Sanusi remains the Governor of CBN, says Jonathan

President Goodluck Jonathan said Monday night that Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi who was suspended as the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN last Thursday may return to his job to hand over to his successor if he is not guilty of the allegations of financial misdemeanour levelled against him in the report of Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria.

Indeed, according to him, Sanusi remains the Governor of CBN but was only asked to step aside to allow the bank’s board resolve issues raised in the 2012 financial audit of the apex bank.

Jonathan added that Sanusi would be prosecuted only if a clear fraud is established against him: “If Sanusi has no case to answer, how will you prosecute someone who has no case?” he asked.

Jonathan, middle, and the media panel

On why only the CBN governor was singled out for suspension based on the report of the Financial Reporting Council, when the report indicted almost every member of the CBN leadership, the President said the governor was made to step aside because he is the head while noting that it was not possible to suspend everybody.

The President also defended his suspension of the Governor.

The President argued that “issue of suspension and removal are very different”, contrary to assertions by some critics and that he has to “quickly rush” to suspend the CBN governor so that allegations contained against Sanusi and in the audit reports of 2012 and 2013 would be resolved and cleared.

The President also said the CBN Act which gave enormous powers to the Governor will only be reviewed if it is found to be out of tune with similar legislations in other parts of the world.

Though the President expressed his reservations over different figures of missing funds given by the suspended CBN Governor, he however promised to continue with investigations into the allegations, promising that “Nobody is covering anybody up,” he said.

According to him, no President will watch even one billion dollars miss, “even one Kobo.”

On the controversies over the Kerosene subsidy

The President said he was aware of the directive by the late President Yar’Adua for the deregulation of the price of kerosene which was made at a time the price of crude oil fell globally in 2008 because he was then the Vice President.

He however argued that the directive was not carried through because of opposition by labour which argued that the price of oil may go up again. He said for such directive to become effective, it must be advertised and gazetted.

The President therefore said the directive “is old and it is rather mischievous for someone to go to the archives and pullout the memo and begin to distribute,”.

He was making an obvious reference to the suspended CBN Governor who had presented the memos that contain the directive in his presentation to the National Assembly to prove that the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC had paid over $8 billion out as kerosene subsidy in negation of government’s order.

Pm news.