By Charles Ozalukwu
A weird movie has been running for nearly a year before our eyes. As in all motion pictures, there is a director, crew and cast, with major and minor characters. The director here is the commander-in-chief, the self-styled messiah, who, because of his holy office, must not be seen, or, if seen, not too frequently. But his voice is heard all the same, his instructions understood and carried out to the letter. And the villain? Well, none other than Mr Godwin Emefiele, the 62-year-old former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). And a villain he must be because in a country of over 220 million people, so badly misgoverned for decades, somebody must be the fall guy, one who must take the blame for other people’s atrocities.
The blame game is a standing order in these parts, a culture, to buy the people over and legitimise the new government or pull the wool over the people’s eyes. When, on December 31st, 1983, Gen Buhari and his troops overthrew the Shagari government, the president, known for his towering cap, was accused of presiding over a very corrupt administration. When Gen Babangida, in 1985, shoved Buhari aside, he too accused Buhari and his number two, Idiagbon, of being too hard-faced and too strict. In 2015 when Buhari returned not in khaki and boots but in babanriga, he charged President Jonathan with corruption and cluelessness, the reason the country was on its knees.
In his turn, taking over from fellow party man Buhari, President Bola Tinubu took the path none of his predecessors ever did. Rather than blame his immediate predecessor or himself, he pointed the finger at Emefiele, an appointee of Buhari. The country is no longer on its knees but on its belly. Companies, foreign and local, are folding up, and foreign ones leaving. There is growing hunger, giving rise to protests and fatal scrambles for free food donated by some fat cat or public-spirited individual. Petrol is now priced out of the reach of the ordinary Nigerian, and the local currency has never performed this badly in its history, falling to nearly 2000 to the dollar at a point before staggering up and crashing again. In all this, the administration never admits the fault of the president who, upon his swearing-in 11 months ago, unadvisedly announced the removal of subsidy on petroleum products, and would go on to also float the naira. It’s all Emefiele’s fault, the administration trumpets.
The script to cast Emefiele as the villain may have been written earlier than May 29th, when Tinubu was inaugurated into office, after a most controversial election. Barely a week after, he suspended the CBN governor and, soon after, officials of the Department of State Services (DSS) took him away from his Lagos home in a manner fit only for the movies. From the airport, a waiting plane flew their prime passenger to the DSS headquarters in Abuja. As Emefiele was familiarising himself with his new surroundings, the commander-in-chief was telling the whole world in France that the suspended CBN governor ruined Nigeria’s economy and that the authorities had taken him into custody. It was a euphemism for paying for his sins. For over four months Emefiele was out of sight, locked away with as much comfort as officials of the secret police would allow. He was not charged. He was not arraigned in any court of law. When he was released in late October, following outrage by lawyers and rights campaigners, officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) immediately picked him up. When the charges came, eventually, they were for illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, which were dropped a month after for lack of substance.
The script to keep Emefiele down was strictly worded and not to be misread or misunderstood. Nothing and no one should get in the way, not even a judge. When a court ruled that Emefiele be remanded at a correctional centre following the dismissal of the gun-possession charge, Your Lordship was overruled not by another judge but by the DSS whose officials outmuscled correctional service officials on the court premises and spirited Emefiele away.
The commander-in-chief did not need to show his face. Things were going according to plan. Lest we forget, while a fraud case against the man was pending at a federal court in Abuja, another one, of abuse of office, popped up last week at what is called a special offences court in Ikeja, Lagos. Emefiele’s lawyers challenged the jurisdiction of the court to hear the matter but Your Lordship put his foot down. He will entertain the matter, he told the lawyers, and reserved ruling till the very end of the case. Needless to say Emefiele has his hands full, but that should make his pursuers happy.
Other persons of high station have also read the script and seem to commit to its full implementation, which is to put as much heat as possible on Emefiele. One of such highly placed individuals is the Number 3 man in Nigeria’s hierarchy of power, His Excellency Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, known for his immense wealth and his glib talk. Akpabio presides over a senate whose members want Land Cruisers each valued at N160 million. When he is not talking about sending dizzying sums to members’ bank accounts (later updating it to prayers to mailboxes) to enjoy during their short breaks, he is mocking the poor. Lately, the former governor of Akwa Ibom State and a confidante of Mr President has been blasting the Emefiele-is-to-blame tune. He said the former governor of the CBN ruined the economy in such diverse ways that the government didn’t know which charge to prefer against him. Among his folk, at the weekend, in Akwa Ibom with his National Assembly friends, he pleaded with Nigerians to bear with the Tinubu administration amid the current hardship, saying once again, that Emefiele wrecked the economy. Emefiele’s lawyers have asked him to pay N25 billion for defamation, and apologise, or face them in court.
That is not all. A few media organisations are thought to have joined the hack-Emefiele-down campaign, with reports that the ex-CBN governor spent about N18.9 billion printing new redesigned banknotes. That story published in the Punch has been debunked by a source at the apex bank, saying no new contracts were issued to print currencies in 2023. The source claims that under the new dispensation, taxpayers will even pay nearly three times more to import a printed naira than what was paid under Emefiele.
What about the one about a dispatch man who allegedly collected some enveloped bribe cash in dollars and reportedly delivered it to the banker in two instalments? And the CBN director who claimed he first took delivery of the cash before handing it to the delivery man who was asked whether he opened the envelopes and counted the money. He said no. And Mr Director, was it your duty to deliver bribe money to the CBN governor? No.
All this is bunk created to bring a man down, it seems. But why? Was it because of the naira redesign, a policy that had Buhari’s approval, if not his entire idea? If so, why is the former president cooling off in retirement while Emefiele, his appointee, languishes as a villain?
By next month it will be one year since the bizarre movie started showing. When shall we get to The End?