Oby Ezekwesili @ 57: Strong, Stable And Sound

By Chuks Ekpeneru

Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili, is famous for the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) advocacy group to draw global attention to the plight of all persons who have been abducted by terrorists from Nigeria’s war-ravaged northeast region.

Until 2014, Mrs. Ezekwesili had operated as a technocrat even while holding political office in the Olusegun Obasanjo administraiton. That was until the kidnap of 276 girls of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok threw her into the frontline of popular activism. Along with some other activists, they launched the Bring Back Our Girls campaign which has since 2014 censured Nigerian governments over their failure to frontally address the issue of the kidnap of the girls.

Ezekwesili started off in the Olusegun Obasanjo administration as the pioneer head of the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit. It was in this position that she earned the sobriquet of “Madam Due Process” for her outstanding work of leading a team of professionals to sanitize the public procurement and contracting processes at the Federal level in Nigeria. She was the architect of the Bureau for Public Procurement legislation, the NEITI legislation and the new Minerals and Mining legislation during her six and a half years stint in government.

She was later appointed Minister of Solid Minerals and then Minister of Education during the second-term presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo.

She also served as the Vice-President of the World Bank’s Africa division from May 2007 to May 2012. As vice-president she was in charge of the bank’s operations of 48 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and supervised a lending portfolio of over $40 billion

Ezekwesili was a 2018 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in transparency in the extractive sector.

Oby Ezekwesili is a chartered accountant from Anambra State. She is married to Pastor Nedu Ezekwesili of the Redeemed Christian Church of God and was born on 28th April 1963.

She holds a master’s degree in International Law and Diplomacy from the University of Lagos, as well as a Master of Public Administration degree from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She trained with the firm of Deloitte and Touche and qualified as a chartered accountant.

Ezekwesili was a co-founder of Transparency International and served as one of its pioneer directors. As a senior economic advisor for Open Society, a group founded by billionaire George Soros, she advises nine reform-committed African heads of state including Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia.

On 1 October 2012, one of the world’s leading telecommunications firms, Bharti Airtel, with operations in 20 countries, named Ezekwesili as a director on its board. She is also on the boards of World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the School of Public Policy of Central European University, The Harold Hartog School of Government and Policy, New African magazine, The Center for Global Leadership @ Tufts University.

In May 2012, Ezekwesili was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science (DSC) degree by the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta in Nigeria. She was selected as one of the BBC’s 100 Women in 2013 and 2014.

Her frustration in mobilizing the political class to achieve the changes in society led her to enter the political fray. She contested for the office of the president of Nigeria on the platform of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria in the election that was won by the incumbent, Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress, APC.

Mrs. Ezekwesili has earned a name as a fighter over her about 20 years in the public space. From a fighter against corruption she has progressed to a fighter for social justice.

Her work in fighting corruption and now social injustice has opened her to all sorts of attacks, but Mrs. Ezekwesili has not been once found wanting, a fact underpinning her moral strength.

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