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 romance—he 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.”
PREMIUM
TIMES
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