5th March, 2014
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, suspended Central Bank Governor, tells ADEMOLA ADEGBAMIGBE and EBHOMELE EROMOSELE what was discussed at the last meeting he had with President Goodluck Jonathan and what he plans to do next
While in Niger Republic, did you have an inkling that you would be suspended?
I had a meeting with President in January, where he accused me of leaking a letter and I denied it and he said it came from the Central Bank and I had rejected that and he had effectively said if I couldn’t find who leaked it from the Central Bank, I should resign. I said I wasn’t going to resign. I think if you have had that kind of meeting with the President, you should know the President wants you out. At the back of your mind, you know he can do it. In fact, he is the President of Nigeria and can remove you legally or illegally. Nobody should be under any kind of illusion that the President cannot do it. He is the President and in control of the state. To that extent, it was clear to me that if he wanted to remove me, he would remove me. That was not an issue; it was just that I was not going to resign myself. This was why when he said I was suspended, I said that’s fine. I was called to do it and if I’m removed from the job, that’s it. I don’t think it was important. All the things I set out to do have been done. We had fixed the banks, the banks are not at risk; we have brought down inflation and we’ve stepped down the exchange rate. I have reached the point now, where I am dispensable.
Many see you as the first philanthropist Central Bank Governor, donating money here and there. It is one of the things that got you into trouble.
I don’t know what you call donations and certainly, when you look at some of the things the Central Bank has done, they were done at the request of the government and we will come out with them, I’m sure, at the appropriate time. I don’t think this is the time to start disclosing things we did at the request of the government itself. Now what are these donations? We made donations, for example, to flood victims when we had the national flood disaster and we got the banking industry to make these contributions. We donated to bomb blast victims. Those are what you call donations. We made investments in the educational sector, which is an area that needs investment. I don’t know what they mean.
Critics contend that such things are not part of the core functions of the CBN…
Well, how do they define that? The board of the Central Bank approves the budget. The board of the Central Bank approves our expenditure. And this is not money that we took from the Federation Account, but earned by the Central Bank. So, where did they get what the Central Bank should do? If you go to the websites of central banks, you would see the interventions that we do. Nigeria is not the only country that does that.
Dr. Doyin Okupe said your removal is an indication of President Jonathan’s unwillingness to condone corruption. How do you respond to this?
That’s fine. If there is proof of corruption against me, I should be removed. But I’m not sure that I was given any opportunity to respond to any allegation of corruption. I have looked at what has been published as allegations. Have you seen anyone that said I did anything?
The Financial Reporting Council’s report listed certain infractions against your name…
Against me, personally?
Things they said the CBN did like issues with the Emirates Airlines…
I don’t want to keep replying to allegations that were put on the internet. There is a private airline called Emirate Touch, which does charter for currency. And they just assumed this is Emirates Airlines. It is just ridiculous. There are many other things like that, many of which a simple phone call could have resolved.
Wings Airline was also mentioned and it was alleged that the value of the contract the CBN gave to it is greater than its yearly turnover…
But how do you decide turnover? If we have an airline that does charter and they carry currency and they come with an invoice and you pay them and you can show that you paid, that is all that you are expected to do. Whether they put that in their account is an entirely different matter.
Why is it difficult for the two agencies in control of the country’s wealth to have a seamless reconciliation?
First of all, do you agree that the Central Bank was not the first institution to raise this issue? The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, had come out to say that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, did not remit about N3 trillion. Transparency International had come out to say that NNPC is the least transparent institution in the world. There had been the Nuhu Ribadu report. People talk as if I was the first to make this point; I wasn’t. What happened to the Ribadu report?
The issue raised was very simple. NNPC had shipped crude in its name, made some payments in its name and there was a huge difference, let’s reconcile. When the reconciliation was done, we agreed that you shipped $67 billion worth of crude, you brought back $47 billion. There is $20 billion that needs to be explained. First of all, a chunk of the domestic crude earnings went to kerosene subsidy and we have seen that this is a product that is not subsidised. The subsidy was not appropriated for and therefore, it proves my point that money that should have come to the Federation Account was taken illegally. There were claims of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit, PMS (or petrol). The National Assembly is still trying to audit and confirm that the amount of PMS they said they brought in was what they brought in. So, we don’t know how much of that is valid.
There was $6 billion, which NNPC said it forwarded to the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC, and the money was with NPDC. You were all there at the National Assembly when the MD of NPDC said he did not receive the $6 billion. If the MD of NNPC keeps telling you of $6 billion with the NPDC and the MD of NPDC comes to say his organisation never received this money, what would you assume? Somebody is lying. The NNPC MD was asked if he was satisfied with what the MD of NPDC was saying that he had not received any such money. What did he say? The video is there for everyone to see. He said: ‘We will go back, streamline our relationship, look at our systems, our legal issues and improve our relationship with the agencies.’ There was no answer. So, for me, let’s forget the distraction. That’s why I am ready to accept when people say it is politically motivated or that I was only reacting because I was queried. Fine! Does it change the fact that $20 billion is missing?
I am not going to place myself in a position where I am going to be the only person explaining. I raised questions and these questions should be answered.
