Tears, Fears and Jubilations as President Buhari Welcomes Emefiele into his Fold
By Bello M. Zaki
It was more than a mixed reaction when the news media Thursday evening reported that Godwin Emefiele, the belaboured Governor of CBN, was in Aso Rock Presidential Villa, being warmly welcomed by President Muhammadu Buhari, personally. The media reported the president falling head over heels welcoming the Governor repeatedly on the occasion to the extent that the acts, at a point, elicited a burst of laud laughter from the audience: The video clips are still making rounds in the social media.
Emefiele who left Nigeria with the President for a summit in the U.S. last December, stayed behind as the presidential entourage returned back into the country: He had left the country amidst an allegation made by a member of the nation’s House of Representatives, Honourable Gudaji Kazaure, that he was misappropriating the sum of 89 trillion Naira accrued to the Federal Government Stamp Duty account with the CBN; and that he, Kazaure, was appointed Secretary to a committee set by the president to investigate the matter, with both executive and judicial power to arrest, detain, prosecute and jail anybody found guilty, or temper or attempt to temper with the work of the committee; the committee, among other things, has very powerful members, such as the Finance Minister, the Director of the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Chief Judge of the Federation.
When it was announced that Emefiele did not return with the presidential entourage, those very eager to see the arrest, detention and prosecution of the CBN Governor, said he was dodging arrest and would remain a fugitive in the U.S., praying fervently for a means of deporting and repatriating him home to face the wrath of the authority for the sins he committed: The social media was awashed with stories of the DSS laying siege in the Airport to arrest him, both his Lagos and Abuja houses were said to be cordoned by well-armed policemen awaiting his return; and when he returned on the 16th of this month, he was alleged to have sneaked in, as varieties of ‘Breaking News and Just ins’ in the social media told the country that the DSS had besieged his office and he would soon be arrested; the most popular one was the one that had pictures of security vehicles at a building supposed to be the CBN complex in Abuja, waiting to transport him to the dungeon. The DSS had to issue a press statement saying it was a fake news.
On the other hand, supporters of Emefiele said he stayed behind for medical check, and that he had even started his annual leave and would return any day in this January. The DSS had on December went to the Federal High Court Abuja to obtain warrant to arrest one Godwin Emefiele, this time not for misappropriation of Stamp Duty funds, but for financing terrorism and other economic crimes: The principal duty of the DSS, according to the Act that established it, is “to protect and defend the Federal Republic of Nigeria against domestic threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of Nigeria, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to both federal and state law-enforcement organs.”
Though the court refused the DSS the warrant of arrest, but the news added ammunition unto the arsenals of the anti-Emefiele’s clique: So the man was even financing terrorists with the federal government’s money? O ti o!
In denying the request of the DSS, the presiding judge and Chief Judge of Abuja Federal High Court, Justice John Tsoho, said the request lacked merit as it didn’t provide convincing evidence that the alleged person had in actual sense being financing terrorism; and that the identity of the said Godwin Emefiele was not disclosed, whether or not the person mentioned in the request was the popularly known Godwin Emefiele, the serving Governor of the CBN; that the DSS can arrest anyone with or without court warrant, and that the court can only grant the DSS warrant to arrest Emefiele, the nation’s economic manager, if it presents the consent of Emefiele’s boss, the president.
The nation’s economists, investment and financial analysts had also locked horns on this ruling: Those in support warned that there would be negative implication on the economy, if Emefiele was arrested, particularly as regards the Money and Capital markets, citing the loses made in the two markets when the erstwhile CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, was suspended by the former President Jonathan in 2014. But those against the ruling said there would not be any negative implication if Emefiele was removed to save the dwindling fortunes of the economy.
Therefore, the pro-Emefiele clan strategised and went to another Abuja court on the 19th of December 2022, the FCT High Court, at the instance of an unknown Human Rights group called ‘Incorporated Trustees of Forum for Accountability and Good Leadership’ and sought an order that neither DSS or any other authority in the country should arrest Emefiele on his return, the court under Justice M.A Hassan, granted their request.
Lawyers against Emefiele faulted the court’s exparte ruling it gave the forum; that the forum, as an incorporated trustees, is an artificial person in the eyes of the law, has no locus standi on the issue, that only Emefiele, who, by the provision of Section 46, chapter 4 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution as amended, has the right to go to court for the defence of his human rights as a natural human, as the section said ‘He or She’ or his or her consented representative (s) as lawyer(s), and not supporters or any persona at law, could.
Also, the pro-Emefiele group turned the issue into a sectional and religious one, saying that Emefiele was being witch-hunted because he is a southerner and a Christian, that the whole charade was a Northern Muslim Hausa-Fulani agenda to oust him out of office. They therefore organised various Christian groups and another faceless permutation called ‘Coalition of Defenders of National Interests’ to protest in Abuja against the arrest of Emefiele and evoked the support of some legacy media from the South and various social media outlets across the country.
