Constitutional lawyer and Human Rights Activist, Mike Ozekhome says that President Goodluck Jonathan did not breach the constitution in suspending Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).He stated this yesterday in Abuja in reaction to the uproar the sack had generated.
“Constitutionally
and legally, what President Jonathan did was correct. He does not
require the consent of the National Assembly to do so.
“Anyone who is
an employee has to know that he is answerable to his employer. You
cannot bite the finger that feeds you.The Nigerian Constitution and the
CBN Act give the President the authority to suspend or remove the
Governor of the CBN,” he said.
Ozekhome
alleged that Sanusi deviated from his primary duty as head of the apex
bank and made provocative and highly derogatory statements even about
the monetary policies of Nigeria.
“A governor of a
Central Bank in any part of the world should be seen and not heard.When
he should be heard, he should only be discussing monetary policies
which will uplift the economy of his country.In Nigeria, what we have is
a CBN governor that has been fighting the government of his country.
When 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,”
Speaking
further, he accused Sanusi of acting like a political leader or
traditional ruler by donating public funds to universities, political
aides and at other functions.
He said 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.
“This variation
in figures of the missing funds has caused chaos in the country, which
is not supposed to be so.People should look at this from all sides. It
is easy for people to say Sanusi’s sack was because he exposed the
truth. But, no! This is not it.
When Sanusi became the governor, the exchange rate of the Dollar with the Naira was about N130.
Today it is
anything between N160 to N170 to a dollar. This is the poorest so far in
the history of this country,” the lawyer said.
He said it was
undeniable that Sanusi had some good impact on the banking industry ‘by
weeding out bad banks and restructuring the entire banking sector”.
“He 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,’ Ozekhome said......dailypost
*What do you think about Mr Ozekhome's views?
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