Former Ogun State Commissioner for Finance, Kemi Adeosun seems to have impressed international news agency, The Economist as it has commended her efforts in the last 9 months as the economic head in Nigeria.
Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun
The Economist newspaper has made a U-turn in its perception of the current Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun which it described as "poorly qualified" to marshall the economy of Nigeria which has been marred with crisis following the dwindling prices of oil in the international market.
The highly influential British newspaper within a space of eight months has stunningly described the ex employee of auditing giant, PricewaterhouseCoopers Limited United Kingdom as a "tenacious Minister" fixing Nigeria's economy, according to The Cable.
In November 2015, The Economist said Adeosun, who has over two decades of experience in financing and capital management, had only managed one of Nigeria’s smaller states.
“However, the new finance minister, an accountant who cleaned up the books of one of Nigeria’s smaller states, is poorly qualified for the job,” The Economist had said earlier before now.
But in less than a year on her job, the paper now sees Adeosun as helping Nigeria get control of its earnings.
“In an effort to fix this, a tenacious finance minister, Kemi Adeosun, has told skint governors that they must make their finances public before they receive a second federal bailout,” the newspaper said.
“She has struck thousands of ghost workers off the public payroll. Her ‘treasury single account’ (TSA) may be the biggest coup of all. It replaced a labyrinth of government piggy banks, giving Nigeria more control of its earnings.”
It added that financiers reckon that Nigeria’s Treasury Single Account “could serve as a lesson to others in West Africa as well”.
The Economist further explained how President Muhammadu Buhari has been fighting corruption in Africa’s largest economy.