Nigeria’s Arunma Oteh to leave World Bank, join Oxford University as academic

World Bank vice president and treasurer Arunma Oteh will leave the bank on Tuesday, December 1, to join St Antony’s College, Oxford University, as an academic scholar in January 2019.

According to Reuters, Nigerian-born Oteh will leave her current role before the end of her term as treasurer.

She joined the bank in 2015, since when she and her team have been responsible for managing its US$200billion debt portfolio, as well as an asset portfolio of almost US$200billion for the World Bank Group and 65 external clients, including central banks, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.

Prior to joining the World Bank, Oteh served a five-year term as the general director of the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission, where she was responsible for the regulation of the country’s capital markets.

In a note sent to staff, the World Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, thanked Oteh for “her committed service to the World Bank Group, to our mission, and to our clients around the world,” adding that he“wished her the best at Oxford.”

In 2011 Oteh was made an Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) and in 2011 she received the “Distinction In Public Service” award from the Commonwealth Business Council/African Business.

In 2014, Oteh won the CNBC Africa All Africa Business Leaders Awards (AABLA) Business Woman of the Year category for West Africa.

She is best known in Nigeria for exposing corruption at the House of Representatives leading to the resignation of a committee chairman after allegations that he had asked for a bribe to influence the House Committee inquiry and collected public funds to attend a workshop abroad but had neither attended the program nor returned the money.

She is also one of five prominent appointees of the Goodluck Jonathan administration who got international jobs before or after leaving government.