At least one or more times in the course of life’s struggles, one comes across destiny helpers or destiny destroyers. Or a combination of both, as in the case of Godwin Emefiele, the suspended (some mistakenly refer to him as former) governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
His destiny helper was the then President of the Nigerian Federation, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, who deployed a sleight of the hand, removed Sanusi Lamido Sanusi from office and appointed Emefiele as CBN governor nine years ago. It was all smooth sailing for Emefiele, until Muhammadu Buhari came into being as President in 2015.
I have had talks with some of the closest aides to Emefiele at the time, and they all knew the man’s days as CBN governor were numbered. They were complaining bitterly, what with all the heavy allegations of sleaze levelled against the Jonathan administration, with Emefiele reportedly facilitating the sleaze by obliging even the most ridiculous of requests to release funds to politicians and other non-deserving individuals from the CBN’s vaults!
There were allegations that President Buhari left Emefiele on his job to get to unearth the shocking details of the terrible sleaze, and that by 2016 when all the information would have been obtained from Emefiele, he would be booted out of office and possibly even jailed.
Then someone I know (whose name I will not reveal, for now), told Emefiele that the only way he could survive the planned axe was by patronizing members of the Buhari cabal. And that was it.
For at least seven years, these self-serving individuals benefitted hugely from Emefiele, and on their part they kept providing him protection. All misdoings of the man were overlooked. And just when everyone thought the CBN boss would not have his tenure of office renewed after the expiration of his first term, the cabal worked on President Buhari to ensure Emefiele got a second term of office for another five years.
The same guys were so desperate that they drafted Emefiele into the presidential race. The CBN boss went against the CBN Act, registered as a member of a political party and procured expensive campaign materials. All the shenanigans were overlooked by Buhari because the cabal that controlled the President wanted Emefiele as President by hook or by crook.
Emefiele continued as CBN governor even after the Department of State Services (DSS) levelled very serious allegations against the man, including charges to do with terrorism support or financing.
Though the DSS boss, Yusuf Bichi, could see very clearly that powerful vested interests were fully supportive of Emefiele, he patriotically braved the odds, risked his own stay in office to move against the powerful CBN governor. Then, in a surprise move, the then Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, was alleged to have provided Emefiele with armed-to-the-teeth soldiers as escorts, to prevent the DSS from arresting the man.
In what was clearly a show of shame, some so-called civil society organisations began to launch all sorts of protests, asking then President Buhari to remove the patriotic Yusuf Bichi from office. It was to Nigeria’s good fortune that these self-serving calls were ignored by the President.
The last straw that broke the camel’s back was the naira redesign policy that ended up bringing unprecedented hardship on Nigerians. Many businesses died during the malaise, and many Nigerians reportedly also lost their lives. Emefiele carried on as if he was above the law, ignoring court orders directing him to open the space and allow Nigerians access to their money. It is shocking that the same man that saw the courts as nothing is now desperately relying on the judiciary to get his undeserved freedom.
Emefiele only reluctantly agreed to obey the Supreme Court order when the Presidency issued a face-saving statement distancing itself from the flagrant disobedience of court orders by the CBN helmsman.
An overwhelming majority of Nigerians who were badly affected by Emefiele’s horrible policies resorted to prayers, beseeching the Lord for His intervention. Obviously, some people that are too consumed by power see that as insignificant. They think the Lord is theirs to manipulate as they deem fit.
And Bola Ahmed Tinubu emerged as President. A new sheriff was in town, and it was clear to all discerning minds that the days of Emefiele as CBN governor were numbered. Some attributed that to the allegations that the whole naira redesign policy was aimed at strangulating Tinubu, but many knew Emefiele’s alleged sins were too weighty to be ignored by any responsible government.
Under Bichi, the DSS has carried out many pro-Nigerian operations, some of which are too classified for the rest of us to know. But look at it this way. If Bichi or his DSS had wanted, they could also conveniently line up to enjoy free money in several billions or trillions from Emefiele. Yet, they chose to ignore that to side with Nigeria, arresting the man seen as operating above the laws of the country, and who at one time was seen as more powerful than the President of the country.
