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PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA
Beyond The Face-Off Between Federal Legislators And The Central Bank Governor (I)
If Wednesday’s face-off between senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, over the governor’s recent claim that the legislators are costing this country an arm has established anything, it is that the Kano prince is not easily intimidated. The weekend before, the CBN governor had told an audience at this year’s graduation ceremony of Igbinideon University, Okada , Benin City, that the legislators cost Nigerians over a quarter of the Federal Government’s overhead spending of 536 billion Naira in this year’s budget, or 130 billion. Predictably this angered the legislators who apparently concluded that the man was out to portray them as a profligate lot. Equally predictably they couldn’t wait to summon him for a public grilling as soon as work resumed this week. Speaker after speaker the senators told him during the Wednesday public hearing on his weekend lecture that he lied with statistics for which, they all insisted, he owed the National Assembly an apology. Leading the assault was Senator Iyiola Omisore, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, who presided over the hearing. Sanusi’s claim, he said was “a deliberate attempt to mislead the nation.” Waiving the budget document before the audience, the senator said the figure of 536 billion Naira Sanusi quoted in his offending lecture as the Federal Government’s overhead in this year’s budget was false. The correct figure, the senator said, was 1.3 trillion. This, he said, meant that the National Assembly’s overhead spending was only 3.5% of the FG’s overhead expenditure, a far cry from the CBN governor’s 25%. This seemed to have been corroborated by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, who said there was a difference between what he said was “overhead expenditure” and “service-wide expenditure.” The latter, he said included 660.8 billion vote making the 1.3 trillion that Omisore said was the correct figure. “If I were the one looking at it from this context,” Aganga said, “I would have added service-wide.” If the minister said this to mollify the senators, it seemed to have had the exact opposite effect. Apparently thinking with the minister’s position they now had their quarry exactly where they wanted him they moved in for the kill; obviously speaking the minds of her colleagues, Nkechi Nwaogu, the Chairperson of the Senate Banking Committee, asked Sanusi in effect, if he would not apologize for giving Nigerians what she said were the wrong figures. “Now that you know that the N660.8 billion was not included in your calculation, now that you know that your figures are incomplete, are you still standing on what you know? Is National Assembly still collecting 25.41 per cent or just 3.5 per cent?” If the senators thought they could intimidate the Kano prince, they clearly misjudged him. He would, he said looking them straight in their eyes, resign first before apologizing to anyone for saying what he knew to be the truth. “I enjoy my job,” he said, “because I like serving people, but it is not my life. I am not thinking of quitting but gentlemen if you want me to quit, I will go without a fight.” With those words the man consolidated the reputation he earned when he first appeared before the Senate for his confirmation as CBN governor last year as someone with the courage of his convictions and supremely confident of his competence. He also became an instant hero; texts of his defiant statement soon started flying between mobile phones around the country. Cleary dejected that they could not intimidate the banker, Senator Omisore dismissed him as a threat to the country’s banking industry. “If you can mislead us on this issue,” he said, “the Nigerian banks are in danger.” To which the Renaissance Professionals (RP), an anonymous organisation that has waged a relentless war against the CBN governor almost from the day he assumed office, would, I suspect, respond with the words “You can say that again!” His big crime in the eyes of this organisation seems to be his sack soon after his appointment early last year of the chief executives of several banks for sundry offenses, including insider trading and mismanagement, offenses that almost ruined the banks. Between November last year and August this year the RP ran a series of full page adverts in several newspapers, including Thisday and The Guardian, which sought to cast aspersion on the man’s integrity and competence. At the last count there were over 50 such full page adverts which such unflattering headlines like “Salvaging the Economy or Securing A Godfather’s Mandate?”, “CBN’s ‘Reforms’: Acts of Wisdom or Absolute Idiocy”, and “CBN Governor’s Scorecard: An Impressive High Or A Pathetic Low.” Then from mid-June this year, the organisation ran a series of 14 full page adverts titled, “Sanusi Lamido Vs. The Nigerian Economy: Is He Qualified To Be Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank?” Each of those adverts which was a study in savage propaganda, ended with a plea to President Goodluck Jonathan to sack the man. “OUR DEAR PRESIDENT,” the organisation said in the refrain, NIGERIANS COUNT ON YOU TO SALVAGE THE ECONOMY.” The Renaissance Professionals were not the only ones who hated Sanusi with a passion. In this they were probably no worse than Dr. Frederick Fasheun, the Founder/President of the Oodua People’s Congress. Like the RP, Fasheun has also waged a relentless war against Sanusi especially in the media. Not satisfied with his attack on the man in interview after interview, he published a full page advert in February this year in which he bluntly asked the president to sack the CBN governor. “Time has come,” he said in the advert published in The Guardian of February 21, among other newspapers, “for the country to offload the incompetent, inconsistent and incoherent management currently running the Central Bank of Nigeria. Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi must go...He must be stopped.” Obviously Sanusi has since got used to attempts to intimidate him. Equally obviously the man remains unfazed. It was not surprising therefore that he refused to apologize to the senators in last Wednesday’s encounter with them. Instead he raised very fundamental questions on the cost of our democracy. “There’s need to reduce the overheads, to reduce the expenditure in government spending,” he said at the end of the hearing. This will be the subject of this column next week, God willing. Food for thought from America Meantime, here’s a piece for thought about our former president, Baba Iyabo, of course, the man who apparently does not know when to let go of power. It is reproduced from the summer edition of the influential American journal, Foreign Policy. The article is about five former world leaders who, it said, would not fade away in retirement but would only get up to grand mischief in their bid to seek relevance in the affairs of the world.
OLESEGUN OBASANJO Old job: President of Nigeria, 1999-2007 New image: Once lauded for helping his country transition from a military dictatorship to a genuine, if chaotic and violent, democracy, Obasanjo has more recently seen his reputation tarnished by a series of corruption investigations.
Then there's the fact that Obasanjo has never really willingly stepped aside. He attempted to amend the Nigerian Constitution to allow himself a third term, and when that failed, he installed the moribund Umaru Yar'Adua as his successor ahead of an election widely believed to be rigged. It was suspected by many in Nigeria that Yar'Adua was chosen because he was seen as weak and could be manipulated by the Obasanjo loyalists in his cabinet (Obasanjo's political influence has faded significantly in recent years, however).
In addition to being hit with new revelations of corruption committed during his time in office, including hundreds of millions of dollars in alleged bribes from U.S. contractor Halliburton, Obasanjo became involved in a messy personal scandal when his son accused him in court of sleeping with his own daughter-in-law.
Recently, thousands of residents of a town in south-western Nigeria have protested plans to demolish their homes after Obasanjo acquired their land. His daughter, Iyabo, a Nigerian senator, was also embarrassed when she was forced to admit to withdrawing thousands of dollars from the country's health budget to pay for a retreat in Ghana.
Obasanjo has continued to maintain a high international profile, serving as a U.N. envoy to peace talks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but his traditionalist views have sometimes embarrassed the organization. At a U.N. event this year with former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he called homosexuality an "abomination" and dismissed individuals' right to privacy, saying "You want to make love to a horse?"
By Joshua E. Keating
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