By Gideon Njoku
Is it possible that the travails of Godwin Emefiele, suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, is a calculated political vendetta against him? Yes, said Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Citadel Global Community Church, Lagos. Not a few Nigerians are of the same opinion. According to Bakare, if Emefiele messed up, he did so with Presidential authorization.
Emefiele was suspended in June by President Bola Tinubu and was arrested within 24 hours by the Department of State Services, DSS, over sundry issues, including illegal possession of arms and ammunition.
Emefiele has been battling for freedom since then. The bail granted him by about two Courts is being challenged by the Federal Government, even though he has met the requirements attached to it.
However, not a few Nigerians believe that the suspended CBN Governor is being, allegedly, “punished” by President Tinubu over two issues.
Firstly, they note, Emefiele was interested in the seat Tinubu is now occupying, even when, surprisingly, he was CBN Governor. He had spent a whopping N100m on Presidential aspiration forms, and was forced to withdraw when the pressure on him to resign from the office of the CBN Governor and face politics became too much for him. He was roundly criticised by many people for desecrating the office of the CBN Governor by dabbling into politics.
Secondly, the Naira redesign and the unprecedented cash crunch that followed it, carried under Emefiele, was devastating to most Nigerians. Tinubu, the then Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, said, along with his supporters and loyalists, that he was the target; that it was meant to starve him of funds for his campaign. But even though Emefiele was the face of the redesign, everybody knew that then President Muhammadu Buhari, was behind it. Everybody knew that Emefiele could not have embarked on such a project, a couple of months to the general elections, without the express permission of Buhari. And that goes for almost all other policies for which Emefiele is, today, being investigated by the Federal Government led by President Tinubu.
That was the point Pastor Bakare made on Sunday, August 13, 2023, when he spoke to his congregation. Bakare who spoke on the theme “Vice, Virtue & Time: Three Things That Never Stand Still” noted that: “The handling of the Emefiele case has sent a signal to the World on the current President’s disposition to the war against corruption.”
He was of the view that the war against corruption by the Tinubu Administration was “like making some people scapegoats by virtue of them being political adversaries while various other major enemies of Nigeria remain untouched.”
Specifically on Emefiele, he posited that he should be prosecuted if found guilty of making a wrong call in the management of Nigeria’s monetary affairs, but reminded that the suspended CBN Governor could not have acted without the express authorization of the Presidency.
Recall that in the heat of the controversy over the new Naira redesign, President Buhari had openly said Emefiele had his permission to embark on the project.
