Nigeria education minister tapped for World Bank
WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) - Nigeria's Education Minister Oby Ezekwesili has been tapped as the World Bank's next Vice-President for Africa, bank sources said on Monday.
The sources said Ezekwesili's appointment will likely be finalized by the World Bank board this week, in time for the spring meetings of member countries of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington next month.
The World Bank would not officially comment.
As vice-president, Ezekwesili would head the World Bank's Africa operations, which lends around $4.7 billion a year to the continent.
Her resume bodes well for World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz's strategy for Africa, where he wants more focus on health, education and infrastructure development, encouraging private-sector investment and speeding up the bank's assistance to countries emerging from conflict.
He has also pushed a controversial anti-corruption campaign that has irked some member countries who say the bank should support developing countries in tackling graft but should not dictate the solutions.
In Nigeria, Ezekwesili has been a leader in tackling corruption and is a close friend of former Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and a core member of President Olusegun Obasanjo's economic reform team.
Harvard educated, Ezekwesili started out as head of Nigeria's Due Process office in the presidency, a powerful office responsible for screening all major government procurement contracts, where she gained the moniker "Madam Due Process."
She said billions of dollars of public money were saved by exposing inflated contracts.
Ezekwesili was a major player in the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, where she often clashed with the Petroleum Ministry over the discretionary award of drilling rights.
She was promoted to Solid Minerals minister, where she restructured the licensing system and reoffered mining concessions on new terms.
In her current job as education minister, Ezekwesili released figures showing shocking rates of exam failure and malpractice nationwide and launched a controversial public-private partnership to take over the management of federal secondary schools.
She holds a bachelor of science degree in business education and a master's degree in international law and diplomacy. She also graduated from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2000 with a master's in public administration.
(Additional reporting by Thomas Ashby in Lagos)
((Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Andrea Ricci; email:lesley.wroughton@reuters.com: Washington Newsroom +1-202-898-8317)) Keywords: WORLDBANK AFRICA
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