Okonjo-Iweala lament "I was misquoted"

The embattled minister drew the anger of the two Chambers of the National Assembly on Tuesday following reports that she had warned, while appearing on an Abuja-based radio programme on Monday, that the country would shutdown if the impasse on the 2013 budget was not resolved.
Ms. Okonjo-Iweala, however, told State House correspondents on Wednesday in Abuja that at no time during the radio programme did she say that the government or country was going to shutdown if the contentious issues in the budget were not resolved.

She said she drew attention to the challenges the country's economy was facing and pointed out that these are short term problems that are being addressed; insisting that that does not in any way imply that the economy or the country was going to shutdown.
"At no point in time did I say that the government or the country is going to shut down," the minister said. "The economy is strong; we are robust; we have our short-term challenges. As you know, we are dealing with reduced revenue due to the issue of oil theft, which Mr. President is focusing on and is solving."
The government, she said, has already constituted a committee of governors, with the Vice President, Namadi Sambo, as Chairman, to try and deal with the issue of crude oil theft in the Niger Delta, pointing out that government is confident that the problem would soon be resolved, to bring down the incidence of pipeline vandalism in the region.
"What I did say was that we will not be able to pay salaries, and that is a very different situation we are talking about. So this was a misleading headline from a newspaper and we should not spend the time of national debate on non-issues. At no time did I say the country is going to shutdown. I said we will not be able to pay salaries and that remains the fact; that is factual," she said.
<Just so you know, this isn't the first time she denies her own words.