Sanusi Should Think Before Talking

The Central Bank Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, is one of the few reliable human assets Nigeria has ever produced. He is learned, transparent, prudent and, more importantly, egalitarian. But recent events around him have shown that he has his own shortcomings too.

Sanusi’s haste of not cross-checking figures before going public to lay blames has become his undoing in recent times. In mathematics, the entire process of how a figure is arrived at must be shown, step by step but this cannot be said of the CBN governor.

He once said that the National Assembly of about 550 Nigerians, were consuming about 25% of Nigeria recurrent expenditure.

He later tendered an apology to the National Assembly over his unguarded utterance. He explained in his letter of apology that members of the National Assembly were only spending 25 per cent of the overhead cost and not 25 per cent of the nation’s annual total budget.

Few weeks ago, the governor hastily wrote President Goodluck Jonathan a letter alleging that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was withholding more than three-quarters of oil revenue earned from January 2012 to July this year.

He questioned their lack of accounting for $50 billion in oil revenue, an allegation the NNPC officials vehemently denied.

The NNPC was later cleared of allegations of non-remittance of $49.8 billion into the federation account after a Joint meeting by the minister of finance and coordinator of the economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the minister of petroleum resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, and Sanusi himself.

The trio at the Oil Revenue Reconciliation Meeting held on Wednesday, December 18, 2013, issued A Joint Press Conference and also reconciled $39 billion leaving a shortfall of $10.8 billion.

It is therefore pertinent that a public figure like Sanusi who deals in figures should not be careless while dealing with the public on matter of figures. He should endeavour to think properly before making false accusations.

He needs to be more careful. He should, at least, demand for verification before making unguarded statements before the general public.

More important for him is to go a step further to realize, especially with this development, that those wrong information might make him look silly in public.