Twenty minutes to midnight on February
25, 2013, and a day before the board of
the Central Bank of Nigeria was due to
meet, Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
developed a craving for romance—he
badly needed a kiss.
The governor, married, with children,
grabbed his mobile phone and typed out
a message. “Maybe you should come kiss
me before board meeting tomorrow,” Mr.
Sanusi wrote and then squeezed the send
button.
At about 9 a.m. the next day, Mrs.
Maryam Yaro, a married mother of two,
an assistant director and subordinate
to the governor at the CBN, arrived
Sanusi’s unnamed Abuja hotel, seeking
to keep the date and help address her
boss’ craving for a kiss. (Insiders
say board members, including those who
live in Abuja, are usually lodged in
hotels ahead of board meetings).
But by the time Mrs. Yaro left the
hotel to return to her official desk at
the CBN, the duo had also struck out an
arrangement to spend the rest of the
week together in Lagos.
So, in the evening of Wednesday
February 27, Mrs. Yaro flew to Lagos
ahead of Mr. Sanusi and checked into a
hotel in the city, skipping work, at
taxpayers’ expense, on Thursday
February 28 and Friday, March 1.
To keep faith with Mrs. Yaro’s date,
the CBN governor arrived Lagos,
travelling on a chartered flight, on
the night of February 28, and checked
into the Federal Palace Hotel, passage
and boarding all at taxpayers’ expense.
Both Mr. Sanusi and Mrs. Yaro
rendezvoused in the hotel till Sunday
when both of them returned to Abuja,
PREMIUM TIMES learnt.
“…I had such a wonderful weekend,” Mrs.
Yaro confessed to the governor while
aboard her Abuja-bound flight. “You
have revived in me what I thought I
lost long ago. I thought I lost the
passion to love again,” she claimed.
“Alhamdulillahi. Love you,” Mr. Sanusi
responded in a measured tone.
Insiders say repeated violation of the
statutory code of conduct for public
office holders such as hiring his
girlfriends and mistresses without
complying with public service rules,
dating married and unmarried women
within the bank, and flirting with them
during official work hours have become
defining characters of Mr. Sanusi’s
governorship of the central bank.
An official of the bank spoke of how
Mr. Sanusi had enthroned nepotism at
the bank, arbitrarily hiring
girlfriends and relatives and engaging
in extramarital relationships with
staff.
“This man (the CBN governor) is the
most morally bankrupt governor the CBN
has ever had,” the official, who did
not want to be named for fear of
retribution, told PREMIUM TIMES.
“Forget all the pretences, he is a
shameless man of loose character.”
Investigations by this newspaper
revealed that Mr. Lamido hired his
latest mistress, Mrs. Yaro, without
complying with the CBN recruitment
policy that stressed, “all appointments
shall be made on the basis of merit,
through a fair and open selection
process.”
“The principles underlying the
recruitment process are those of
fairness, credibility, equal employment
opportunities, merit and optimization
of career prospects for currently
employed staff,” the bank said on its
website.
But Mrs. Yaro, insiders say, was hired
in July 2012 without adherence to these
principles. Those who should know say
Mrs. Yaro, who was a staff at the
National Programme on Food Security, an
agency under the Federal Ministry of
Agriculture, was brought into the bank
as assistant director without “advert
for the vacancy and after a kangaroo
interview.”
When contacted, Mr. Sanusi said due
process was followed in hiring Mrs.
Yaro.
He said having worked for years in the
ministry of agric, Mrs. Yaro came
highly recommended and qualified for
the job for which she was hired.
The CBN governor continued, “I have
known Dr. Yaro since 1981. She was my
student in Yola and she later came to
ABU Zaria. We have been very good
friends but this is not why NIRSAL took
her. You may wish to check her CV
against all the other CVs in NIRSAL.
And she did go through an interview
process with the NIRSAL CEO making the
decision not CBN HR.
“As for the personal allegations, this
is all strange to me but I have a
personal policy of not responding to
such allegations since in Nigeria
anything can be published on any public
officer without proof. I have limited
myself to what concerns official
allegations and leave you to your God
and your conscience on whatever else
you want to publish. Thank you for
telling me though.”
Mrs. Yaro however declined comments
when contacted by PREMIUM TIMES.
“Be careful what you are saying,” she
told one of our reporters on the
telephone. “I have nothing to comment
to you on anything.”
When asked if she would be willing to
respond to specific questions about her
trips to Lagos to keep dates with Mr.
Sanusi, she simply said, “Whatever it
is, I don’t know. Will you just let me
be?”
But our investigations revealed that
the governor’s claim was far from
accurate. Through several interviews
and review of records, PREMIUM TIMES
was able to determine that Mrs. Yaro
and Mr. Sanusi had dated each other for
at least six months before she was
hired.
Insiders say Mr. Sanusi repeatedly
pestered the human resource department
of the bank ordering it to bring Mrs.
Yaro’s application to him for approval.
And once the file reached his table,
the governor wasted no time in treating
it.
On June 25, 2012, Mr. Sanusi, who was
travelling in South Africa at the time,
telephoned Mrs. Yaro to break the news
to her that he had approved her
recruitment in what critics consider a
clear conflict of interest and a
violation of a provision of Nigeria’s
Code of Conduct which stipulates that
“a public officer shall not put himself
in a position where his interest
conflicts with his duties and
responsibilities.”
Mrs. Yaro, (whose businessman husband,
Ahmed, is largely based in Kaduna but
visits Abuja regularly) assumed duties
at the CBN in the first week of
September 2012 and was deployed to the
Development Finance Department.
