Making trouble for corruption

Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala earned the moniker “Okonjo the troublemaker” for her fierceness in fighting corruption as finance minister of Nigeria. The economist and director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks to Fraud Magazine about battling corruption in the most populous country in Africa.

Upon first meeting Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, it might seem incomprehensible that the director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has ever had a reputation for being a “troublemaker.” Her eyes twinkle when she smiles and she loves to dance, as attendees of the 36th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference learned during her June 2025 keynote speech in Nashville, Tennessee. But behind that warm and engaging demeanor is someone unafraid to disrupt the status quo, especially if that status quo is mired in corruption. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde once remarked that Okonjo-Iweala, “is this wonderful, soft, very gentle woman with an authentic approach to problems but, boy, under that soft glove there is a hard hand and a strong will behind it.”

That hard hand would serve Okonjo-Iweala well in 2011, when she began her second stint as finance minister of Nigeria — she served two separate terms under two different presidential administrations. She saw just how the government was expending billions of dollars on its oil subsidy program and detected a system rife with corruption. Her quest to banish chicanery from the program and end the subsidies led to public protests; she and her family experienced threats to their personal safety. There were calls for her to resign from her position. She earned the title, “Okonjo-Wahala” — “trouble woman.”

Throughout Okonjo-Iweala’s career, fighting corruption hasn’t merely been about “stopping people from doing bad things or breaking law.” Okonjo-Iweala, an economist with expertise in international development from a country with a history of government corruption, has seen how it stymies progress and takes resources away from citizens. As she told attendees during her keynote speech at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ (ACFE) Global Fraud Conference this year, “Corruption is theft from the rest of society and from the future.”

Okonjo-Iweala, the 2025 recipient of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ (ACFE) Cressey Award for a lifetime of achievement in the detection and deterrence of fraud, talked to Fraud Magazine about fighting government fraud and corruption, the role of the WTO in reducing fraud, and being the first woman and African to lead the international trade organization.

Becoming ‘wahala’

A 2012 article published in The Guardian recounts how a 15-year-old Okonjo-Iweala carried her malaria-stricken 3-year-old sister on her back 10 kilometers (6 miles) to find a doctor. When she arrived at the clinic with her ailing sister, she encountered “nearly a thousand people trying to break down the door of a makeshift clinic.” According to the story, Okonjo-Iweala ducked down, crawled between people’s legs, climbed through a window and delivered her sister to life-saving medical care.

The story underscores the kind of toughness that Okonjo-Iweala has in reserve when faced with adversity. She’s had to muster it when confronting corruption in Nigeria’s oil subsidies program, when excising ghost employees from the government payroll and when renegotiating Nigeria’s debt with the international community. It’s the type of resolve that might lead some to label her a “troublemaker.”

In 2003, when Okonjo-Iweala became finance minister for the first time, anti-corruption organization Transparency International deemed Nigeria the most corrupt country on earth. She didn’t waste time trying to change that by exorcising ghosts. Okonjo-Iweala and her team discovered thousands of people on the government’s payroll who were drawing salaries but weren’t turning up for work; they didn’t exist, but they were draining money from the government coffers and enriching fraudsters. She used biometric testing to determine which employees were real and who was there only “in spirit.” As Okonjo-Iweala told attendees during her keynote in Nashville, “We tackled this effectively by tightening gaps in our controls.” They implemented an integrated payroll and personal information system, thus removing thousands of the fictitious employees from the system and saving taxpayers and the government more than $1 billion.

Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa, but an economy based on this natural resource is often unstable, vacillating between booms and crashes. Nigeria had also spent nearly four decades under military dictatorships before becoming a civilian-run democracy in 1999. Those military dictatorships weren’t known for their responsible spending habits. By the time Okonjo-Iweala became finance minister in 2003, Nigeria owed $30 billion to the Paris Club, a group of international creditors. In 2005, she led negotiations with the group to cancel $18 billion in debt.

It’s not just a question of one person acquiring wealth here, another person there, but over time the systematic diversion of resources over several governments and administrations has impoverished the country of its resources that could be used for development.

Nigerians do get to share a little in the bounty of Nigeria’s top natural resource by the government subsidizing the cost of fuel at the gas pump. It’s a highly popular program that makes fueling cars cheaper for everyday citizens. But, as Okonjo-Iweala would uncover, wealthy oil importers also benefited from, and took advantage of, those subsidies. They’d overstate how much fuel they imported for refining and pocket the difference between the global market rate and the subsidized domestic price of the oil.