Only Nigerians who do not know the sacrifice the DSS and its personnel are making are still surprised that the service fought on the premises of the court to re-arrest Emefiele on some fresh charges. Many Nigerians did not even know the DSS did not act illegally. It had obtained a court warrant to arrest the man based on the new charges against him. In essence, the order to re-arrest Emefiele came before that of another court granting bail to him.
No one supports the fact that the DSS personnel on the ground had to fight their prisons service counterparts to re-arrest Emefiele. But the stakes were very high, and at that point in time Nigeria will have lost out if the prison officials had been allowed to go with the suspended governor of the CBN because every piece of evidence painstakingly gathered by the DSS would almost certainly have been destroyed or tampered with.
Perhaps the best description of the situation came from Emeka Ugwuonye who, in a brilliant piece, wrote as follows: “One of the good things out of spending time in Nigerian prison was that I learnt some secrets about how the prison and the Nigerian criminal justice system work. Yes, I was detained in Kuje Prison. I was never convicted. No court ever found me guilty of any crime. And I did not commit a crime.
Yet, I spent time in prison. I used my time in prison to study the prison and the system so well. If Nigerian prisons were to be a university, I would have gotten double PhDs. In Nigerian, nobody goes to prison just because he committed a crime. You go to prison because you annoyed someone who has money to pay someone for you to be charged.
“Now, about the fight you read about between DSS and prison officers, there are questions to ask. First, why was the Officer-in-Charge of Ikoyi Prison in court at that time? The Officer-in-Charge is the equivalent of Deputy Commissioner of Police. He does not go to court unless ordered to appear. The Officer-in-Charge of the correctional center does not normally go to court But this Officer-in-Charge was in court as Emefiele was ordered to be remanded in Ikoyi Prison. Why?
“The prison staff, especially the Officer-in-Charge and above, make a lot of money when a big man is detained in their prison. They go out of their way to curry favour from such big men. A man like Emefiele has a lot of money. He will need a lot of favours while in prison. He will need access to phones. He will want to have air-conditioned cell, specially fitted cell. He will want to have access to visitors and many other things. He is not entitled to any of this. But with the support of the Officer-in-Charge, he will have them and more. That will cost him a lot of money, like millions of money. So, everybody in the prison hierarchy would have been lined up to benefit from Emefiele. That effort starts right from the moment he leaves the court and heads to prison. He would be taken in a special vehicle.
“I saw this a few times in Kuje. I will never forget the day Abdulrasheed Maina arrived in Kuje Prison. All the top officials went wild. They were falling over themselves in order to please Maina. I happened to be taken to the court the same day Maina was being taken to court for the first time from the prison, and they placed me in the same van with Maina. Oh my God! It was like the President’s motorcade. The entire prison top guys went to court that day in support of Maina. There were sirens and escort vehicles ahead of our van. They said they were providing security. I was laughing silently as I watched all the prison officers falling over themselves to please Maina. So, I could imagine what was going on in their camp when they guessed that Emefiele was to be arraigned in court for firearms-related offences. They knew that the court would grant Emefiele bail and that he would likely not meet the terms of bail the same day. So, he would spend at least one night in prison.
“Again, I have double PhD on the Nigerian criminal justice system. I saw a part of it that lawyers do not see and which is never taught in any law school. The prison officers are at the bottom of the food chain. By the time an inmate gets to the prison, the police have taken all his money. He has paid his lawyer and may have bribed the court officials. By the time he finally gets to the prison, he is out of money. So, the prison officers do not have the opportunity to make money from their inmates as the police do from suspects. Compared to other players in the chain, prison officers are the poorest. So, they could be quite desperate and, when opportunities like Emefiele come, they grab them with both hands. They could go out of their way to please such a man, as you saw in the free-for-all fight between DSS and prison officers. Thank God they didn’t shoot themselves.”
In conclusion, this column appeals to Nigerians to bestow more trust in the ability of the DSS to handle the Emefiele case in the best interest of the country. Whereas others are interested in making money from the man, the DSS is clearly interested in protecting the best interest of the country.
At this time of economic hardship when the naira keeps getting weaker, the leadership and other officers and men of the DSS need money like everyone of us, but the difference is that in their case, they do not prioritise it above the interest of Nigeria.