By Chukwuma Umeorah
Senior Special Adviser to African Development Bank’s (AfDB) President, Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, has refuted report that he tagged Nigeria as the most difficult client of the bank.
He spoke against the backdrop of a newspaper report alleging he described Nigeria as the banks’s most difficult client.
Oyeyinka expressed disappointment at the report explaining that he had delivered a one-hour lecture on “The Real Sources of Africa’s Economic Challenge” where he highlighted the need for the continent’s ruling class to invest in productivity and value-adding, while supporting knowledge-based institutions to ensure the localisation of global know-how in Africa.
In the same vein, he advised that Africa needed to strengthen her institutions in order to ramp up its transition from resource dependence to knowledge-driven economies.
During the question and answer session, a question was asked as to “how much the African Development Bank was doing for Nigeria.” Chief Executive Officer of ODEJAD Agro Company, Mr. Danjuma Adejo, who was part of the virtual audience at the event said that “AFDB was doing a lot and will continue to do so.”
Adejo insisted that the speaker never declared Nigeria as being the most difficult client of the bank.
“I don’t know how the journalist got that line of reasoning, but i can tell you that the speaker never said so.”
One of the organisers of the event, and a professor at the Centre for Energy Research & Development (CERD), Obafemi Awolowo University, Willie Siyanbola, also expressed his disappointment with the pattern of the report on the issue, pointing that the most resourceful part of the speaker’s lecture was neglected.