By Adedapo Adesanya
Former Foreign and Finance Minister in Nigeria, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, will emerge as the first woman Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
This is because her opponent for the position, South Korean trade minister, Ms Yoo Myung-hee, on Friday abandoned her bid.
According to South Korea’s trade ministry in a statement, Ms Yoo had consulted with the United States — her prime backer — and other major countries and decided to renounce her candidacy.
“South Korea will continue to make various contributions to rebuild and enhance the multilateral trade system,” the statement from South Africa assured.
Mrs Okonjo-Iweala, if eventually confirmed, will succeed Brazilian Roberto Azevedo who resigned in August 2020.
The final decision as to who will head the trade body has been deadlocked since October when key WTO ambassadors tapped Mrs Okonjo-Iweala as the best pick to lead the organisation but the Donald Trump administration maintained its opposition to her appointment.
The WTO head is normally chosen by consensus, and this has left the selection process at a standstill since last year.
The decision to withdraw her candidacy is coming less than a month after the new administration of Joe Biden emerged took over from Mr Trump.
The WTO is widely seen as being in need of reform — even before the COVID-19 crisis hit, it had grappled with stalled trade talks and struggled to curb tensions between the United States and China.
The global trade body has also faced relentless attacks from Washington, which has crippled the WTO dispute settlement appeal system and threatened to leave the organisation altogether.
The WTO was destined to have its first woman director-general after the months-long consultations process whittled the candidates down to the final two.
Twice Nigeria’s finance minister and its first woman foreign minister, Mrs Okonjo-Iweala, 66, trained as a development economist — she has degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard.
She spent a quarter of a century at the World Bank, rising to be managing director and running for the top role in 2012, and is seen as a trailblazer in her home country.
Similarly, Ms Yoo, 53, is known as a glass-ceiling-breaker in the South’s still male-dominated society.
She is an English Literature graduate of the Seoul National University. She set aside her dreams of a literary career to become a trade ministry civil servant, later handling a number of free trade negotiations along the way.
