The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) director-general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, claims that her investigation into a purported $2.4 billion subsidy fraud resulted in her mother’s kidnapping.
In December 2012, Kamene Okonjo was abducted from her residence in Ogwashi-Uku, Delta state.
Okonjo-Iweala stated in a recent interview with Bloomberg that the kidnappers insisted she leave the nation and resign as finance minister.
Under previous President Goodluck Jonathan, the WTO director-general was Nigeria’s finance minister from 2011 to 2015.
According to her, the probe into subsidies started when her office observed a significant rise in claims made by petrol importers.
“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 recounted.
She said her mother was abducted shortly after the decision was announced, adding that her captors demanded her resignation as a condition for her release.
“I was told (by the kidnappers) that for her to be released, I should resign and leave the country,” she said.
The former minister described the incident as one of the most traumatic experiences of her life, saying her mother was held in a forest before escaping.
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“She was held in the middle of a forest, and one night she escaped. She’s still alive. She’s 96 now,” Okonjo-Iweala said.
“It was a terrible, terrible five-day ordeal. I think the worst in my life.”
“I never dreamt my parents could ever be touched in this way, that people would be that evil,” she added.
Okonjo-Iweala said she considered resigning before her mother regained her freedom, but her father warned her against giving in to the abductors’ demands.
“He said, ‘We don’t give in to blackmail’. And he said, ‘You’ve got to carry on. You’ve got to go to work’,” she recalled.
