Sanusi: The animal farm called Nigeria!

My plan was to prolong my brief sabbatical from writing, for a few months more at least. I had become quite bored of it all to be sincere. Events in the polity were becoming ever so predictable with uncanny regularity. I also needed time to recharge my batteries. But all that changed with the manner […]

My plan was to prolong my brief sabbatical from writing, for a few months more at least. I had become quite bored of it all to be sincere. Events in the polity were becoming ever so predictable with uncanny regularity. I also needed time to recharge my batteries.
But all that changed with the manner of the ‘dismissal’ – there is no other way to describe his contrived suspension given the fact that his successor was promptly appointed pending senate confirmation of the act – of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, erstwhile CBN Governor, and by far the most daring and audacious Nigerian to occupy the exalted and highly coveted office to date.
My senses of natural justice coupled with patriotic zeal, strug-gled to come to terms with the development. I just could not let the event pass by without a comment. And why not! Sanusi differed from all previous Governors of the CBN in many respects. He seemed to have arrived with a mission and perhaps surprised only himself when he declared that he would not be seeking for a second term in office. And if that failed to warn his current transducers, well, it may be because they never knew the man or his antecedents.
Unlike the Central Banks in most Third World countries which operated as if they were the private treasuries of the ruling establishment, the CBN under Sanusi, dared to differ. He was determined to exhibit the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of the apex bank at every opportunity. But today’s like Sanusi himself, has become extra-ordinary in many respects.
The message of fiscal discipline and accountability he preached were alien to the new lords of the manor, and their resolve particularly when it comes to the handling of public funds. It was only a matter of time before an open confrontation developed between him and the PDP administration at the centre. His damaging revelations on the state of NNPC accounts provided only a tiny glimpse of the actual rot in the system.  
He had to go. All his previous good works stood for nothing. It never mattered that his valiant efforts stabilized the entire financial system – banks, the stock market, pension funds, etc – at a time of great turmoil in the global financial system which him international applause and numerous awards. It mattered even less that his led to the arrest of several rogue bankers who fed fat on the previous system and ultimately to the recovery of billions of Naira they stole. In any other country except Nigeria, Sanusi would have earned a national honour for his efforts. But this sadly, is today’s Nigeria with all its contradictions.
In the clearest hint yet of how far decency has vacated the corridors of power these days, one of the thieving bank Chief Executives, already convicted abroad for money laundering had the audacity to write a lengthy letter to the President complaining about his treatment by the CBN under Sanusi, while conveniently glossing over the serious charges that made him a wanted person in the first place. The man had exploited our slow and corrupt judicial system at home to remain free.
The next act, which should not surprise anyone, going by the recent trend of events, is when his letter to the President is used as justification to arrest Sanusi. The fact that the rogue banker wrote the President only days before Sanusi’s removal from office should not escape our attention. It spoke volumes.
But Sanusi is not an angel. He is mortal like the rest of us. He has his flaws like the rest of us. For that reason, all the allegations against him must also be thoroughly investigated. But in doing so, due process must be observed. In a nation of lazy thinkers where the great majority are also highly gullible, Sanusi was not only hounded out of office,  an unfortunate impression was created as if he ran the CBN like his private fiefdom.
If the official letter that relieved him of his duties is to be believed, he unilaterally spent hundreds of billions of Naira on intervention projects of his choice across the country as if it was his private treasury. Most commentators who have subsequently condemned his alledged   profligacy an alarming degree of ignorance in the way and manner the bank is currently managed.
The CBN is one of the oldest institutions in the nation having commenced operations in July 1958. It is older than Nigeria. If we accept the charges against Sanusi, throughout that time it, the bank was run like a village association to the extent that he alone could incure such huge expenditure without inputs from the bank’s executive Management, or even the approval of its Board of Directors whose functions and responsibilities clearly delineated with various financial approval thresholds in place in the bank especially for capital expenditures.
Now, to put the accusations in their proper perspective, we need clear answers to the following questions: was Sanusi the first CBN Governor to initiate intervention projects across the country? Has it been the tradition of the apex bank to bring such projects under the purview of our extant public procurement laws in the past? Did he issue explicit directives for the bank not to comply with the provisions of the BPP Act or simply observed an established tradition of the bank in place long before he assumed duty? Where there instances of conflict of interest which involved him in any of the projects? Is there any evidence that the projects were inflated to enrich himself whatever guise? Did the expenditures meet with the procurement standards established by the bank for such projects?
The questions are by no means exhaustive, but one thing that made me laugh was the use of the word “financial recklessness” in the SGFs letter of suspension to Sanusi!  Coming in the wake of the simmering scandals surrounding the billions of dollars the NNPC diverted or is yet to account for and the serial indictment of a ministers member of same cabinet, was the President just discovering the meaning of the term, or just taking the Mickey out of Nigerians?
Regardless, it is obvious that none of the intervention projects of the CBN would have sailed through without the expressed approval of its Board of Directors. To single Sanusi out for blame therefore clearly suggests that factors other than those officially given for his removal must have been responsible for his removal.  This is more so, since even the report of the Financial Reporting Council used to justify his removal recognized the pluralism in the governance structure of the bank. It demanded for the dismissal of all its Deputy Governors as well!
It is precisely the stubburn relunctance of the president to make an issue of the more serious allegations against those assumed to be close to him for their more serious financial crimes against the state that made me to believe that we are essentially re-living George Orwell’s fictional Animal Farm in its worst form in Nigeria today.  
In Orwell’s Animal Farm, the main issue of conflict among its constituents was equity, or the lack of it. It did not surprise me when the Kano Emirates Council, in its reaction urgently urged the FG to review Sanusi’s ‘suspension’, by following the laid down procedure “in the interest of equity, justice and fairness”. Painfully, since any recourse to primordial sentiments ultimately devalues the interrogation of the serious challenge corruption poses to our unity and economic growth, some animals in our version of the Animal Farm, have become more equal than the others, solely on account of where they hail from and allegiance to the President, but not necessarily for their competence, or loyalty to the Republic. We can also have few illusions of what Sanusi said about ‘vested interests’ in a short video that went viral even before his apparent dismissal.