Okonjo-Iweala explained to Fraud Magazine that the amount of money the government was spending on the subsidies ballooned between her first stint as finance minister and her second term. When she left government for the first time in 2006, Nigeria was spending about $2 billion on subsidies. But when she returned to her post in 2011, “the numbers were showing something strange.” The government was now spending about $12 billion on the subsidies.

“Even if you take into account population growth, the increase in wealth of the middle class, there would be more demand for fuel. That didn’t happen,” she told Fraud Magazine. “Once I saw the numbers, I knew there was something obviously wrong.” She says that she asked then-President Goodluck Jonathan to hire a third party to audit the subsidy program. 

A technical team went to the oil depots where importers stored oil. After talking to people, they discovered that importers were lying about how much oil they were bringing in. A 200-page report revealed the corrupt practices that had created a sixfold increase in the Nigerian government’s spending on oil subsidies between 2009 and 2011.

Okonjo-Iweala recommended that President Jonathan scrap the program and divert the funds to other public services that would benefit citizens. But this attempt to root out corruption wasn’t greeted with celebration by many Nigerians. Instead, it sparked protests in cities across the country. It also led to calls for Okonjo-Iweala’s resignation — from a group of criminals who kidnapped Okonjo-Iweala’s then 82-year-old mother. If Okonjo-Iweala would leave her government position, the kidnappers said they’d release her mother. Thankfully, Okonjo-Iweala’s mother was able to escape after five days in captivity and walk to safety. The government partially reinstated the subsidies following the demonstrations, but Okonjo-Iweala stood her ground and refused to resign, even after she was threatened with physical harm.

“Nigeria is a large country with natural resources. In some ways, it’s easy to manipulate and capture some of the resources for personal gain,” Okonjo-Iweala told Fraud Magazine. “I think [Nigerians] see that so much of that corruption has really undermined the country and set it back. It’s not just a question of one person acquiring wealth here, another person there, but over time the systematic diversion of resources over several governments and administrations has impoverished the country of its resources that could be used for development.”

A distinguished career 

When Okonjo-Iweala was born in 1954, Nigeria was still under British rule. In her lifetime, she’s seen her country develop from a colonial outpost to an independent nation in 1960 to a country fighting a civil war and enduring years of military dictatorships before becoming the democracy it is now. Supporting developing countries and encouraging growth in nations beset by strife has been a constant theme in Okonjo-Iweala’s career as an economist. Indeed, her doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is in regional economics and development. But economics wasn’t always her first choice of career. As she tells Fraud Magazine, the subject used to bore her to tears.

Okonjo-Iweala’s father was a professor of economics and statistics (and a king). On days when he’d prepare for his lectures, she’d pepper him with questions about what he’d be teaching. “To keep me quiet, he would give me a textbook,” she says. Her father would instruct her to read a chapter then tell him what she learned. But at the time, she didn’t learn all that much. “It was so boring. At the time, I was child, and I decided that I wasn’t ever going to do that because it was the most boring thing ever. I’d read the book and cry, just sitting there in the study,” she recounts to Fraud Magazine.

I’ve learned that in life, once you master your materials and you know what you’re talking about, people will soon forget that you’re African or a woman. They start listening to what you have to say.

She wouldn’t always find economics so boring she could cry. An undergraduate economics course while she was a student at Harvard would change her mind after a professor there showed her class just how much economics could explain many things in society. “[The professor] would take the newspaper and look at an article and then he would tell you the economics underlying it. I was fascinated by how everyday things could be explained by this discipline.”

This experience led her to make the decision to go into the family business. “Of course, my father was delighted,” she tells Fraud Magazine.

Today, Okonjo-Iweala has multiple degrees and a slew of honorary degrees, including from Yale and Brown Universities. She graduated from Harvard University and got her Ph.D. from MIT. She’s worked for the World Bank as a development economist and was a chair of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (Gavi). During her time at the World Bank, she spearheaded several initiatives to assist low-income countries during the financial crisis.

In March 2021, Okonjo-Iweala became the seventh director-deneral of the WTO, an organization that sets the global rules for trade. In 2024, members of the WTO voted for her unanimously for a second term.

Fair trade

As far as international organizations go, the WTO is a relatively young one. It was founded in 1995, two years after the European Union was founded. The WTO is an intergovernmental group that regulates trade, and its 166 member countries make decisions by consensus. All it takes is one country to block an initiative.

