God Complex…Group Lists Reasons Atedo Peterside Shouldn’t Be Taken Seriously Over His Petulant Outburst

The founder of Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, Atedo Peterside, has stirred the hornet’s nest and the wasps are out in full venom. A day after Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was deposed as Emir by the Kano State government, Peterside, who was billed to attend a forum organised by the Central Bank of Nigeria, turned down the invitation via an open letter wherein he expressed in no uncertain terms his displeasure with the way Sanusi was treated.

In the letter, Peterside said, “My refusal to join you has more to do with the monumental events that took place yesterday viz the removal of the Emir of Kano from office and the release of information that purportedly seeks to exile him and restrict his movements or confine them to a little known enclave in Nassarawa State.”

Peterside, who said he was at an event when the news reached him, added, “I was distracted by disturbing news from Kano yesterday which confirmed what can go wrong when those in authority pay lip service to the Nigerian constitution and then proceed to violate the fundamental freedoms that it guarantees each individual because they prefer to cling to practices like exile which they learnt from colonial masters and the military. These practices have no place in a democratic dispensation.”

The letter has generated different reactions amongst Nigerians, noteworthy, a not-for-profit Abuja-based group, the Network for Social Good, which has lampooned Peterside for being a self-seeking opportunist who only sticks out his neck for friends when it favours him. In a statement made available to The Capital, the group said that it was shocking to read the letter because “Only people who are not aware of Peterside’s God Complex will dignify his so-called open letter with any seriousness. As far as we are concerned, his outburst in the letter is at best puerile and petulant and completely wide of the mark.”

According to the group, “We find it amusing to read from him because when Sanusi was Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and he was being hounded by agents of the Jonathan administration because of his transparency and forthrightness, people like Peterside who should have stood by him stayed aloof. Instead, he and Aig Imoukhuede, the former MD of Access Bank, were scheming to succeed him as CBN governor. At the time when Sanusi needed him most, he preferred to stay on the side of the government of the day rather than on the side of truth.”

The group went further to say that having lost out to Godwin Emefiele and with Sanusi fortuitously moving on to become Emir of one of Nigeria’s most powerful emirates, Peterside, whose Anap Jet business is reportedly struggling to survive, has been lobbying to be in his good books thus, necessitating the open letter. “This letter was not borne out of any altruistic move; it is just a means to an end. If his Anap Jets had succeeded as much as he envisioned, we are sure this letter would not have seen the light of day,” the group concluded