By Uche Mbah
Former Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the economy, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, has advocated economic restructuring for Nigeria in the wake of distress in the oil sector. Both the International Monetary Fund, IMF, and World Health Organisation, WHO has recently honored her.
The latest appointment was by the WHO, who has appointed her as Special Envoy overseeing access to COVID-19 tools across the globe. She shares the role with Sir Andrew Witty, a business expert.
“I would especially like to thank Sir Andrew Witty and Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala for agreeing to act as the Special Envoys for the ACT Accelerator,” WHO’s DG, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced at the launching on Friday in a teleconference attended by journalists and stakeholders in line with the social distancing occasioned by COVID 19.
“The Act accelerator seems to bring together the combined power of several organizations to work with speed and scale.
“Today, WHO is proud to be uniting with many partners to launch the Acess to Covid-19 Tools (Act) accelerator,” he said.
A month earlier, he was appointed by the IMF as a member of their economic advisory group.
In a recent interview with Channels television, the former World Bank Vice President said African nations must do economic restructuring in the wake of the crash in crude oil prices.
She called on Nigeria to look into the tourism, and creative sectors, among others, to shore up revenue.
“There will be business cycles with commodity prices. What you also need to do is make the economy less dependent on these commodities,” she said.
According to her, learning how to task these sources of revenue should be a long-term plan.
“And that is why in the long term, there should be the restructuring of the economy so that you have other sources that can create revenue,” she said.
