How Nigeria secured $30bn Paris Club debt relief — Okonjo-Iweala

The Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, yesterday recounted how a deliberate communication strategy helped Nigeria secure the landmark $30 billion Paris Club debt relief during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Okonjo-Iweala, who spoke at the public presentation of ‘’The Pain and the Promise,’’ a new book by communications expert and public affairs analyst, Paul Nwabuikwu, said she was brought in from the World Bank in 2003 to help restore Nigeria’s public finances, including negotiating the elimination of the country’s estimated $30 billion debt owed to the Paris Club of creditors. She said the ambitious reform agenda required Nigerians to understand and support difficult economic policies.

Okonjo-Iweala, who was the finance minister at the time, said: “I had been brought in from the World Bank to help straighten up and strengthen Nigeria’s weak finances, including getting rid of the $30 billion of the country’s debt owed to the Paris Club. ‘’To do this work, I knew Nigeria would have to undertake serious economic reforms of the type that would demand understanding and sacrifices from Nigerians.’’ She said one of the key pillars of the reform programme was effective public communication, which informed her decision to recruit Nwabuikwu into the economic team. “One important component in my mind then was that we would need a crack communications person or team to help us reach Nigerians, to explain all of this in simple language.

That is where Paul came in,” she said. Okonjo-Iweala described Nwabuikwu as “smart, articulate, compassionate, a terrific writer and communicator,” adding that his communication strategy played a significant role in the success of the reform agenda. “I can say without fear of contradiction that we wouldn’t have had as much success with the reform programme if we had not had a masterful steering of communications from Paul,” she said.

She explained that Nwabuikwu understood that reforms in a democracy required more than policy implementation. “Reform is not just about writing new laws and enforcing new policies. It’s about persuading people, explaining trade-offs and building enough trust that governments can keep pushing through obstacles,” she added.

She also lamented that Nigeria’s persistent ethnic, religious and regional divisions continued to slow national development,…