Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Defender of NOI
For those of you who've moved onto a different argument, there was another response to the Okonji-Iweala appearance on hard talk. Nick Norbrook, managing editor of the Africa Report, puts up a staunch defence of of the headtie madam. For those of you who don't know how publications work, the managing editor of a magazine is the person everyone loves to hate. For it is he who hires and fires, but tends not to have any discernible writing talent. Is any of this relevant to his posting on the African Shirts blog? No. But it's early morning, and I need to do a little sniping to wake me up.
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4 comments:
Wrong conclusion, Nkem. Someone who calls himself Nick Norbrook posted on your blog. No significance there... :-)
Besides, I think my response in that should suffice.
I completely agree, I am a tool of the Alliance of Suckup Scribes (ASS). I apologize, I'll slink back in to my ASS now.
Nick you come across a little odd - perhaps its electronic disturbance or perhaps you and Nkem aren't in love with each other. Whatever.
I just went back and read your comment on the original post. The proposition that NOI was the architect of banking consolidation is false. In fact, as everyone knows, consolidation was the work of Charles Soludo. He has rightly claimed various gongs as reward. So why would you want to aggrandise NOI for this?
Part of the reaction against her was precisely the idea that she alone is the driver behind the reform process, which if you are Ribadu, el-Rufai, Soludo, Oby etc mst seem a little annoying. She was fired because the feeling was she was getting too big for her boots..
Debt relief: it really was almost a done deal that it was going to happen, once the UK govt started to put pressure on the Paris club. NOI should definitely be congratulated for her role, but again, the idea that she was the single hands behind the deal is an enormous misconception. As a World Bank vp, she projected the right level of symbolic significance, and that was almost all..
Finally, as someone with close familiarity with the Finance Ministry thanks to 2 1/2 yrs working as a consultant there, I didn't in all honesty see much in the way of internal reform. There are gaping holes in the mechanisms and processes of Public Finance in Nigeria which NOI did little to address.
Just read Nick's reply on the original NOI blog and i don't need to reply because Jeremy's done me proud with his reply.
But i'll say when people like Nick can't stick with, and may be can't get jobs, with high profile international political journals out there, they manage magazines/Ezines like the African Report and talk a lot of crap out of their ASSES (i.e. their Alliance of Suckup Scribes, your words mate), without the base facts of what really is going on on the ground in African countries. So what you've worked in Africa as a journalist in local radio? Past tense and not Nigeria. Yes, i done did my research.
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