Sanusi, do something about the Mint
Governor Sanusi’s bold steps against some of the banks and their management have, indeed, earned him commendations from in and outside the country. Good and commendable as the CBN governor’s actions against some of the commercial banks appears to be, quite a significant number of Nigerians also thought (and rightly, too,) that the searchlight of […]
Governor Sanusi’s bold steps against some of the banks and their management have, indeed, earned him commendations from in and outside the country.
Good and commendable as the CBN governor’s actions against some of the commercial banks appears to be, quite a significant number of Nigerians also thought (and rightly, too,) that the searchlight of his reforms would also be beamed within the corridors of the apex bank itself. This is so because many Nigerians believe that some of the flagrant abuses of banking procedures that took place in the affected banks, whose boards of directors and management were sacked, did not take place without the knowledge of the CBN management.
Apart from other offences and details that are not made public, we were told some of the crimes of the affected banks were that many of them granted loans to friends, serving directors etc without verifiable collaterals, while other managing directors gave approvals for loans without recourse to constituted authorities.
Similar instances of abuse of banking procedures and, in some cases, worse scenarios are said to have taken place in the CBN under the leadership of, Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo.
Take, for example, the nine-member board of directors of the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC) which, by law, is supposed to be constituted by the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) was allegedly put in place by former Governor Soludo. Almost all of its members are said to be associated with Soludo and former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
For whatever reason that made president Obasanjo to allow Soludo to have picked those persons for the NSPMC board of directors, it is difficult to understand. Should a person be allowed to serve on two boards of government agencies when our laws totally prohibit that? It baffles one that in an era of the rule of law, transparency and accountability, some persons who are board members of a company, saddled with the responsibility of the production of the nation’s currency, should also serve on the board of another government company whose responsibility is to disburse or distribute such monies.
If Soludo, who got the consent of his former boss to do whatever he wanted to do at the apex bank for reasons best known to them, did just that without giving it a second thought, then it is amazing and disturbing that Malam Sanusi, an acclaimed apostle of sanitisation of the banking industry, has not found it necessary to disband the NSPMC board to allow for proper constitution of another, then something is wrong somewhere.
Since Soludo allegedly unilaterally constituted the board of NSPMC, whose chairman is supposed to be the permanent secretary, Ministry of Finance, the former CBN governor can be said also to have run the day to day affairs of the minting company. And because Soludo was so close to his boss, he told Obasanjo that the mint was going to be re-equipped, recapitalised and re-structured, preparatory to its privatisation. Since he sold the fake idea to Obasanjo, the company has neither been re-equipped, re-capitalised nor re-structured. Rather, Soludo was said to have directed the share capital of government in the company under the finance ministry should be taken over by the Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE), an instruction that was carried out.
Worse still, the former CBN governor approved a huge loan to the mint for the purchase of equipment for its refurbishment for the so called planned privatisation. Regrettably, the loan to the mint was not properly expended, as the so-called equipments procured have since been grounded. Unfortunately, today, the company cannot even meet up the demands of our government security print needs.
Sanusi should immediately rise to the new responsibilities and challenges confronting the banking sector by taking his reforms to the apex bank where he presides. During his maiden visit to the minting company headquarters in Lagos, the CBN governor promised to restore immediately the positions of the three executive directors of the company earlier scrapped by Soludo in order to allow for increased productivity. At that visit, Sanusi had stated that, “it is wrong for a company with a turnover of about N38 billion to continue to be run by a single managing director who is acting as a sole administrator”, more than eight months today, not even a single position of the EDs is restored as promised by him.
As keen observer of the operations in the all-important banking sector, we would continue to pray, encourage and support Sanusi in his determination to rid it of corrupt practices and administrative recklessness. However, Sanusi should try his best to continue to pursue such reforms with all sincerity, fairness and in the best interest of all.
No one is calling for the probe of his predecessor if he does not intend to do so. However, he must, once again, display that rare courage of doing away with any illegal contraption earlier put in place by Soludo in the interest of the nation.
Malam Musa Abdallah wrote from No. 42 Katuru Road Malali – Kaduna