Former President Goodluck Jonathan and ex-governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, during his tenure, and now Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, yesterday openly disagreed over the sack of the latter.
Sanusi had said in the book he co-authored with the former Minister of Finance, Shamsudeen Usman, that the former President sacked him because he blew the whistle on the $ 49.8 billion allegedly stolen from the government’s coffers during his tenure.
But replying to the monarch, Jonathan said he (Sanusi) was only suspended over the query raised by the Financial Reporting Council, FRC, over expenses of the apex bank, adding that had his (Sanusi) tenure not expired, he would have been recalled to office.
The former president, who spoke during the launch of the book, “Public Policy and Agents Interests: Perspectives from the Emerging World,” said: “Let me mention that I do not agree completely with some issues raised by one of the contributors. But I don’t intend to join issues because he is our royal father. And he is here.
“The one he raised that he was sacked because he blew a whistle that the Federal Government lost $49.8 billion is not quite correct. He was not sacked, he was suspended because the Financial Reporting Council, FRC, queried the expenditure of CBN.
There were serious infractions that needed to be looked at. That was the reason. But somehow, the time was short. So before we finished, his tenure elapsed. Probably, he would have been recalled.
“On the issue of $49.8 billion, till today, I am not convinced that the Federal Government lost $49.8 billion. And that year, our budget was $31.6 billion. So for a country that had a budget of $31.6 billion to lose about $50 billion and salaries were paid, nobody felt anything. The researchers that wrote this book need to do further research.
“More so, our revered royal father came up with the figures, first $49.8 billion, later $20 billion and later $12 billion. I don’t even know the correct one.”
Jonathan said he was vindicated about the claim after the former CBN governor began to change the narrative from $49bn to $20bn and later $12billion.
He added that PriceWaterhouseCoopers, PWC, which investigated the matter, revealed that no such amount of money was stolen but noted that $1.48bn could not be accounted for by the NNPC at the time.