Secret Reporters No place to hide
Secret Reporters
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has directed the Godswill Akpabio-led National Assembly to confirm the former Executive Director (Business Development), of Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM), Stella Okotete, as a Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Insider sources within the Aso Rock Villa, who disclosed this development to SecretReporters, stated that the President has also assigned Youth Ministry to the 39-year-old Stella.
The sources told our correspondent that the controversies that led to the delay of the confirmation of the Delta State nominee by the national assembly have been put to bed.
Recall that Stella made the headlines when she was announced as one of the nominees among the 48 submitted by President Tinubu to the senate for screening and confirmation and began to speak in tongues which trended a bit on social media. Her
However, Stella’s nomination suffered a blow when the Senate failed to confirm her and two others. There were permutations that the senate failed to confirm her due to some controversies that surrounded her academic journey.
But in a series of documents made available to newsmen through her lawyers, Babatunde Ogala and Co, Stella wrote to the different relevant institutions to verify the authenticity of her certificates and degrees.
The documents showed that Okotete graduated from Benson Idahosa University in 2007 with a second-class lower grade in International Studies and Diplomacy and concluded the compulsory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) from Kebbi State in 2009.
Other documents made available to SecretReporters showed her professional short course certifications from institutions like Harvard Kennedy School and the rest as well as a Master’s degree from Noun University.
Recall that in her role as the Executive Director of Nigeria Export-Import (NEXIM) Bank, a job she took in 2017 with the mandate to promote economic diversification and grow non-oil export revenue, Stella took the bank’s operating profit from a negative of over 8 billion naira to a plus of nearly 4 billion naira in 2021. Through careful reforms and a change of institutional mindset, she cut the bank’s non-performing loans from 94% in 2017 to 29% as of December 2021.
Official records have it that the total asset of the bank grew by over 200%, and additional funding of over 100 billion naira was attracted within the same time period.
