Why I Made Dora Akunyili NAFDAC’s DG – Obasanjo

Ololade Adeyanju/

The good deeds of Professor Dora Akunyili continue to live on long after her demise.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was the latest to extol the virtues of the late Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control, while disclosing why he chose her for the job.

Obasanjo was speaking at the Eko Hotel and Suites, on Thursday, during the 14th annual lecture of the Women in Management, Business and Public Service.

Obasanjo said he chose the late professor of Pharmacology for the NAFDAC top job due to her uncompromising honesty and integrity, apart from the fact that she was eminently qualified for the role.

According to The Punch, Obasanjo stated: “I was looking for somebody who would work in NAFDAC. There was an old man who was there and didn’t really impress me. I had had a couple of meetings with him and I found him not (to be) the type of man I would want to have on that job.

“I was talking to a friend who said, ‘Oh, there is a lady; she went to Britain for a medical (programme) and when she finished, she said whatever money was left from the money deposited by her department should be sent back to the department.’

“And the people called her and said, ‘Are you not a Nigerian? Nigerians will come here and say add something which you would pay back to us later.’ So, I said there is a Nigerian woman like that, where is she? So I located Dora and I said, ‘What is your profession?’ She said, pharmacy. I said pharmacy; I am looking for a pharmacist for this job. She got the job.”

The former president also blamed the minor role being played by women in Nigerian politics on men, saying: “It is out of the selfishness of our men; they will look for anything to keep women under and look at the sort of things that we do.”

While urging women to play more active roles in politics, Obasanjo described Nigeria as not being “short of women of virtue, women of character, women of integrity.”

He disclosed that he had headhunted Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to be the Minister of Finance in his government as she was working with the World Bank at the time.

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