I want to be remembered as someone who speaks truth to power’

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Emir of Kano, relieves his encounter with former President Goodluck Jonathan on the day he stared down at the President and refused to blink. He spoke with Peace Hyde, West Africa correspondent for Forbes Africa TV’s, “My Worst Day” with Peace Hyde.

Isaac Anyaogu and Chigozie Egwuatu record the highpoints of the revealing interview. Excerpt:

Who is the Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II?

It’s a tough one. I suppose a lot have changed in my biography, having been the governor of central bank; a banker, before then, an academic. In terms of the throne, it’s a hereditary throne. The dynasty has existed for over 1,000 years. And my part of the dynasty has been ruling Kano for over 200 years.

Before we talk about this position and your part in the financial sector, could you please tell us more about your journey?

Well, I came into banking more or less by accident. My plan as an undergraduate was always to go on with my masters and Ph.D and become an academic economist. And I did such with post-graduate work, and I did such in university teaching. And then going in search of a Ph.D in 1984, the government of the General Muhammadu Buhari, faced then with exactly similar situations we are in now when he came into office, had to put a lot of exchange controls, and one of those controls was to put a ban on scholarships abroad for disciplines that were available in Nigerian universities.

And for some of us as young academics, the attraction of being an academia was an opportunity to go to the US, UK or France, do a doctorate and get that exposure. And I decided that I didn’t want to start visiting any Nigerian university. I decided to move my hands elsewhere, so I started off as a corporate finance person, because Icon was a subsidiary of Morgan Guaranty Trust in New York, and it had a very strong corporate finance department

And then, at a time I had to go to Sudan to study Islamic Law, and then back to UBA and was drafted to risk management and since then I have not actually been what you call a commercial banker. I have always been sent to the intellectual aspect of the tenets of banking, and risk management as of that time was the cutting-edge of banking. And then I rose to the position of Chief Risk Officer in UBA.

When I look at your career from banking and now as the Emir of Kano, I’m sure you are one of the most successful people with experience. When was your worst day in all these, so far?

I think it will have to go down to the moment I came to conclusion that I was not going to complete my tenure as the governor of central bank. I had for many years expressed concerns about businesses not going up, but nobody heard me. I always thought there were some explanations of maybe, the profit-sharing contracts that were not payable to Nigerians, the oil companies taking the bulk of the revenues we were getting. We had all sorts of financial arrangement of oil companies, maybe the revenues were going to pay off all those debts; maybe NNPC was borrowing from the banks and they were going to pay off the banks.

I think when I came face-to-face with the reality that money was actually coming in and not being remitted; that subsidies were being paid on a product even though there was presidential order not to pay subsidy on kerosene, that there were so-called strategic alliance contract agreement with people that have no background in oil exploration to be taking money from Nigerian shipments.

I was so devastated. I had to take a very difficult decision of keep quiet and hang on for the few remaining months I have in the tenure and just leave in peace.

At the point in time, what was actually going through your mind? What were your fears or your reservations?

In my life I have always defined myself by the commitment to speaking the truth to honour. And this I did not start from the central bank. Those who knew me from my days as a student activist, from my days as a radical academia; try to see that, you can just Google my name and you will see the articles I have written and all the debates I have had in the first three years with people in politics and Bureau de Change. And it has always been my life to say things the way I see them.

So, when I was faced with the banking crisis, I knew I had just two options. One option is to do what Central Bank has always done, what central banks in the whole world always do, which is to say, you know, when one bank fails, people just see that only one bank failed they don’t see the tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who have been destroyed and these people actually are the voiceless.

So, another option is to say look, no matter how much it is going to cost the system, we need to make the investment necessary to protect those people. So, when I went to the President, I basically gave him those two options. I said look, you will take the decision but this is what I feel. I feel we should protect the poor people, and there are implications to that. We will remove the managements of the banks, we have to go after the debtors, these are very rich people, if the banks cannot pay back, and we will also need to prosecute them.

And he said, you know what? I agree with you. We can’t allow this to continue and he asked, do you need help? I then said we need the EFCC to prosecute, because I don’t prosecute financial crimes; and I need the police for protection of my people and protection of the banks. And I need the SSS to make sure that these people whom we want to try do not escape from the country. That was exactly what made our interventions possible.

Talking about your suspension from the Central Bank, how did you feel?