The department then put her in charge
of the bank’s Nigerian Incentive-Based
Risk Sharing System For Agricultural
Lending, (NIRSAL), a unit that attempts
to fix the agricultural value chain, so
that banks can lend with confidence to
the sector and, encourages banks to
lend to the agricultural value chain by
offering them strong incentives and
technical assistance.
Sources said Mrs. Yaro married Ahmed
(or Shuaib, according to another
source) six years ago after her first
husband, Waisu Yaro Bodinga (then an
executive director at the Nigeria Ports
Authority) died in the ill-fated ADC
plane crash of 2006.
The romance between Mrs. Yaro and Mr.
Sanusi became even hotter after she
began work at the bank, with the two
lovers regularly exchanging telephone
calls and text messages during work
hours to profess love for each other.
At times, Mrs. Yaro would remain in her
office far beyond close of work to
enable her to keep appointments with
the CBN governor, records show.
Sometimes, Mrs. Yaro would raise
concerns about Mr. Sanusi’s other
girlfriends and mistresses (such as
Sutura and Rose) and how they were
blocking her from getting the
governor’s full attention, but the
relationship continued nonetheless.
Mrs. Yaro also began to have access to
confidential information known only to
top management and board of the bank,
insiders say.
At a point, one source said, she began
to strategise to corner contracts for
one Goke Akinboro, the Chief Executive
Officer of Lagos-based Cellullant
Limited, an information technology
company. Mr. Akinboro is also described
as “very close” to Mrs. Yaro.
On March 15, 2013, the CBN lovers
headed to Lagos again for another
weekend of fun. The initial plan was
for the duo to fly to the nation’s
commercial capital on Saturday, March
16, returning to Abuja on Sunday. But
the trip had to be brought forward by a
day after the lovers realized that the
Area Council election in Abuja was
holding that Saturday and that movement
might be restricted.
Mrs. Yaro arrived Lagos on the night of
March 15, and immediately checked into
the Radisson Blu Anchorage Hotel on
Victoria Island. Mr. Sanusi flew from
Kano to Lagos via chartered jet on the
bills of the Nigerian taxpayers. He
arrived at about 11 p.m., stopped by
his Ikoyi home, before dashing to the
hotel where Mrs. Yaro was waiting in a
seductive dress in Room 23. The lovers
spent that night and the next day
together in the hotel.
As he flew into Abuja March 17 on a
chartered jet, Mr. Sanusi sent a
message to Mrs. Yaro saying, “Love.
Just landed in Abuja. Thank you for a
wonderful weekend.” Mrs. Yaro replied,
“Alhamdulillah. I had a wonderful
weekend too. I am able to get the 3:15
flight on Arik Air. Love you.”
But in-between those rendezvous in
Lagos, Mr. Sanusi and Mrs Yaro also
found time to get together elsewhere.
They were to meet on March 11, 2013, in
Makurdi but somehow Mrs. Yaro could not
make it to the Benue State capital.
But earlier on February 14,
(Valentine’s Day), the lovers had a
good time together in Maiduguri.
Although, the two of them travelled to
the city on different missions, they
somehow found a way to get together.
At a point, Mrs. Yaro voiced open
frustration when Mr. Lamido delayed in
taking her calls as she tried,
frantically, to track him down. “I’m
thinking that one Shuwa girl has
snatched you away from me,” Mrs. Yaro
wrote in a message. “I don’t trust them
(Maiduguri girls) with you.”
A velvet-ranking figure within
Nigeria’s economic and political
circles, Mr. Sanusi, is generally
perceived as one of the intellectual
anchors and moral conscience of this
administration. When his five-year term
expires next year, he has indicated he
would not renew his contract. Mr.
Sanusi has a well-advertised ambition
to become the future emir of his native
Kano, where he is already a top
chieftaincy holder (Dan Maje Kano). Dan
Majen Kano, a historic title, which
means Son of Emir-Maje, is reserved for
the royal family members from the Kano
Habe dynasty.
A zigzag prospect to run for the
Nigerian presidency is also believed to
be floating in the horizon for Mr.
Sanusi.
Multiple sources at both the CBN and
First Bank, where Mr. Sanusi was
managing director before his
appointment to the central bank,
describe the governor as an “incurable
womanizer.”
“This guy seems unable to resist
anything in skirt, and it is
unfortunate that a lot of young people
look up to him as an example,” one of
Mr. Sanusi’s aides in Abuja said,
expressing widely held concerns in
banking circles that “It is sad that he
wouldn’t even let married women be.”
Mr. Sanusi, 51, appointed CBN Governor
on June 3 2009, is a smart economist
and award-winning banker with a
background in risk management.
He holds a graduate degree in economics
from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria
and a diploma in Sharia and Islamic
Studies from the African International
University in Khartoum, Sudan. Today,
Mr. Sanusi is also commonly regarded as
an important voice in Islamic
jurisprudence.
The Banker, the UK-based financial
magazine honoured him in 2010 as global
Central Bank Governor of the Year as
well as African Central Bank Governor
of the Year. In 2011, the TIME magazine
listed Mr. Sanusi in its annual
publication of 100 most influential
people.
At the African Banker Awards gala
dinner held Wednesday in Morocco, Mr.
Sanusi also emerged the “2013 Africa
Central Bank Governor of the Year.”
“There is no doubt that he is a fairly
effective banker,” an official of one
of Nigeria’s leading banks, who
requested anonymity for fear his bank
might be targeted, told PREMIUM TIMES.
“But he is a man of zero morality
despite his public posturing. It is
really sad.”
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