Excess Crude Account Is Not President Buhari’s ATM

By Ochereoma Nnanna

The Nigerian Governors’ Forum, NGF, under the chairmanship of Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State is in the pocket of President Muhammadu Buhari. To be fair to the President, he never made any effort to pocket it.

*President Buhari 

 Buhari has been very avuncular to the governors irrespective of their political parties, offering the states financial bailouts and refunding them their Paris Club debt overpayments. He has done well on that count. Apart from Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State who has chosen to be outspoken as an opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, governor, most of the others were very sympathetic towards the President in the darkest hour of his illness some months ago. Even opposition governors volunteered to go and see how he was recuperating in London. The governors feel so cosy with the President (except on the issue of herdsmen’s attacks) that hardly does a day pass without one or two of them tramping the Aso Villa corridors. Governor Yari, for one, virtually lives in Abuja, perhaps to be closer to the President. Senator Kabiru Marafa has accused him of preferring his post as the Chairman of the NGF to his elected mandate as Governor of Zamfara State. So, if Yari and the NGF are in Buhari’s pocket, it is because they crawled in there by themselves not because of presidential manipulation. 

Emir Sanusi And The Aborted Probe

By Paul Onomuakpokpo 

With the abrupt termination of the probe of Emir of Kano, Mallam Muhammad Sanusi 11, we have been denied the opportunity to witness a shamefaced confirmation or a smug rebuttal of the allegation of financial sleaze against him. Is the allegation that he mismanaged N6 billion of his emirate a mere canard peddled to sully his hard-earned reputation? This remains unresolved. It was the Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-corruption Commission that first started a probe of Sanusi before the state House of Assembly launched an investigation into the same matter.

*Emir Sanusi

The investigations were provoked by his trenchant criticism of the northern establishment. He drew the ire of his highly conservative leaders when he accused Zamfara State Governor Abdulaziz Yari of not only failing to take action to check the outbreak of meningitis but for regarding the affliction as a direct comeuppance for his people’s violation of divine stipulations against fornication and adultery.

It is by no means a surprise that Sanusi has been embroiled in another controversy. For him, controversy is a veritable staple of life. Therefore, if controversy does not come on its own, Sanusi courts it with aplomb. Then the approbation follows. He is seen as one of the enlightened people from the north who could speak truth to power. It was a controversy that he triggered by accusing the Goodluck Jonathan government of corruption that led to his removal as Central Bank governor.