Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), says her probe of an alleged $2.4bn subsidy fraud led to the abduction of her mother.
Kamene Okonjo was kidnapped from her home in Ogwashi-Uku,
Delta state, in December 2012.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Okonjo-Iweala said the
abductors demanded that she resign as minister of finance and leave the
country.
The WTO director-general served as Nigeria’s finance
minister between 2011 and 2015 under former President Goodluck Jonathan.
She said the subsidy investigation began after her office
noticed a sharp increase in claims submitted 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.
“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.
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