cover image Reforming the Unreformable: Lessons from Nigeria

Reforming the Unreformable: Lessons from Nigeria

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. MIT, $24.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0-262-01814-2

This is a book with an identity crisis: is it a memoir, a “Seven Steps for Highly Successful Developing Countries,” or a serious guidebook to help struggling economies find their way out of the morass of poor governance and corruption? Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s coordinating minister for the economy and minister of finance, and former managing director of the World Bank, has difficulty making up her mind. The author is well-placed to provide much needed insight into the difficult task of reforming a bloated and intransigent bureaucracy while jump-starting a failing economic system. Unfortunately, only halfway through the book does she manage to get past providing too much in the way of insignificant detail, such as how to maintain team cohesion, and bland, overly-generalized principles that can be found in many of today’s self-help books for businessmen. Her insight into the many possible forms of graft are eye-opening for the Westerner. Her explanations of how to achieve at least minimal success in achieving reform of pension funds and the civil service are desperately required. It is therefore disappointing that Okonjo-Iweala did not share more of her hard-won wisdom. (Oct.)