Nigeria’s Iron Lady

Pan-African News Wire File Photos

“THE gele is my trademark,” says the Nigerian finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, describing the colourful head wrap she puts over her short, greying hair before she allows pictures to be taken. “I am very Nigerian from dress to everything.” Some of her critics disagree. During anti-reform protests in January, demonstrators focused their anger on the finance minister. They called her an unwelcome outsider because she spent long periods abroad. She was a managing director at the World Bank before coming home last year.

Sitting in her half-moon-shaped office overlooking Nigeria’s dusty capital, Abuja, Ms Okonjo-Iweala faces an unenviable task. President Goodluck Jonathan has given her just three years to overhaul sub-Saharan Africa’s second-biggest economy, one riven with corruption and inefficiencies, carved up by political bosses and vulnerable to bursts of communal violence.