The Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has stated that some Nigerian politicians have weaponised insecurity to destabilize the administration of President Bola Tinubu and governors.

Iweala made this statement during the opening ceremony of the Nigerian Bar Association 2024’s Annual General Conference held at the Eko Hotel and Suites in Lagos on Sunday, August 25.

Okonjo-Iweala, who previously served as finance minister under former President Goodluck Jonathan, cautioned individuals who use insecurity to provoke their opponents.

“We all know that security has been weaponised in our country for political purposes by political actors, leading partly to the situation we have now,” the former finance minister stated. “We have politicians who believe that the best way to make their opponents look bad is to instigate insecurity, making it look like they can’t govern, regardless of whether this leads to loss of lives and property of innocent Nigerians.”
“This has to stop,” the WTO boss emphasised.

The WHO Director-General expressed the need to address the theft of national assets through the use of advanced technology, noting that Nigeria’s socio-economic progress is hindered by a prolonged insecurity crisis.

“We cannot have socio-economic development without security” and the “theft of national assets must be stopped, deploying technology,” Ms Okonjo-Iweala noted.

She stressed that “all Nigerians must agree that stealing of our national assets of any type is intolerable and must be stopped” and that there “is so much technology available now to track such theft, and there must be no more excuses for inaction.”