The chances of Finance Minister and the only nominee from Africa for the post of the world bank president, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to head the dlobal bank, received a massive boost Friday with Friday's withdrawal of one of the contestants who is the candidate from Columbia, Jose Antonio Ocampo.
The Columbian nominee reportedly made a formal announcement to this effect on Friday night in an agreement among emerging and developing countries to coalesce around one nominee.
Ocampo’s withdrawal from the race means that the Nigerian Finance would remain as the only candidate from developing nations in a race against President Barrack Obama’s choice, Jim Yong Kim, a Korean-American health expert.
Ocampo was said to have been impressed with a straw poll among World Bank directors representing the Group of 11, which includes emerging countries and Australia, backed Okonjo-Iweala hence the reason for his withdrawal.
A source within the global bank told our Correspondent that Mr. Ocampo withdrew from the race as a result of the decision of the developing nations to present a single candidate to challenge the United States nominee
It was also gathered that Mr. Ocampo took the decision to withdraw from the world bank race as a result of the laudable programmes that Dr. Okonjo-Iweala plans to embark upon as the incoming president of the global bank.
It would be recalled that during an interview session at the United States Centre for Global Development in Washington DC Monday evening, Okonjo-Iweala urged the World Bank to modernise global governance as she commended the shareholders of the bank for putting it in the paper that they will make the selection on merit bases.
She said that she did not believe that America will drop the World Bank if a non-American becomes the president based on merit, stressing that United States cherishes competition.
She said, “I am not pessimistic and I believe that people are just misjudging the US Congress. America has been a leader in so many places and so many things. I am sure that the Congress will continue to fund the World Bank.”
Saying that the US will be willing to allow openness because it will be to their benefits, Okonjo-Iweala noted that her leadership will ensure that stakeholders go and talk to the US Congress to let them know why they should continue to support the World Bank even without an American leading the institution.
SOURCE: Leadership Newspaper, 14 April 2012. http://www.leadership.ng/nga/
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