How Okonjo-Iweala, Ezekwesili, others can help Nigeria –UN adviser
A United Nations Special Adviser and world renowned university scholar, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, has challenged Nigerian professionals in the Diaspora to leverage their positions in top organisations for the nation’s development.
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Dr. Oby Ezekwesili
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Managing Director, World Bank, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Empowered Newswire, a United States-based Nigerian news agency, reports that Sachs specifically mentioned the Managing Director of the World Bank, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and the bank‘s Vice President for Africa, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, as some of the US-based Nigerian professionals in key international development positions.
He said other US-based professionals could collaborate with both women and present the Nigerian government with an unassailable development agenda.
Sachs, who spoke at the Columbia University, New York on Thursday at a Nigeria Higher Education Foundation-organised symposium on “Ivory Towers and beyond: The role of partnerships in African Sustainable Development,” said a proper presentation would compel the Nigerian government to listen. The event drew several speakers including top Nigerians based in the US such as UN Special Envoy, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, and Prof. Ferdinand Ofodile, a professor of Medicine at Columbia and the second black person to become a fellow of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
Others included award-winning New York nuclear cardiologist, Dr. Ola Akinboboye, and a distinguished US-based Nigerian professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, Dr. Funmi Olopade. Nigeria‘s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Prof. Joy Ogwu, also attended and spoke at the opening of the symposium. Sachs, who is an internationally acclaimed development economist, compared Nigerians in the Diaspora to the Indians in Diaspora, which coalesced in the US into a powerful group and positively impacted on their country.
He said, “You have two Nigerians at top positions in the World Bank; one of them, Oby, I am proud to say was my student at Harvard. Bring them together, go home and have a big conference and say this is the right time for Nigeria. Do it and you will have my support. I have seen it worked before.” In his welcome address, the President of the Nigeria Higher Education Foundation, the organisers of the talk, Dr. Sola Olopade, said the symposium highlighted “the contributions made by prominent experts and researchers to help Nigeria attain Millennium Development Goals.”
