Decision of Mr President on Sanusi is Right

Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Mr. Mike Ozekhome on Friday said President Goodluck Jonathan’s suspension of Lamido Sanusi as Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was legally right. Ozekhome, who is also a constitutional lawyer and human rights activist, said this in a chat with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

“Constitutionally and legally, what President Jonathan did was correct. He does not require the consent of the National Assembly to do so.

“Anyone who is an employee has to know that he is answerable to his employer. You cannot bite the finger that feeds you.


“The Nigerian Constitution and the CBN Act give the President the authority to suspend or remove the Governor of the CBN,’’ he said. Ozekhome claimed that Sanusi had deviated from his primary duty of leading the apex bank to the path of monetary stability.

“A governor of a Central Bank in any part of the world should be seen and not heard. “When he should be heard, he should only be discussing monetary policies which will uplift the economy of his country. “In Nigeria, what we have is a CBN governor that has been fighting the government of his country,’’ he said.

Ozekhome alleged that Sanusi had been making very provocative and highly derogatory statements even about the monetary policies of his own country. “When you say all that, then how do you want international investors to come to the country, when a very reliable figure is saying all these negative things about his country,’’ he claimed.

The lawyer alleged that the ex-CBN governor had been acting like a political leader or traditional ruler by donating public funds to universities, political aides and at other functions. He said Sanusi was not versatile and had made six mistakes on the missing funds from the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) within the last two months.

“This variation in figures of the missing funds has caused chaos in the country, which is not supposed to be so,’’ Ozekhome said. (Nation)