Sanusi and his Thoughtless Challenge of Mr. President

Posted by African Examiner Articles/Opinion, Latest Headlines Saturday, January 11th, 2014

By Odimegwu Onwumere

With his recent remark – “I Am Not Resigning Until My Tenure Ends” – Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the embattled Central Bank of Nigeria governor, can be best described as a contentious person. Since his appointment, he never seemed to be a man who speaks with one tongue, but two. Some of his first sermonisations were that the Federal Government should fire more 50% of Civil Servants. On another occasion, he raised an alarm that certain billions of naira were missing. He would later come to say that his comment was in error. It has been from one ill-behaved comment to another by Sanusi, making him a man whose brain needs cross-examination by a competent psychologist or psychiatrist.

CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

Sanusi was over conceited to abreast the fact that a public office holder or political appointee at the national level serves at the enjoyment of the sitting president. Such an appointee is shown the exit door in a case the appointer no longer enjoys the pleasure of the appointee. So, keeping Sanusi would not be in the confidence of the person who appointed him, with him having shown much treacherous tendencies and lopsidedness to duty and today, romancing with whomever that he feels that he earns his support against his appointer. Who is sure what else Sanusi wants to teach Nigerians when he has blatantly denigrated the office of the president by that singular comment that he was not going to quit till his tenure expires, even when he was supposedly asked to do so by the president. This is a tolerated insult and mockery of the presidency by Mallam Sanusi not taken too far. He would not go on terminal leave or resign now, are violation and desecration of the office of the president.

In earnest, not minding whatever academic qualifications that may be associated with Sanusi and his pedigree as a prince of a northern ruling class, he behaves like one who is yet to grow up in handling of national issues, let alone, such aplomb position as the country’s chief monetary manager. It’s not that somebody was in the job of labeling Sanusi that everyday money was missing from the CBN purse, but himself. Invariably, Sanusi is well competent on how to talk but not on how truth is enforced about the country’s Excess Crude Oil money. Sanusi has made the business of the CBN to be shrouded in secrecy. There is always a missing figure and actual figure, which have made Sanusi a strange alarmist, never to be taken seriously any day, any time. He has made the work of the CBN to look like a wrong one and Nigeria, a wrong country, when a man like Sanusi has seemingly taken the posture of an opposition to be bashing President Goodluck Jonathan.

His foolhardiness that he would not resign and was ready to resist any attempt to force him out of office before June 2 when his tenure expires except that 2/3 of the Senate says otherwise, makes Sanusi a man of arrogant posture. Initially, he sounded like a prudent man when he told the Senate select committee in December 2012 that he would resign. The comment was in the aftermath of one of his garrulousness that the National Assembly’s budget for overhead was 25.4% of the country’s total. So Sanusi has been jumping from one comment to another. In a lecture he delivered at the eighth convocation of the Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State, he said 25% of the nation’s resources were spent on the lawmakers.

Much as Nigerians knew, Senators on this floor took turns to tongue lash Sanusi. He was fingered as a man who talks like a weed-controlled fellow. Some of the questions from the House were, “do you enjoy your job? Do you feel like quitting?’’ And the ever loquacious CBN Governor replied before an erroneous soothing crowd of spectators: “My name is Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, (my name is) not Central Bank Governor. I enjoy my job but if you want me to quit, I will honourably quit.”

Much as everybody would agree that democracy is dependent on allowing people the freedom to speak, it is however, not speaking like Sanusi whose ovation has expired long time ago. The boastful Sanusi had said that he had always been involved in the fight for democracy. He had hinged his comment on the way back to the time of June 12 and that even if the military takes over now, he will still fight them off: a comment that makes him better be taken as a bigheaded opposition than a gentleman spearheading the exalted monetary office as the CBN.

What perhaps had been puffing Sanusi to superciliously say that he would not quit as purportedly directed by Mr. President to him to do was because he saw President Jonathan as a man from the minority and himself, from the majority Hausa/Fulani tribe. But he was unaware and was highly proud to align with the fact that the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria confers on the president so much power. Sanusi is too condescendingly to come to term with the fact that President Jonathan is his employer before his inglorious and unpleasant comment.

Whoever that is backing Sanusi that swells his head, just want him to ruin his career. It is not the 1999 constitution that is Sanusi’s employer, but the president. Sanusi’s haughtily comment that he would not resign except his tenure expires has betrayed the ‘man of honour’ that many Nigerians thought that he was. Many Nigerians would say that the goofing Sanusi thought that he had a legal right to force himself upon an un-willing employer.

But one thing is certain: Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has shown that he is a very proud man. They said that he studied economics, but he was incompetent to use his ‘common’ sense to know when he was brought to test and how he was expected to conduct himself. He did not take grace to bay, owing to the fact that he would have been removed from the CBN in about July 2010, with regards by some people that he has damaged and disorganised the banking industry, Stock Market and the economy. Claptrap!

Odimegwu Onwumere, a Poet/Writer, writes from Rivers State.