it would have what it needed infrastructure wise and people could go up and down the ladder anywhere they pleased”, she said.


Okonjo-Iweala also singled out unemployment as one of the greatest challenges Nigeria was battling with.

“When we think about creating jobs, which is the biggest problem our economy is faced with, we want to get very practical to talk about what we should be doing rather than the theory,” she said.

“One thing is important, you can not create these jobs unless you have a conducive environment in the economy that enables and encourages your domestic private sector to invest as well as the foreign private sector so that is where it begins”, she added.