We have in the Central Bank what is called the governor’s consultative committee, made up of the executive directors and the governor. We use to review the performance of the economy. At one of the meetings, I complained that I was not satisfied at all that we hadn’t understood what was happening to the revenues.

For example, in 2012, the average oil price was $130; in 2013 it was $112. Yet, between 2012 and 2013, government oil revenue was by $10 billion. I said that we can’t just be reporting numbers, we had to be practical.

Did you anticipate that this could be the end of your position?

I will be honest with you. In my mind, I believed that this kind of thing could not be happening without very senior people knowing. I don’t know whether you have seen my TEDX video, I talked about it. I knew that taking on the NNPC was taking on the most powerful minister in Jonathan’s government and nobody that has touched (Allison) Diezani had survived.

It was not a question of what would happen, I just knew that I did not want to go down in history as having seen this and kept quiet. I never saw being the governor of central bank as my end, it was never really an ambition for me, it was a job. I will leave it anyway. I decided I didn’t want a second term because I didn’t have the kind of relationship with the people that made me look forward to another five years.

So the only reason I stayed was because I believed that if you were called to serve your country don’t just look away, my Uncle told me. The idea was to complete the term and then go. But in my mind I was always ready to leave any time, so it wasn’t an issue.

I said that was fine, frankly it wasn’t the Central Bank who wanted to have an explanation for the $49 billion. If we were proved wrong we would be very happy because no Central Bank governor, no Nigerian would like to believe that there was so much money that was not accounted for, but after that $29 billion there was no reasonable explanation for $20 billion.

There were millions of dollars paid as petroleum subsidy, and I had evidence that President Yar’ Adua had written and directed that kerosene subsidy should be stopped. That the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulation Agency (PPPRA), which is an agency that pay subsidy, had officially accepted that and therefore NNPC had no right to pay kerosene subsidy.

Who do you think was responsible?

NNPC was doing it. In all my documentation, everything I said out there, I placed all the blames squarely on NNPC. Was NNPC doing this on its own? I don’t think so and certainly there was supervising minister who was chairman of the board of NNPC, who cannot just continue to claim he doesn’t know what happened.

Anyway, in the middle of all this, the president called me to a meeting at 3pm, and the place was like it was swept clean. There was no one apart from security services, eerie silence, like everybody has been asked to go.

He says to me that he is calling me because that letter you wrote to me got to Obasanjo. I said I am surprised. He said he is calling me because he thinks I know who gave Obasanjo the letter. No, I didn’t.  He said that the letter must have been given by the CBN, and I said no, the letter was in a different place. It was in petroleum, it was in finance and the CBN, and by the way Obasanjo has been a President and so he has lived in this villa for eight years and he is more likely to have sources at this villa than the CBN.

Because that wasn’t the purpose of the meeting, he said he is convinced that that letter went from the Central Bank and I had 24 hours to find who leaked the letter or sack somebody, the director who prepared the letter or my secretary or somebody in the Central Bank, and that if I didn’t sack anybody then that was proof that I leaked the story and therefore I should resign. So, of course that was the purpose of the meeting.

What was your opinion on that ultimatum?

All I said to him was that first I was surprised that I am being asked to resign for raising an alarm over missing fund, while the minister who is in charge of it has not been asked to resign. >From there I knew that I have signed my death warrant if I make that kind of statement, that was it and I knew. I said to him that I have no intention of resigning and he got very angry. Once I mentioned the minister, his countenance changed and he said you know, whether you like it or not, you are going to leave the office and I cannot continue to work with you. Either you or I will leave government.

So, I knew I was not going to see the end of my tenure, it was just a matter of time so I thanked him and shook his hand and left.

I was amazed that the concern was not so much that there was so much corruption but that somebody had written about it or that somebody had leaked the letter. Even if I had leaked the letter to Obasanjo, I was surprised that leaking the letter was far more important than the issue.

Was there any time you were afraid for your life?   

I went straight to the office of the principal secretary, Hassan Tukur, and I went with a gentleman from Kano and I said to them, gentlemen I am coming to you because I have just had a meeting with the President and the President has threatened me. I repeated what happened and said to them I am telling the two of you and I am going to tell the people close to me so that they know if anything happens to me it is the President

They then said no, no, and no that I shouldn’t talk to people but I would have to tell my family. Anyway I did tell people close to me and the newspapers picked up the story and there was headline. The papers thought it was a telephone conversation they didn’t know it was a face-to-face meeting and it came out.