OPINION: Optics of Emefiele’s travails

NIGERIA, our country, will never let you be. It leaves you no room to understand anything not to talk of digesting it. If only one absurd thing happened in a week or even in a day for that matter, you may be able to wrap your head around it. No. Not here. We are confronted everyday with multiple absurdities especially from the political, economic and governmental sectors. You must be specially gifted to really grasp any of the issues that pop up ever so often. Last weekend, Godwin Emefiele, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN] was arrested in his Lagoshome, driven in one of the less fancied trucks in his fleet of cars, SUVs and sundry luxury trucks to the airport, guided into a jet like a fugitive and flown to Abuja. Hours before then, he had been suspended from office by Nigeria’s President, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The nebulous office of the secretary to the government of the federation had issued a statement to the effect of Emefiele’s suspension. In one of the preceding paragraphs, I had deliberately described Emefiele as the governor of the CBN. Yes, we suspect the inevitable and how it will end, but for as long as he stays suspended he remains the CBN governor, because nobody will be made the substantive governor before his sacking or the end of his tenure next year. The video said to be that of Emefiele- gaunt, drained and apparently sufficiently cowed, speaks to the oft-repeated issues of man, life, influence and power. As an alumnus of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka [UNN], Emefiele is a lion. And he looked and lived every bit of it most of the time in his pilgrimage through the central bank. That’s until last weekend. We watched the footage over and over, and then wondered whether that was Emefiele who was spitting fire on national television while battling Abokifx founder whom he accused of fiddling with the value of the Naira. Or even the obviously affected imperial and imperious Emefiele who would not entertain a contrary opinion during the height of Naira redesign and currency swap. No, that was not the Emefiele we saw on Saturday, June 10 being herded into an aircraft reportedly on his way to the dark recesses of the notorious dungeon of Nigeria’s secret police otherwise called Directorate of State Services [DSS].

Now it counts for little, if any, that we once, in this column early in the life of the regime of the former President, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari described Emefiele as a grovelling governor. Some people at the time countered us, saying that he had to do what he had to do because he was working ahead of securing a second term in office. He achieved that in 2019, which was a record since the return to rule by civilians and quasi-civilians in 1999. Will Emefiele rue the second term he ‘worked’ so very hard to earn? Time will tell.

The lion in Emefiele was again in full display ahead of the presidential primary election of the ruling All Progressives Congress [APC] in mid-2022. He worked with the stealth of a lion waiting for a prey. Not many people knew that our sitting CBN governor was a bonafide and cardcarrying member of the APC. And that he coveted and lusted over the highest office in the landthe presidency. He made a dash for it but he was checkmated by the wily politicians. He went to court to enforce his ‘right’ to contest in the presidential primary election of the APC. He dropped the gambit, probably overwhelmed by the forces arrayed against his ambition.

Before Emefiele pulled back and out, numerous pictures and videos of his alleged branded campaign vehicles had trended on the social media. And his glossy and high end posters announcing his entry into the presidential race had flooded parts of the country especially Abuja. While all these were going on, Emefiele sat pretty in the CBN governor’s office. As the Igbo would say, okuko n’agba egwu n’uzo nwere onye na-akuru ya nkwa n’akuku ohia [there’s someone in the bush nearby beating the drum for that chicken dancing by the roadside]. And so it turned out to be because after the rogue ambition of Emefiele failed miserably, he continued in office as if nothing had happened. There was no serious indication that then President, Gen. Buhari noticed anything absurd, if not illegal, about the action of the now suspended governor. Neither did the national assembly [NASS], the lapdog of the president notice anything untoward. A nonfiction novel on the presidential quest of Emefiele could rival the Icarus Agenda novel which dwelt on a puppet and the manipulative puppeteers in a quest for power elsewhere. The government primed the suspension, arrest and detention of Emefiele. It was an extended weekend given that yesterday was a public holiday. In our jurisdiction, you are arrested and detained first, then the government will go in search of evidence to prosecute you. In some other climes, you are confronted with evidence of your alleged wrongdoing at the point of your arrest and detention. Here you are guilty until proven innocent. Elsewhere you are innocent until proven guilty. Who amongst us reading this has not concluded that Emefiele is guilty even before charges are preferred against him? We understand that already, the DSS is working to seek the nod of a court to extend the detention of Emefiele. You wonder how this can be, given that this same agency had months ago sought a court order to arrest the same Emefiele for allegedly financing terrorists and for sundry economic crimes. Take Emefiele to court today, Tuesday. The alleged crimes for which DSS sought his arrest last year would put a man who is already 62 years in prison for the rest of his life if convicted. But as it stands someone would be ready to pay a king’s ransom to know what’s going on in Emefiele’s mind in jail right now.

READ ALSO: Reactions trail Osinbajo aide’s accusations against Emefiele

If we had once written about a groveling CBN governor and followed it with another scathing article in the wake of his attempt to contest for the presidency while he was CBN governor, it should go without saying that we are not fans of Emefiele. However, assuming without conceding, that the CBN governor was guilty of the yet to be preferred charges, should it not be concerning to Nigerians across board that his accusers and prospective jailers are not coming to equity with clean hands. The DSS is alleged to be a cesspool of corruption. And corruption is not limited to money matters. It is corruption and high handedness and impunity for one government agency to invade the offices of a sister agency and attempt to occupy them as the DSS did recently. It took a presidential order for the secret police to pull back on their siege to the Lagos offices of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC]. And we are supposed to be in a democracy. It was corruption in 2016 when the DSS invaded the homes of some justices of high and higher courts, dragged the jurists out of their beds in their pyjamas, detained and later arraigned them. We do not recall the DSS getting a single conviction from that exercise. And there was no apology to the humiliated justices. The same secret police once invaded the NASS complex on ‘orders from above’. Balderdash. In addition, can those who presently occupy the topmost offices in our beleaguered country claim to have come to equity with clean hands? How do citizens of a country feel when their leader is accused of a thousand and one wrongdoings? Some of the allegations against the President, Bola Tinubu are currently being litigated in the Tribunal arising from the disputed February presidential election but one issue is virtually settled. And that’s his association with narcotics business. It is in the public domain that Nigeria’s President or someone who bears the names similar to his forfeited hundreds of thousands of dollars to a foreign government. The debate about whether it was criminal forfeiture or a civil matter is of no consequence. The optics are bad for Nigeria no matter where you stand in the political divide. The headlines in newspapers from Europe to the Americas and Asia and elsewhere that Nigerians had chosen a candidate tainted with drug deals does nobody any credit. Now we are unravelling. How do you sit atop a jury that will determine the fate of Emefiele if he is found guilty of any crimes that may be preferred against him?

It’s a shame that the consequences of what we are doing at the topmost levels of our governance appear not to have fully dawned on us. The Tinubu government, if it holds out, will be dogged by unflattering perceptions and legitimacy problems in fighting corruption, narcotics, forgeries and other crimes because the fish rots from the head.

Now This

Musa Rabiu Kwankwaso and Abdulahi Ganduje are former governors of Kano state. The latest former governor Ganduje said he would slap the daylight out of the other. Both were in the Presidential Villa about the same time last week. Kwankwaso retorted that Ganduje, who had a run-in with the alleged dollars-for-contract scandal while in office, was his political son who cannot look him in the face not to talk of slapping him. We should pray fervently not to be in the era of fisticuffs or bolekaja by supposed adults.

AUTHOR: UGO ONUOHA

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Articles published in our Graffiti section are strictly the opinion of the writers and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stand.

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