Is it true that you apologised at a point because you quoted a wrong figure?
I never did. I never apologised to anyone. What I said was that I regretted that the letter had found its way to the press because that was not the intent. I also said it was unfortunate because that letter was supposed to be the beginning of an investigation and not the end. I never said $50 billion was missing. I said from the initial report I had, there was a difference of $50 billion between what NNPC shipped and what it repatriated. I thought we should have waited until the conclusion of the investigation before we say that.
Your critics think you decided to blow open this issue with the NNPC because of your link with the opposition party, the All Progressives Congress, APC. How would you react to this?
I have no links with the opposition party. I have close friends in all parties. The President’s Principal Private Secretary, Hassan Tukur, is a close friend; the National Chairman of the PDP, Adamu Mu’azu is a personal friend. Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State is a very close friend. So is Senator Bukola Saraki, who has been my friend from King’s College, Lagos. When did he become an opposition politician? A few months ago. Am I now to leave him because he belongs to the opposition?
Nasir el-Rufai has been my friend from the university. I have a read a story that I was supposed to marry el-Rufai’s sister, but the youngest sister he has is 57 years old. So I don’t know which sister I was supposed to have married. I have friends. Some of them are politicians and some are not. Wale Edun is in APC. He’s been my friend since the 1990s. He was a guardian to my son. Am I going to leave him because he is in the wrong political party? How do I even know the right or wrong political party? I am not in any political party and I don’t have a membership card of any political party. I do not attend any party meeting or that of a party caucus, but I have friends all over.
What would be your reaction to the petition written by Erastus Akingbola, generally accusing you of using Saraki to take over his bank?
It is an old petition. They got Erastus Akingbola again to write it in February. But I am sure you know he has been saying that since 2010 when he was removed. Obviously, somebody was in touch with him and said: ‘come and write again.’ And he wrote another one dated February and as you know, this was all part of the process of gathering as much as possible on the governor.
You know, it is a sign of how far we have basically gone back as a country that the Governor of Central Bank should be suspended and one of the basis for the suspension is a petition written by a man who ran his bank into the ground. The bank had a negative capital of N600 billion. We went to a court in London, obtained a court judgement of N160 billion against this man for stealing money from his own bank. Yet, the Nigerian government, for which the Central Bank is working, suspends the governor of the Central Bank and attaches as one of the reasons for suspending him a petition written by this gentleman. This is a man facing criminal trial for theft. The judge, who heard the case was hurriedly promoted to the Court of Appeal three weeks to the final closing statement and the passing of judgement so that she would not deliver the judgement. I think whoever advised the President or the Secretary to the Government of the Federation to attach that petition as a basis for suspending the Governor of the Central Bank didn’t offer good advice. I don’t think it speaks well of the system. But the substance of that allegation does not exist and I don’t want to use TheNEWS to be answering. As you remember, the suspension letter didn’t even ask me to respond. It just said: ‘you are suspended on account of these things.’ So I am waiting for time I’d be asked to respond.
It is widely believed that you were aware of the scam you alleged a long time before now. Why did you wait till the end of your tenure before coming out to speak?
You should read my memo to the Senate. My memo to the Senate documented all the steps I took since 2010; from my meetings with the NNPC to get an explanation to my investigations into fuel subsidy. It was just one step after another. It was an ongoing process.
Throughout my tenure as Central Bank Governor, I raised one issue or the other.
Do you feel threatened?
No, I don’t. My life is in the hands of God and I don’t think it is even an important issue at this moment. If you talk about $20 billion, there are many people involved. If you take the subsidy racket of kerosene, you’ve got the marketers, you’ve got the middlemen, you’ve got the people who give the subsidy. People are making a lot of money. Now, you can’t rule out that there are people who would want to hit at you. And of course, with the entire communication machinery of the state, the whole idea now is to say: ‘Okay, he says we are corrupt, but he is also corrupt.’ That is the answer (to them), but that is not an answer. The answer to ‘you are corrupt’ is ‘I am not corrupt.’
The questions are: Is $20 billion missing? Has it been accounted for? If it has, where is it and who took it? These are the questions that must be answered. If they have allegations against me, they should make them known and I would defend myself. But for them to link it to the fact that I said something is unfortunate. This is where Nigerians have always lost it. Farouk Lawan was investigating subsidy fraud, he came up with a fantastic report involving trillions of naira. He was then trapped by Otedola and the SSS and there was a video showing him collecting money. Because of that, Nigerians forgot the trillions of naira that he had discovered. We abandoned the entire report and that was the end of it. Professor Tam David- West discovered fraud in the purchase of a vessel, MD Tumer, and what did they do? They tried him for accepting a cup of tea and wristwatch and jailed him for taking a bribe. Nigerians forgot they should be aggrieved, but concentrated on the wristwatch.
It is a classic technique of government. Now, you can hear them saying: ‘Look, there is an FRC report against the Governor of Central Bank and it is because of that that he is saying this.’ Okay, it is because of that he is saying this, but is it true or not?
Where do you go from here?
