Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala
But she has raised a new request: the merging of the Finance and National Planning ministries into one under her leadership, Naija News Desk has learned.
As the intrigues over her proposed appointment mount alongside intense pressure on Mr. Jonathan by lobbyists of every colour, Empowered Newswire has reported that previous discussions of dollar-denominated salary for Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala may have hit a legal brickwall because of a 2007 Court of Appeal ruling that declared the previous dollar salary structure paid Okonjo-Iweala and Mr. Olu Adeniji (who she would later succeed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the Obasanjo administration) was an illegality. Both Ministers were ordered to refund the excess salaries paid them.
In that ruling, the Court of Appeal said such a dollar salary was an illegality even if the salary differential was paid by an organization such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which was reportedly involved in the payment of the controversial dollar salary at that time.
After dropping the initial demand for a jumbo pay, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala is said to have have demanded that in addition to merging the Ministries of Finance and National Planning into a single entity, she wanted to be given the freedom to formulate and control Nigeria's fiscal and monetary policies during her tenure as Minister. She has also reportedly a free hand to choose all the members of Jonathan's economic team members in and outside of the government.
Officials in the US also confirmed yesterday that Mr. Jonathan had always shown keen interest in at least two of Nigeria’s top officials at the World Bank: Dr. Okonjo-Iweala and Ms Oby Ezekwesili, wanting them to return to the government as ministers in charge of some critical portfolios. Both former ministers played prominent roles in Obasanjo’s economic reform team.
But only one of them, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has been more forthcoming about returning to her old position as federal minister apart from her request for a differential salary which ignited a controversy within the government from the outset.
Some presidency officials are irked by her brazen requests, with one of them describing her as being too ambitious and wanting to run a parallel government in order to bolster her political ambition to run for president in 2015. Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala has not indicated such an ambition.
Those who opposed the request for a dollar-salary for any federal minister point out that since the controversy that greeted the dollar salary that former president Olusegun Obasanjo approved for the Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala and Chief Adeniji, other foreign-based Nigerians have been named to the cabinet without being paid dollar salaries.
They cite Olusegun Aganga, Nigeria's most recent Minister of Finance. Mr. Aganga, it was learned yesterday, neither asked for nor enjoyed a dollar-denominated salary.
Before his appointment as finance minister by Jonathan, Aganga was a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs in London. Incidentally, Mr. Aganga, who was described as cocky and colorless by a presidency official, is unlikely to return to the cabinet, especially if the FG strikes an agreement with Okonjo-Iweala.
Others critics of Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala's conditions for accepting a ministerial position say some Nigerian ministers who formerly worked in top US schools and institutions did not receive dollar salaries from the Obasanjo administration.
One such person is Ms. Ezekwesili, who worked with Prof. Jeffrey Sachs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard before being named by Obasanjo as Senior Special Assistant. She created and managed the successful Due Process Unit of the presidency, from which she became Solid Minerals minister, and then education minister.
It would be recalled that former FCT Minister Nasir Rufai was instrumental, by his own personal disclosure at a New York event in 2004, to the appointment of Okonjo-Iweala as minister and the approval of a dollar salary for her at that time.
President Jonathan is said to be interested in including technocrats in his administration for two reasons: to keep the international goodwill and endorsement that followed his recent election, especially from some strategic and friendly Western nations and governments.
A US diplomatic source said that friendly western leaders had hoped that Jonathan would constitute his cabinet early enough as he had promised so that he would be able to beat the current political fights and jostling from his party members.
One of the sources said "we had hoped he would name his cabinet on day one of his new term," because as the source explained, Jonathan gave the impression to some western leaders during his recent international outing of strong determination to make real change happen in Nigeria.
A diplomatic source also told Empowered Newswire yesterday that the delay in naming the cabinet, about a month now since the president was inaugurated, and the reported names of the politicians dominating leaked versions of the list, are all being closely watched by western diplomats in Nigeria as well as officials in their home capitals.
Commenting on the dollar salary controversy, Dr Baba Adam, a public commentator, said: “Anyone in Diaspora deserves what they are earning in their current positions outside Nigeria. We understand the skill-set many of us in Diaspora can bring to Nigeria, however, it is very bad for anyone in Diaspora to knowingly request the Nigerian President who swore to defend the Nigerian Constitution to violate the Nigerian Constitution and/or disrespect a Court ruling by paying their salary in dollars or any other currency."
In a statement released earlier in the US, Adam noted, “We strongly urge Nigerians in Diaspora who are willing to go back to serve in any position to accept the Nigerian salary remunerations prescribed by law. After all Minister's salary and allowance is thousand times the earning of an average Nigerian. After their service, Nigerians in Diaspora, if they wish can return to their jobs and earn their Diaspora jumbo salary."
Based on a legal suit filed by the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, the Court of Appeal in Abuja in July 2007 granted the reliefs he sought in the case including:
*A declaration that the purported authorization by the President to the effect that the salaries of Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and External Affairs Minister, Mr Olufemi Adeniji be paid in foreign currencies was unconstitutional and amounted to an abuse of office;
*A declaration that the yearly salary of USD247,000 (about N36 million) being paid to the 3rd defendant, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala , the Federal Minister of Finance is a flagrant violation of Certain Political, Public and Judicial Office Holders (Salaries and Allowances , etc) Act No 6 of 2002 which prescribes a yearly salary of N794,085.00 for every Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria;
*A declaration that the yearly salary of USD120,000 (about N17 million) being paid to the 4th defendant Ambassador Olufemi Adeniji, Federal Minister for External Affairs is a flagrant violation of Certain Political, Public and Judicial Office Holders (Salaries and Allowances, etc) Act No. 6 of 2002 which prescribes a yearly salary of N794,085.00 for every Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; and
*An order compelling the 3rd and 4th defendants to stop the Federal Government of Nigeria, its agents, servants, privies or howsoever called particularly the 1st defendant from paying Ministers or any other public officers covered by certain political, public and judicial office holders’ salaries and allowances etc Act No 6 of 2002 outside the salaries prescribed in the said Act.
Chief Fawehinmi also contended that besides the jumbo salaries and allowances being paid in foreign currency, the illegality involved the point that the payment of the salaries into the foreign accounts of the Ministers contradicted the provision of the Code of Conduct for public officers which frowns against maintenance of foreign accounts while holding public office.
He further contended that the approval of different salary scales for the two ex-ministers offended an Act of the National Assembly tagged “Certain Political, Public and Judicial Office Holders (Salaries and Allowances, etc) Act No 6 of 2002, which prescribed the yearly salary of N794,085.00 for every minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The court then asked the former ministers to refund the money paid.
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