‘Twenty minutes to
midnight on February 25, 2013, and a day before the board of the Central Bank
of Nigeria was due to meet, Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi developed a craving
for romancehe badly needed a kiss.
The governor,
married, with children, grabbed his mobile phone and typed out a message. “Maybe you should come kiss me before board
meeting tomorrow,” Mr. Sanusi wrote and then squeezed the send button.
'At about 9 a.m.
the next day, Mrs. Maryam Yaro, a married mother of two, an assistant director
and subordinate to the governor at the CBN, arrived Sanusi's unnamed Abuja
hotel, seeking to keep the date and help address her boss' craving for a
kiss. (Insiders say board members,
including those who live in Abuja, are usually lodged in hotels ahead of board
meetings).
But by the time
Mrs. Yaro left the hotel to return to her official desk at the CBN, the duo had
also struck out an arrangement to spend the rest of the week together in Lagos.
So, in the evening
of Wednesday February 27, Mrs. Yaro flew to Lagos ahead of Mr. Sanusi and
checked into a hotel in the city, skipping work, at taxpayers' expense, on
Thursday February 28 and Friday, March 1.
'To keep faith
with Mrs. Yaro's date, the CBN governor arrived Lagos, travelling on a
chartered flight, on the night of February 28, and checked into the Federal
Palace Hotel, passage and boarding all at taxpayers' expense.
Both Mr. Sanusi
and Mrs. Yaro rendezvoused in the hotel till Sunday when both of them returned
to Abuja, PREMIUM TIMES learnt.
“…I had such a
wonderful weekend,” Mrs. Yaro confessed to the governor while aboard her
Abuja-bound flight. “You have revived in me what I thought I lost long ago. I
thought I lost the passion to love again,” she claimed.
“Alhamdulillahi.
Love you,” Mr. Sanusi responded in a measured tone.
Insiders say
repeated violation of the statutory code of conduct for public office holders
such as hiring his girlfriends and mistresses without complying with public
service rules, dating married and unmarried women within the bank, and flirting
with them during official work hours have become defining characters of Mr.
Sanusi's governorship of the central bank.
'An official of
the bank spoke of how Mr. Sanusi had enthroned nepotism at the bank,
arbitrarily hiring girlfriends and relatives and engaging in extramarital
relationships with staff.
“This man (the CBN
governor) is the most morally bankrupt governor the CBN has ever had,” the
official, who did not want to be named for fear of retribution, told PREMIUM
TIMES. “Forget all the pretences, he is a shameless man of loose character.”
Investigations by
this newspaper revealed that Mr. Lamido hired his latest mistress, Mrs. Yaro,
without complying with the CBN recruitment policy that stressed, “all
appointments shall be made on the basis of merit, through a fair and open
selection process.”
“The principles
underlying the recruitment process are those of fairness, credibility, equal
employment opportunities, merit and optimization of career prospects for
currently employed staff,” the bank said on its website.
'But Mrs. Yaro,
insiders say, was hired in July 2012 without adherence to these principles.
Those who should know say Mrs. Yaro, who was a staff at the National Programme
on Food Security, an agency under the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, was
brought into the bank as assistant director without “advert for the vacancy and
after a kangaroo interview.”
When contacted,
Mr. Sanusi said due process was followed in hiring Mrs. Yaro.
'He said having
worked for years in the ministry of agric, Mrs. Yaro came highly recommended
and qualified for the job for which she was hired
The CBN governor
continued, “I have known Dr. Yaro since 1981. She was my student in Yola and
she later came to ABU Zaria. We have been very good friends but this is not why
NIRSAL took her. You may wish to check her CV against all the other CVs in
NIRSAL. And she did go through an interview process with the NIRSAL CEO making
the decision not CBN HR.
“As for the
personal allegations, this is all strange to me but I have a personal policy of
not responding to such allegations since in Nigeria anything can be published
on any public officer without proof. I
have limited myself to what concerns official allegations and leave you to your
God and your conscience on whatever else you want to publish. Thank you for
telling me though.”
‘Mrs. Yaro however
declined comments when contacted by PREMIUM TIMES.
“Be careful what
you are saying,” she told one of our reporters on the telephone. “I have
nothing to comment to you on anything.”
When asked if she
would be willing to respond to specific questions about her trips to Lagos to
keep dates with Mr. Sanusi, she simply said, “Whatever it is, I don't know.
Will you just let me be?”
But our investigations
revealed that the governor's claim was far from accurate. Through several
interviews and review of records, PREMIUM TIMES was able to determine that Mrs.
Yaro and Mr. Sanusi had dated each other for at least six months before she was
hired.
‘Insiders say Mr.
Sanusi repeatedly pestered the human resource department of the bank ordering
it to bring Mrs. Yaro's application to him for approval. And once the file
reached his table, the governor wasted no time in treating it.
On June 25, 2012,
Mr. Sanusi, who was travelling in South Africa at the time, telephoned Mrs.
Yaro to break the news to her that he had approved her recruitment in what
critics consider a clear conflict of interest and a violation of a provision of
Nigeria's Code of Conduct which stipulates that “a public officer shall not put
himself in a position where his interest conflicts with his duties and
responsibilities.”
'Mrs. Yaro, (whose
businessman husband, Ahmed, is largely based in Kaduna but visits Abuja
regularly) assumed duties at the CBN in the first week of September 2012 and
was deployed to the Development Finance Department.