The pro-Emefiele warriors also went to town with a very saleable but unverified story in both the legacy and social media when the Governor returned to the country, that the CBN governor resumed his office with “military” protection; that the military operatives were engaged to prevent an ambush by the DSS that are bent on embarrassing the Governor despite existing court orders preventing his arrest.
In retaliation, the anti-Emefiele group also unleashed their social and legacy media against their opponents, and also organised various Abuja protests for the arrest and prosecution of Emefiele, therefore, the foregoing two weeks of January were agog with the double sides of Emefiele protests, and legal and media wars.
The Emefiele saga had exposed a very salient feature of the Nigerian elites; that whenever their economic and political interests were at stake, they would evoke sectional, religious or even tribal sentiments. Take for example, a lot of the alleged beneficiaries of the Emefiele largesse, who were also alleged to have fought tooth and nail to subvert Kazaure’s investigation, from the presidency to the Ministry of Justice to the National Assembly, are Hausa-Fulanis and Muslim Northerners; I will not swear that they were not the ones that raised and financed the pro-Emefiele-Christian-Southerner hues on Abuja streets and the media.
Likewise, the architect of the 89 trillion investigation, Mr. Adekoya, who is also the Chairman of Kazaure’s N89 trillion Stamp Duty investigation committee, is a Christian Southerner, so also more than half of the committee members, yet interest groups dubbed the whole set up as Norther Muslim Hausa-Fulani agenda.
Certainly, one cannot rule out political interest: Hon. Kazaure had informed me at a three-hour tripartite telephone conference with his friend and adviser, the day I published his financial interest on the issue, that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has interest in the issue, that he was the one that first introduced Adekoya to the president for the Stamp Duty investigation. I also know very well that a state governor in the North-West region of this country, who is a favorite son of ‘Baba Buhari’ had keenly contested for Emefiele’s seat at the expiration of Emefiele’s first tenor in office in 2019. But as Kazaure alleged that Emefiele has spread his tentacles in the villa, I believed his tentacles must have reached the parlour of the ‘Mother of the House’ because it was seriously rumoured that she was the one that saved his seats from the APC hawks.
At party level, both the APC and PDP had called for Emefiele’s arrest and prosecution, even though APC recanted, seeing the implication of its call to the image of Buhari’s administration: APC National Caretaker Committee Secretary, Senator John Akpan Udoedehe, said on Channel TV programme ‘Politics Today’ that the CBN governor was supervising over the pillaging of the nation’s vaults under his watch, therefore should be investigated and prosecuted if found guilty; on the strength of this PDP also called on the CBN Governor to resign. APC officially debunked the story later, saying its secretary was misquoted and mispresented.
There could also be other interest groups, unknown to this blog, who might have seized the opportunity of picking the chips as the two sides fought, by stocking the embar of the crisis. Whatever the case, President Buhari who kept mute during the two weeks of the cold war, only to warmly welcome Emefiele back from his leave, had created sleepless nights on both sides of the divide: A staunch anti-Emefiele advocate told me that he was totally disappointed with the president, not only for welcoming Emefiele to the villa, but receiving him twice that day, and having a 25-minute closed door discussion with him in one of the visits; that he didn’t know when tiers started running down his cheeks, and also said that he was certainly that many of his likes must have wept. While some activists on this divide still hope the president would act otherwise, that he was only hearing from the other side before he acts to recover the peoples stolen trillions.
At the extreme, there is forefront anti-Emefiele warrior, Hon. Kazaure, who severally swore to media men that he would go on exile if Emefiele was not arrested, prosecuted and jailed, as his own life would be in danger. The Honourable had several narrated the ordeal his partner and Committee Chairman, Mr. Adekoya, went through at the first phase of the investigation, when armed men visited his Gwarimpa house and shot at him; he had to sneak back to London to recuperate. Really there is fear that some would lose their jobs or favours, or both from the recent act of the president, as they probably might have acted out of sort during the imbroglio.
There were also jubilations and partying with the return of the prodigal son into the warm arms of the president, this runs right from Thursday evening down into the weekend, as champaign, guilder and even ogogoro and burkutu flow like water amongst supporters.
But the fight continues: Two anti-Emefiele posts hit my screen this morning: The video clip by Hon. Kazaure calling Nigerians to wake up and join him in his crusade, that Emefiele had hired four very powerful global forensic auditors to distort the electronic records of the trillion naira Stamp Duty Account; he mentioned the names of the Auditing firms as: KPMG, PWC, Deloitte, and East and Young, respectively.
Another post is a supposed wiretapping of the CBN Governor’s telephone conversation by the DSS, in which he, the Governor, was planning with some CBN Directors on how to cover up the theft of N120 billion stolen from the government: If this posting is not true, I give kudos to those who cloned it – if at all they are not CBN insiders, they certainly must have a deep working knowledge of the nation’s financial system.
A lesson from this Presidency/DSS/Emefiele saga, is a terrible symptom of a failing state, that is bedeviled by lack of due process and absence of application of the rule of law. One day, this blog will find time to revisit the saga from this perspective.