“My day is usually filled with meetings back-to-back to back. Trade policy and trade rules can be political,” she explains to Fraud Magazine. “There are huge lobbies in trade, which means that trade ministers and leaders are constantly on edge about trade issues. International trade issues can also be domestic issues.” As director-general of the WTO, Okonjo-Iweala must manage the expectations and concerns of trade ministers from almost every corner of the globe. 

“On a typical day, I talk to ministers about the issues in their country and how the WTO is or isn’t helping them in what they want to achieve. I have many leaders from developing countries that require technical assistance from the WTO, and they need help in solving a particular problem they might be having in complying with WTO rules,” she says.

Okonjo-Iweala’s path to becoming director-general of the WTO wasn’t necessarily an easy one. In fact, when she vied for the spot the first time, her candidacy was opposed by President Donald Trump in his first term. However, when Joe Biden became president in 2021, his administration supported Okonjo-Iweala’s ascendency to director-general. Now that Trump has been re-elected to a second term, many observers say that Okonjo-Iweala has a difficult road ahead of her. As Reuters reported, she’ll have to contend with an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China, and the U.S.’ policy on tariffs. Okonjo-Iweala has brushed off these concerns. "We have a full agenda to deliver ... and we fully intend to get to work immediately, no stopping, to try and deliver on these results,” according to Reuters.

One thing on her agenda concerns subsidies — but this time subsidies in the fishing industry. She hopes to work with WTO members in phasing out $22 billion in fishing subsidies that she says are damaging to ocean fish stocks. 

And even with an agenda focused on environmental and sustainability issues, she’s still minding the places where fraud might flourish, such as in tariffs and customs. As the U.S. implements its tariffs on consumer goods, Okonjo-Iweala talked to Fraud Magazine about the opportunities that the tariffs present for fraud and how the WTO might handle it.

“Just because you have a tariff, it doesn’t mean you’ll have fraud,” she explains. "You can have high tariffs and the people who are supposed to pay them will do so without any fraudulent activity. But it is the case sometimes that when tariffs are really high, there’s an incentive for evasion. And we find in many countries, including many developing countries, that this is an issue.”

Yet while tariffs are sometimes used to protect a country that manufactures certain goods, Okonjo-Iweala maintains that despite some good outcomes, tariffs can be a powerful inducement for fraud. “Generally, it's an incentive to those who want to do the wrong thing because they can get back around it under the table.”

If people want a good, they’ll find a way to get it even if it must be smuggled and they pay bribes to get customs officials to look the other way. Okonjo-Iweala tells Fraud Magazine that to thwart paying off customs officials, human interactions in customs and trade can be limited with the use of technology. 

“The best way to deal with these things is with digitization. Use the technology to remove human interaction as much as you can in customs and the trade,” she says. “Countries have saved hundreds of billions of dollars just by digitizing and streamlining their procedures.”

Being first and prepared

Okonjo-Iweala is the first woman and African to lead the WTO. Yes, there are difficulties and complications that come with this status, but she tells Fraud Magazine that growing up Nigerian has fortified her to confront whatever challenges lay ahead.

“I'm a woman, but I'm also a woman of color. And I’m an African, and when you walk into a room, people will have their expectations. But I'm also Nigerian and I think being a Nigerian uniquely helps,” she says. “People have expectations of [Nigerians] that they’re not very smart or not going to produce anything that will meaningfully change things.”

People have their preconceived notions, but Okonjo-Iweala says that many Nigerians aren’t concerned with anyone’s assumptions about them. “Nigerians are brought up in a country that feels egalitarian to them, and they think they’re as good as anyone else. So, if you’re trying to tell Nigerians that they can’t do something or they’re not good enough, they won’t even notice because they already believe they can do it.”

She credits her father with preparing her for managing challenges that come with being the first person to do something. He encouraged her to go to the best schools and to be prepared for the types of barriers and prejudices she might face as a woman and African. “He prepared me very well.” 

She also has some thoughts about being the first woman in a position that’s been dominated by men for most of its history. “You can see when people aren’t giving you your due. Their expectations are limited, so you must show them what you can do,” she tells Fraud Magazine. “I’ve learned that in life, once you master your materials and you know what you’re talking about, people will soon forget that you’re African or a woman. They start listening to what you have to say. Don't believe those who think you can’t do it.”

Jennifer Liebman, CFE, is editor in chief of Fraud Magazine. Contact her at jliebman@ACFE.com.