The department
then put her in charge of the bank's Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing
System For Agricultural Lending, (NIRSAL), a unit that attempts to fix the
agricultural value chain, so that banks can lend with confidence to the sector
and, encourages banks to lend to the agricultural value chain by offering them
strong incentives and technical assistance.
'Sources said Mrs.
Yaro married Ahmed (or Shuaib, according to another source) six years ago after
her first husband, Waisu Yaro Bodinga (then an executive director at the
Nigeria Ports Authority) died in the ill-fated ADC plane crash of 2006.
The romance
between Mrs. Yaro and Mr. Sanusi became even hotter after she began work at the
bank, with the two lovers regularly exchanging telephone calls and text
messages during work hours to profess love for each other.
'At times, Mrs.
Yaro would remain in her office far beyond close of work to enable her to keep
appointments with the CBN governor, records show.
Sometimes, Mrs.
Yaro would raise concerns about Mr. Sanusi's other girlfriends and mistresses
(such as Sutura and Rose) and how they were blocking her from getting the
governor's full attention, but the relationship continued nonetheless.
'Mrs. Yaro also
began to have access to confidential information known only to top management
and board of the bank, insiders say.
At a point, one
source said, she began to strategise to corner contracts for one Goke Akinboro,
the Chief Executive Officer of Lagos-based Cellullant Limited, an information
technology company. Mr. Akinboro is also described as “very close” to Mrs.
Yaro.
'On March 15,
2013, the CBN lovers headed to Lagos again for another weekend of fun. The
initial plan was for the duo to fly to the nation's commercial capital on
Saturday, March 16, returning to Abuja on Sunday. But the trip had to be
brought forward by a day after the lovers realized that the Area Council
election in Abuja was holding that Saturday and that movement might be
restricted.
Mrs. Yaro arrived
Lagos on the night of March 15, and immediately checked into the Radisson Blu
Anchorage Hotel on Victoria Island. Mr. Sanusi flew from Kano to Lagos via
chartered jet on the bills of the Nigerian taxpayers. He arrived at about 11
p.m., stopped by his Ikoyi home, before dashing to the hotel where Mrs. Yaro
was waiting in a seductive dress in Room 23. The lovers spent that night and
the next day together in the hotel.
'As he flew into
Abuja March 17 on a chartered jet, Mr. Sanusi sent a message to Mrs. Yaro
saying, “Love. Just landed in Abuja. Thank you for a wonderful weekend.” Mrs.
Yaro replied, “Alhamdulillah. I had a wonderful weekend too. I am able to get
the 3:15 flight on Arik Air. Love you.”
But in-between
those rendezvous in Lagos, Mr. Sanusi and Mrs Yaro also found time to get
together elsewhere. They were to meet on
March 11, 2013, in Makurdi but somehow Mrs. Yaro could not make it to the Benue
State capital. But earlier on February
14, (Valentine's Day), the lovers had a good time together in Maiduguri.
Although, the two of them travelled to the city on different missions, they
somehow found a way to get together.
'At a point, Mrs.
Yaro voiced open frustration when Mr. Lamido delayed in taking her calls as she
tried, frantically, to track him down. “I'm thinking that one Shuwa girl has
snatched you away from me,” Mrs. Yaro wrote in a message. “I don't trust them
(Maiduguri girls) with you.”
A velvet-ranking
figure within Nigeria's economic and political circles, Mr. Sanusi, is
generally perceived as one of the intellectual anchors and moral conscience of
this administration. When his five-year term expires next year, he has
indicated he would not renew his contract. Mr. Sanusi has a well-advertised
ambition to become the future emir of his native Kano, where he is already a
top chieftaincy holder (Dan Maje Kano). Dan Majen Kano, a historic title, which
means Son of Emir-Maje, is reserved for the royal family members from the Kano
Habe dynasty.
'A zigzag prospect
to run for the Nigerian presidency is also believed to be floating in the
horizon for Mr. Sanusi.
Multiple sources
at both the CBN and First Bank, where Mr. Sanusi was managing director before
his appointment to the central bank, describe the governor as an “incurable
womanizer.”
“This guy seems
unable to resist anything in skirt, and it is unfortunate that a lot of young
people look up to him as an example,” one of Mr. Sanusi's aides in Abuja said,
expressing widely held concerns in banking circles that “It is sad that he
wouldn't even let married women be.”
'Mr. Sanusi, 51,
appointed CBN Governor on June 3 2009, is a smart economist and award-winning
banker with a background in risk management.
He holds a
graduate degree in economics from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and a
diploma in Sharia and Islamic Studies from the African International University
in Khartoum, Sudan. Today, Mr. Sanusi is also commonly regarded as an important
voice in Islamic jurisprudence.
'The Banker, the
UK-based financial magazine honoured him in 2010 as global Central Bank
Governor of the Year as well as African Central Bank Governor of the Year. In
2011, the TIME magazine listed Mr. Sanusi in its annual publication of 100 most
influential people.
At the African
Banker Awards gala dinner held Wednesday in Morocco, Mr. Sanusi also emerged
the “2013 Africa Central Bank Governor of the Year.”
“There is no doubt
that he is a fairly effective banker,” an official of one of Nigeria's leading
banks, who requested anonymity for fear
his bank might be targeted, told PREMIUM TIMES. “But he is a man of zero
morality despite his public posturing.
It is really sad.”
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