Sanusi, an activist as CBN governor

Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Lamido Sanusi

 

News By Punch

Removal of   former CBN Governor, Mallam Lamido Sanusi, by President Goodluck Jonathan  brings to mind the banker’s peculiar ways of  handling official issues, AKEEM LASISI writes.

 

President Goodluck Jonathan is likely to have experienced the most embarrassing moment of his tenure recently when Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi reportedly refused to resign as directed by him. In a political system where the President’s power is not just overwhelming but also overbearing, Sanusi was said to have told Jonathan point-blank  that it was the National Assembly, not the President, that could sack him.

 

Many analysts believe that the clash, which reportedly came in the form of a telephone conversation between the two, meant that Sanusi’s days in office were numbered – no matter how hard he tried to fight.  The perception was that, especially in Nigeria’s kind of democracy, which, many fear, is still largely crude, no top political office holder can tolerate that kind of ‘assault’.

 

When Sanusi was eventually removed or ‘susupended’ from office on Thursday, about four months before his tenure would have ended, many people could conveniently say, ‘We saw it coming.’ This became more predictable as the Kano prince had continued to raise issues that obviously made the Federal Government uncomfortable. The fact is that  based on his expose, in 2011, of the jumbo earnings of the federal legislators, his statements on the Boko Haram saga, and his harsh stance on the corruption-laden oil politics in Nigeria, Sanusi remained the most controversial of all the CBN governors the country has ever had.

 

Until  he was appointed as the governor of the apex bank, it was  largely seen as a kind of pantheon  to be headed only by conservative priests. Even if such a person was privileged to hear and see all, based on the strategic position the CBN occupies in the country’s economic equation, he was hardly expected to say anything. He could see all evils, but he was expected to say no evil – especially if it would hurt the Presidency. As far as Sanusi was concerned, however,  saying all was part of the game, no matter whose ox is gored – even if he was not yet sure of his facts.

 

That he would be very controversial had been foretold by the way he handled the sanitation exercise the CBN carried out in his early days in office.  The former managing director of First Bank never minced words in painting some of his former colleagues – MDs of other banks, including the then Intercontinental Bank and Oceanic – as very corrupt people.  Not only did the CBN take over the ownerships of the banks, the saga also led to the jailing of Cecilia Ibru, while Erastus Akingbola remains on trial.  Some people claimed that one or two banks might have been selfishly protected in the course of the storm that raged through the sector, but Sanusi’s stance then indicated that his regime at the CBN was going to be more than unique.

 

In 2011, he took on the National Assembly when he claimed that the legislators were consuming about 25 per cent of the national budget. Even when the Senate summoned him for questioning, he did not eat his words. He told the Senator Iyiola Omisore-led committee, “By my upbringing, if I’m wrong, I don’t need to be told to come and say I’m wrong and I would apologise. By my nature, if I am not convinced that I’m wrong, I do not apologise and this is really where the point is.”

 

The typical CBN governor would also be very diplomatic in handling issues and policies relating to religion. This is key, particularly in a country such as Nigeria, where many are very sensitive to religious matters – not minding the fact that hypocrisy has been elevated to the level of faith in the country. But for Sanusi, his being the country’s No 1 Banker was no hindrance when he handled matters that related to his religion, Islam. The man that obtained a degree in Saharia from the International University of Africa,  Sudan exhibited this  on his utterances on the Boko Haram insurgency. While he did not outright justify any act of violence, his approach to religious and ethnic issues made tongues to wag on a number of occasions.

 

CBN’s introduction of Islamic banking system also raised some dust in 2011. Many observers, especially Christians, felt uncomfortable with the thought that the CBN was being partial to Islam. Not long afterwards, Sanusi gave his ethno-religious stance a new colour when he went to office in full Islamic, regalia. The picture of a turbanned CBN governor again sparked a debate. Yet, Sanusi was again in the centre of another controversy when the CBN, as if  coming from the moon, donated N100m to victims of the Boko Haram attack in Kano – after having remained unconcerned when the insurgents earlier wreaked havocs in some other towns and villages. Anyway, it later donated N25m to victims of the bomb blast at the St. Theresa Catholic Church in Abuja.

 

On some occasions, it was not very easy to know where Sanusi stood on certain national issues. Or,  put differently, he, at times too quickly moved from one position to the other. An example that many Nigerian will still remember was his position during the fuel subsidy crisis of 2012. On the eve of Jonathan’s removal of the subsidy, Sanusi was initially reported to have condemned the move. Days after, during a TV debate on it, he lined behind government officials who said that the country would practically collapse if the subsidy was not removed. But many Nigerians became wiser when enquiries by the House of Representatives revealed that it was widespread corruption in the subsidy regime that was – and is – actually killing the country.

 

And one other positive element of his tenure is that he is the first CBN governor to have regularly engaged the press. His predecessors were bureaucrats who hardly spoke in the public.

 

But the role that Sanusi played in the past few weeks was that of an activist in the CBN governor’s costume. Forget the fact that the alarm he first raised, about the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation holding N$49.5bn oil money, was proved to be partly false, as a meeting held on it revealed that it was ‘only’ about $10bn the NNPC had yet to account for.  But Sanusi got many people’s attention and sympathy later, when he insisted that up to $20bn was missing. While the Federal Government has said that it will invite forensic experts to probe the NNPC, a lot of people have expressed the opinion that the money allegedly missing could just be part of a ploy to fund 2015 elections.

 

As the drama of Sanusi’s removal – suspension, sack or whatever – unfolds, his exploits are bound to continue to vibrate in the minds of many. Of course, pundits have noted that his royal background – it has been said he is going to be the next Emir of Kano – had contributed to his uncompromising, if not arrogant, style. What is, however, also becoming clear is that even where political power and royalty clashes, it is the latter that often bends for the first. Perhaps Jonathan is poised to prove that ‘power’ pass power’ – as the colloquial saying goes.