Maku Dismisses Sanusi As A Voodoo Statistician
Contrary to the image of a whistle blower given the suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, by some Nigerians on account of his yet-to-be substantiated allegations of missing funds against the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) at different times within the last three months, the Minister of Information, Mallam Labaran Maku, on Tuesday declared that the suspended CBN Governor is a voodoo statistician and not in any way, a whistle blower as being ascribed by some people.
The Minister made the declaration in Abuja while fielding questions from journalists after appearing before the Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe-led Senate Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs.
He was at the Senate to defend his Ministry's 2014 budget proposals.
Maku said the whistle blower image given to Sanusi by some unsuspecting Nigerians is nothing but voodoo statistics he churned out on the alleged missing oil funds, adding that it was a perception fed by negative reports from the media.
"Sanusi is not a whistle blower as governor of Central Bank of Nigeria.
The perception making him so, is fed by negative reports from the media.
I have not heard in any nation where the Central Bank Governor is a whistle blower.
He is the manager of the nation's monetary policies as an adviser to the president of Nigeria on those issues.
So the fact that he has moved from being the CBN governor to whistle blowing is a problem in itself.
"Remember Sanusi said $49.
8 billion was missing, how much do we earn? That means there was a free fall.
But the story changed to $10.
8billion before he jerked it upward to $20 billion at his last appearance before the Senate Committee on Finance, so nobody knows the exact figure he was alleging then to be missing from the NNPC accounts, It is voodoo statistics and not whistle blowing that are coming from the CBN governor," Maku said.
He added further that no CBN governor makes statement on his nation's economy without verifying the way Sanusi did.
Maku however said that the suspension of Sanusi as explained by President Goodluck Jonathan Monday night during the Presidential media chat, has nothing to do with the voodoo statistics he churned out to Nigerians on alleged un-remitted monies into the Federation Account by NNPC, but rather on issues raised by the Financial Reporting Council on the 2012 budget of CBN.
"But the reality of what has happened is that there are issues with the account of CBN of 2012 as the president explained.
The Financial Reporting Council has said that there are issues that should be addressed; so the President returned it back to the council and the council again returned it with some of the items with even more questions that are needed to be answered.
"CBN is the nerve centre of the nation's financial system, if there are problems with it, it means that it can generate a lot of problems in the banking system and the economy and so the president has been trying to sort this out and between him and the CBN governor, communications have been going on since April 2013.
So it has nothing to do what my brother Sanusi has said relating to the NNPC.
Conversation has been ongoing between them on the Financial Reporting Council issues long time ago before Sanusi started raising allegations against NNPC .
" The President has said it all during the media chat on Monday night on why he was suspended, which makes the hoopla being created out of it by some critics to be worrisome or are they saying that the queries that were raised relating to the CBN account were false? ", Maku queried.
EMMA UCHE, ABUJA