Sanusi: Termites’ triumph

Remember the piece I wrote last year about this time titled “Nigeria: Termites to Giant Sanusi Lamido Sanusi”? I said in it, “today, I feel like a morbid pessimist in a world where the high and mighty with knowhow for bettering my world trample on me as I yell and scream ‘look down, I am […]

Remember the piece I wrote last year about this time titled “Nigeria: Termites to Giant Sanusi Lamido Sanusi”? I said in it, “today, I feel like a morbid pessimist in a world where the high and mighty with knowhow for bettering my world trample on me as I yell and scream ‘look down, I am here, I am here’. Some comfort may come from the knowledge that the giant’s foot stomping is in my favour, the heck, my edge over termites. How else can you feel when without being wooed, the Nigerian Central Bank’s brilliant Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi appends his signature on a decision that introduces unfavourable currency into the economy? I am not an economist but since when did you have to be an economist to hold opinion on the type of legal tender you are holding in your hand? The proposed currency of coins and particularly the N5000 note are clearly unpopular. But it is too late to voice our complaints and reservations, is it not”. Of course the decision on the N5000 note was rescinded. Alas, now the giant has himself been trampled upon.
I contended in the article on the discountenanced N500 note:- “Sanusi Lamido Sanusi talks to Nigerians like a General does to a battalion. That he does not get sanctioned in the public’s favour means that he has the nod of the Commander-in-Chief. Ordinary Nigerians are of course in a war against poverty and the vagaries of life in our decadence, but citizens they are, and not soldiers. Common folk, like babies are wont to do, shove aside mother’s breast for whatever reason. They have a mind that needs convincing on favours made even with the best intentions.
Hear Sanusi. “The problem is that the CBN is the only institution doing anything”. Yes Mr Sanusi. Do just anything. Hear the views of the people who elected the government that appointed you. They are saying that cowry shells being lighter, would serve better than coins. May be it was time we returned to our first ignorance. At least no one added any salt to our injuries.” If I went on, I would have written prophesy of today’s happenings, and may be even an epitaph. Sanusi had it coming. He talked the right things at the wrong time.
Yet, the suspension to my mind was a tactless move by President Goodluck Jonathan. What was gained by it when in a few weeks, the man’s tenure would have ended and every process of his sanctioning would have been achieved without the flexing of a muscle?
Handlers of President Jonathan may have argued that there was need for the President to show strength. But all may agree, the strength of character would have shown the more, if only the President “forensically” audited the claim of the Governor of the Central Bank that NNPC has illegally spent $20bn dollars without declaring it as Federal Revenue which should have been deposited into the Statutory Account and appropriated. As it is, that question lingers and has not been answered to the satisfaction of the Nigerian people and no matter how we attempt to complicate the issue, it will continue to beg for answers.
That a theft has occurred and the Federal Government while not disputing that the money has not surfaced at the Central Bank where it should, says it need forensic experts to establish whether indeed the money has been stolen! This is against the even laughable explanation that kerosene, for which our common folk have suffered, had been subsidised with the $20 billion dollars.
Equally shocked is the international community to whom transparency in the oil market is of crucial importance, and which had looked at Nigeria as having been blessed by a banker of the stature of Sanusi Lamido. To now fire the whistleblower of such theft of humongous amount of revenue is the display of the worst form of leadership miscalculation.
Does the matter end there? Of course you and I know that it does not. Politically, it will hurt President Jonathan because he will have alienated Kano, whose powerful emir only last week in receiving the President urged him to be fair and just over matters in Nigeria. Jitters in the North West of Nigeria have a ripple effect which tends to send tidal waves to the entire Northern Nigeria, where the President’s popularity had taken a seemingly irretrievable dip. That is why many feel that President Jonathan had to take this difficult decision under some extraneous pressure.
Well informed Nigerians know that the President followed the process in caging this canary only by a clever half measure. The process is spelt out in the constitution. To not follow it is to choose the wrath of the National Assembly to which the hapless nation had looked for intervention in the feud between Sanusi on one side, the NNPC and the Ministry of Finance Plc on the other side.
It is not about Sanusi. It is about the Constitution. It cannot be applied at whims and caprices. Sadly those who argue in favour of the President on this will decry the despicable condition of the ordinary farmer and by extension 80% of the population. They will hiss and curse over the deplorable condition of our roads mostly Federal which are a result of constitutional abuses. I deplore Sanusi Lamido Sanus’s holier-than-thou outspokenness, yet I disagree with the President’s use or misuse of his powers in suspending him without dealing with the substantive issue of his $20billion allegation.
The President has powers he can patiently apply and even send the Central Bank to the jailers, but the process must be followed. Just as one lie will always beg for another one, this abuse of the law will beg for the compromise of the Senate and the House of Representatives and further down the line.
There is an inquest in the Senate chaired by Senator Ahmed Makarfi the result of which to my mind should have been in before the president’s action. That President Jonathan chose this crude path only says that he has better confidence in confronting the National Assembly and Nigerians and whatever they feel for transparency can be damned.
In his media chat, President Jonathan has defended his action, saying that he suspended the CBN Governor over a report on the activities of the Central Bank that allegedly revealed irregularities that necessitated the sanctioning of the Governor through suspension. It is difficult to convince the world that it was not witch-hunting.