In an explosive interview with Forbes, former CBN governor and current Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has revealed that former governor of Rivers state and current Minister for transport, Rotimi Amaechi was responsible for leaking Former president, Olusegun Obasanjo's letter to Jonathan over a missing sum of $20 billion to the media.
Sanusi said that in 2012 and 2013, government revenue collapsed by $10
billion, without a collapse in oil prices or production capacity, adding
that the CBN found a $49 billion revenue gap.
Sanusi said he then wrote Jonathan, saying:
“If this continues, we are going to have a big problem if the price of
oil came down. We can’t protect interest rates, we can’t protect
exchange rates, we can’t protect reserves.We may have to tighten money
to prevent inflation, there will be unemployment, government will suffer
– all of the things we are seeing today.”
Sanusi further stated that Jonathan did not do anything until Obasanjo's letter went public. he says
“This was in August 2013, the president received the letter and did
nothing. A few weeks after that, the finance minister called to say,
governor, can we do some reconciliation on oil revenue numbers? I said
minister, I report to the president.I have written to the president, if
the president wants me to sit with you and do reconciliation, the
president will tell me.
After Obasanjo’s letter, all hell now broke loose. The letter was then
leaked to online media, and it became public. That was when the
president got angry and we then had to sit and do reconciliation."
Sanusi says he was then summoned by the president;
“In the middle of all these, the president called me and said I should
see him at 3pm. I turned up at 3pm and the entire place had been swept.
There was no one apart from security services. I got to his office, it
was just me and him. It was as if everybody had been asked to go.And so
he says to me, he’s calling me because he is surprised that letter I
wrote to him got to Obasanjo, I said I’m surprised too.
He said he’s convinced that the letter went from the central bank to
Obasanjo, and I had 24 hours to find who leaked the letter or sack
somebody; the director who prepared the letter or my secretary and if I
did not sack them, that was proof that I leaked the letter and
therefore, I should resign.
“I said to him that I’m surprised that I’m being asked to resign for
raising an alarm over missing funds and the minister in charge of the
portfolio is not being asked to resign.From then I knew I had signed my
equivalent for death warrant. But I said I was not resigning. He got
very angry and said whether you like it or not, you’re going to leave
that office, I cannot continue to work with you, either you or I will
leave government."
Afraid for his life, Sanusi said he did the following;
“I was amused that leaking the letter is far more crime than leaking
money. I went straight to the office of the principal secretary to the
president, and I met him with a gentleman from Kano, who was foreign
minister Ambassador Aminu Ali.I said to them, gentlemen, I’m coming to
you because I just had a meeting with the president, and there were no
witnesses, and the president had threatened me.
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