WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has said her mother was kidnapped after she refused to pay $2.4 billion in fuel subsidy claims she found to be fraudulent while serving as Nigeria’s finance minister.
She told Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua on the Leaders programme that the kidnappers demanded she resign and leave the country in exchange for her mother’s release.
She said the probe began when officials noticed a sharp rise in claims from fuel importers under the subsidy programme. Nigeria, though an oil producer, relied on imported refined products at the time, and importers were paid by government to sell petrol at regulated prices.
“So I went to the president and said, look, something is going on here. Could we audit the accounts? And he said, yes, go ahead. And we found about $2.4 billion worth of fraud. So we refused to pay,” she said.
Threats followed, then the abduction. She described the five-day ordeal as “the worst in my life”. Her mother was held in a forest and escaped one night. She is now 96 and still becomes distressed when the incident is mentioned.
Asked if she considered quitting, she said: “Between my mother, having my mother alive and staying in a job, I would pick my mother any day.” Her father, however, urged her not to yield. “He said, we don’t give in to blackmail,” she recalled.
She said she still carries a sense of guilt over the experience.
