A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Mike Ozekhome, on Friday said President Goodluck Jonathan\u2019s suspension of Lamido Sanusi as Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, was legal.<\/p>\n
Mr. Ozekhome, who is also a constitutional lawyer said this in an interview in Abuja.<\/p>\n
\u201cConstitutionally and legally, what President Jonathan did was correct. He does not require the consent of the National Assembly to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone who is an employee has to know that he is answerable to his employer. You cannot bite the finger that feeds you.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Nigerian Constitution and the CBN Act give the President the authority to suspend or remove the Governor of the CBN,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Ozekhome claimed that Mr. Sanusi had deviated from his primary duty of leading the apex bank to the path of monetary stability.<\/p>\n
\u201cA governor of a Central Bank in any part of the world should be seen and not heard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he should be heard, he should only be discussing monetary policies which will uplift the economy of his country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Nigeria, what we have is a CBN governor that has been fighting the government of his country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Ozekhome alleged that Mr. Sanusi had been making very provocative and highly derogatory statements about the monetary policies of his own country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen 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,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n
The lawyer alleged that the ousted CBN governor had been acting like a political leader or traditional ruler by donating public funds to universities, political aides and at other functions.<\/p>\n
He said Mr. 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis variation in figures of the missing funds has caused chaos in the country, which is not supposed to be so,\u201d Mr. Ozekhome said.<\/p>\n
He said in as much as Mr. Sanusi could lay claim to some notable achievements, it was evident that he still made some notable mistakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople should look at this from all sides. It is easy for people to say Sanusi\u2019s sack was because he exposed the truth. But, no! This is not it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Sanusi became the governor, the exchange rate of the Dollar with the Naira was about N130.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday it is anything between N160 to N170 to a dollar. This is the poorest so far in the history of this country,\u201d the lawyer said.<\/p>\n
He said it was undeniable that Mr. Sanusi had some good impact on the banking industry \u201cby weeding out bad banks and restructuring the entire banking sector\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has succeeded in that area. No doubt. But his visibility and intrusion into matters that are highly political and have nothing to do with his office are questionable character,\u201d Mr. Ozekhome
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
(NAN)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Mike Ozekhome, on Friday said President Goodluck Jonathan\u2019s suspension of Lamido Sanusi as Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, was legal. Mr. Ozekhome,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n