By Donu Kogbara
WHEN Mallam Lamido Sanusi Lamido, the suspended Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Governor, decided to publicly query the financial dealings and modus operandi of the state oil company (NNPC), my knee-jerk reaction was that he was behaving inappropriately for a government official and must have a murky hidden agenda.

I felt he should have addressed any concerns he had about NNPC to Mr President in a private setting, instead of loudly embarrassing an administration he was a leading light of (and had gained considerable benefits from).

My view is that if you dislike the manner in which an entity to which you belong is carrying on, you should resign instead of becoming an in-house whistleblower. It is, in my opinion, highly dishonourable to sit tight and continue to collect generous perks, while dissing your colleagues and making your boss look bad.

*CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido

And I wondered whether Mallam Sanusi would have been so eager to take pot shots at NNPC, thereby casting aspersions on those who run it, if its supervising Minister – Mrs Diezani Allison-Madueke – had been a fellow Northerner married to a fellow Northerner, rather than a Bayelsan married to an Igbo.

I also remembered that Sanusi had also, on occasion, been quite harshly criticised for not always handling his own duties in a completely efficient and transparent manner.   Phrases like “pot calling the kettle black” and “people who live in glass houses should not throw stones” therefore sprang to mind.

Furthermore, I was a member of the Presidential Oil & Gas Sector Reform Implementation Committee that drafted the original Petroleum Industry Bill, so I’m not a complete ignoramus when it comes to oil/gas industry matters. And my instincts told me that Mallam Sanusi’s seemingly credible analysis was flawed.

But I wasn’t sure that my instincts could be trusted because I am not an expert.

I am not one of those journalists who have been full-time energy correspondents for decades. I am not one of the many engineers, lawyers, economists, geologists, etc, who have worked in the industry round the clock since they graduated from university. Nor am I an academic who is training the next generation of industry professionals and has written books about oil. To cut a long story short, because I am humbly aware of my intellectual limitations within this context, I was afraid to jump to conclusions about Sanusi’s complicated technical assertions by myself and decided to search for an expert advisor who had nothing to lose from being totally objective.

I wound up consulting a gentleman who works for a foreign research unit that specialises in studying the management of Nigeria’s hydrocarbon resources.

There isn’t enough space on this page for me to share his observations with you in detail, so I’ll settle for just repeating his conclusion: “The submissions made by the CBN Governor appear to be weighty but can be faulted in some areas…”

HOWEVER, despite this confirmation that Mallam Sanusi is not as accurate as he would like us to think – and my reservations and suspicions about his conduct and motives – I was appalled when Mr President decided to suspend him. Since Sanusi is human, he is far from perfect, but he WAS a Class Act when he was a Lagos-based banker and he DID later become one of the few players in Jonathan’s camp who enjoyed REAL respect from the international community.

Vanguard readers should go online and check out websites like Financial Times and BBC if they want to see how serious foreigners are interpreting his removal.

Sanusi has a large army of outraged fans at home and abroad; and he is going to court to seek reinstatement. But he was due to retire in about three months’ time ANYWAY. And I would not, if I’d been in Jonathan’s shoes, have given him this opportunity to turn himself into a martyr and global cause celebre.

You have probably guessed that I am emotionally biased against Sanusi and wary of him because I am a Niger Deltan and regard Jonathan and Diezani as quasi siblings and want them to be given the benefit of any doubts.

But even I think that my sectional sentiments are trite and impossible to morally justify…and that anyone who is dragging Nigeria down with obfuscations and dysfunctions should be punished, no matter where he or she is from.

The Bottom Line is that even though some of Sanusi’s complaints are based on dubious assumptions, some are also worthy of investigation.

NNPC has been riddled with corruption and incompetence since it was established. State oil companies in more ethical, more productive and more civilized countries are thriving, while NNPC limps on somewhat pathetically.

By kicking Sanusi out of his team, Jonathan has given the world the impression that he is more interested in suppressing truth and maintaining the status quo than in accepting the urgent need for oil sector reforms and ruthlessly tackling NNPC’s multiple shortcomings on behalf of the suffering Nigerian People.