I have always said what my next move would be. I will go and study languages and when I come back, I hope to work on my farm, I hope to set up a think tank on public policy in Africa. But my next move depends on what the state allows me to do. The state has my passport. When the state says ‘you can’t travel out,’ then I can’t travel. If the state says ‘we are going to lock you up in jail’, then I would be in jail writing my memoirs.
While you have been able to manage the inflation rate, the real sector seems to be reeling.
The Central Bank has done more than any other government institution to provide cheap funding for the real sector. We’ve put about N800 billion of low interest money into agriculture and also intervened in other sectors. The real sector needs more than finance. Who’s providing the finance? Who’s providing the infrastructure? Who’s providing the high-yielding variety of goods? Who’s providing the right tariff and trade policies and protecting the industries from unfair competition from Chinese people? The Central Bank has done everything the Central Bank should do, but there are other institutions of government that need to work as well. How much is the government investing in the real sector? How much is the government investing in large scale agriculture? How much is the government investing in roads and power? All the money is going into petroleum subsidy, import, security, salaries, overhead. Look at the federal budget. Until you have the right fiscal and structural policies, finance cannot fix the problems.
People overestimate the potential of micro-finance banking. You think you can go to a village, where you have not given them water, electricity, education and healthcare, but you set up a micro-finance bank and you think if the micro finance bank gives them loans of N100,000 or N200,000 at 40 per cent interest, it would remove them from poverty. It cannot work. Where are the requirements? It is important when we talk about the real sector or when we talk about finance to remember that finance works within an ecosystem and that ecosystem involves physical and structured policies.
The Senate seems comfortable with the President’s action against you and it is going ahead with the investigation?
Look, I am not interested in who is comfortable or who is not comfortable. I don’t think the Senate has made any official position and I think only one senator has spoken. I don’t think it is even a matter for the Senate. Like I said, I will never go to court and ask that I be reinstated or that my very fine colleague, Sarah Alade, that we should take up an injunction against her parading herself as governor or the very fine gentleman, Godwin Emefiele, should not be made governor. I am very happy for them and I support them and I wish them all the best. What I am going to court to do is to challenge the right of the President to suspend the Governor of the Central Bank in the interest of the institution. There is a need to do this because tomorrow, if the Governor of Central Bank annoys the President, the President would write a letter and attach all forms of petitions and documents that the governor has never heard of or seen and then say you are fired on the basis of the documents. I don’t see how that is not going to psychologically affect the governor, who will make sure that he does not annoy the political authority which undermines the overall basis of the Central Bank. I am proud of my record as Governor of Central Bank. If I look at the core mandate of the Central Bank, I have achieved 100 per cent. Whatever people do or say, even if today they decide to, on the basis of the allegations, put me in jail, you cannot take away the fact that we have single-digit inflation, that we have a stable exchange rate and no Nigerian (and this was the promise I made to Musa Yar’Adua when he appointed me governor), that no depositor has lost a penny in any Nigerian bank. This is the first time it has happened and I am grateful to God it has happened. We have done our biometrics project, we have done our cashless Nigeria, we have a good financial inclusion, we have done our mobile banking, we have done more than enough in less than five years. Now, what happened to me as an individual can happen where people can complain whether I should have given donations to Boko Haram victims or whether I should have built centres of excellence.
Those interventions they talk about in the universities are things I am most proud of. The Central Bank has gone to secondary schools across the country and put up structures I am proud of. If the government says Central Bank should stop, that’s fine. The Ministry of Education is not doing it, nobody is doing it. Education can go to the dogs. Central Bank should provide the money to be used for overhead in the federal budget. That is fine, you know. At least I know that while I was there, I put up these structures and the structures are there forever.
A criticism is that the contracts for those interventions contravened public procurement rules…
But they did not say exactly what part of the Public Procurement Act we breached. They didn’t say. Did the contract not go through tender? Were they not approved by our board? Did we not use professional construction? Did I give the contract to myself? Anybody can make this statement but it is only a smear campaign. When I said $20 billion was missing, I brought evidence. These are the things you have done, you have purchased kerosene at $30 billion, you have sold at $10 billion, inflicted a lot on the Federation Account without appropriation. That is how you level an allegation. You have taken oil blocs, from which money should go to the Federation Account and handed those monies to Atlantic Energy and NPDC. That’s a specific allegation. Public Procurement Act? How was Atlantic Energy selected? Was it in compliance with the Public Procurement Act? Was there ever an advertisement by NNPC and NPDC that they were looking for operators? If you want to hang anybody, you can hang anybody. You can pick an institution and level all sorts of allegations, but there is a serious problem staring you in the face and you are basically fishing in waters for others. You don’t know the reason I don’t want to reply too much. If I respond–and they know that these allegations are practically baseless and that I can prove that they are baseless–what then happens if they now go and start raking up a whole new set of allegations? I would spend the next few months defending myself all over again. It is like this whole process. If I had not announced that I do not want a second term, the punishment would have been ‘deny him a second term, humiliate him, say that he begged but we refused to give him.’ Because I had announced, ‘okay, this man cannot be allowed to go like that. He has annoyed us.’ I am very happy that it is happening this way.
-Culled from TheNEWS magazine