By Tolu Abidakun
He was stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea; going forth was a great difficulty and turning back proved even far more tedious exercise – by the time the storms calmed to the nudge of pliant winds, Godwin Emefiele, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has waded too deep in the murky waters of rancid economics and hideous politics.
It would be recalled that Emefiele was persistently ridiculed as a pawn in the grand designs of former President Goodluck Jonathan and his cronies to milk Nigeria for all she’s worth in their bid to retain tenacious hold on power; the CBN governor was allegedly used by the former administration to turn the CBN into a conduit pipe for funding the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) led government.
However, former President Jonathan and his cohorts’ hopes were dashed to smithereens following their loss to President Muhammadu
Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC), at presidential polls.
Few months into President Buhari’s administration, his anti-corruption fight seem to be yielding results as shocking revelations of the previous administration’s monumental corruption continue to foul the country’s social, economic and political circuits.
Recent findings showed that the CBN under Emefiele’s leadership virtually cleaned out its vaults to finance the presidential campaign of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). This follows earlier reports about an extra-budgetary disbursement of N40 billion to the office of the national security adviser and N20 billion to the Department of State Services (DSS) by the CBN.
The Capital findings revealed that the monies were released in dollar currency contrary to money laundering regulations and they directly from the dollar reserve vaults of the CBN.
Security intelligence reports revealed that in August 2014, Emefiele called a board meeting to request for an approval of N60 billion to support the security services under a “special security intervention fund” he intended to create. The CBN governor, who is also chairman of the board, allegedly told the members that the money was needed to equip the military to fight and crush the Boko Haram insurgency in the north-east.
This was shortly after he reportedly secured approval from President Jonathan to disburse the funds. Sambo Dasuki, retired colonel and then NSA, had twice requested for N60 billion in documents and was only successful at third attempt following Jonathan’s intervention. In the new documents, the former NSA regularly wrote to Emefiele asking him to disburse the approved money in hard currency equivalent, usually in tranches of N10 billion.
Raymond Dokpesi, chairman of AIT and DAAR Communications allegedly got N2.1 billion of the fund for Jonathan’s media publicity and investigators have now traced some of the monies collected by the office of the NSA to the PDP presidential campaign.
Dasuki has said not all the monies he received were for security, maintaining that some were for NGOs. However, questions have been raised on how CBN created the security fund overnight to meet NSA’s requests.
Some board members reportedly cautioned Emefiele against such an audacious move, advising instead that the expenditure should be tied to procurement, but he allegedly rejected the advice.
The CBN, it was alleged, created an illicit intervention fund to take money out of the system. Sources within the CBN and the government maintained that the fact that the former NSA was given the money in cash forex, indicates criminal activity by the CBN itself.
In giving so much cash, the CBN has implicated itself in money laundering. And by siphoning it from the CBN vaults, the management of the bank had taken foreign exchange from the apex bank’s reserves without observing due process.
The accountant-general did not sign off as required for such transaction to be made; money was simply moved like it happened under past military regimes when large amounts were looted from the CBN under the guise of financing ECOMOG, the West African peace-keeping force.
In February 2015, after the presidential elections were controversially postponed to bolster the former government’s alleged bid to crush Boko Haram before the elections, the CBN allegedly disbursed about $300 million on the instructions of the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) to the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).
NAPIMS is a corporate services unit in the exploration and production directorate of the NNPC charged with managing government’s investment in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry. NIA is Nigeria’s equivalent of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which deals with foreign intelligence.
Economic crimes investigators are currently working with the theory that the money was used to fund PDP’s campaign in the presidential election which it eventually lost to the APC and in all these sordid transactions, Emefiele’s name keeps popping up in unworthy instances.
