I used to think that this man was a
mallam!
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 at Sanusi’s
unnamed Abuja hotel, seeking to keep the
date and help address his boss’ craving for a
kiss. (Insiders say board members,
including those who live in Abuja, are
usually lodged in hotels ahead of board
meetings).
Choi! This one na serious allegation o.
Continue, it gets more interesting...
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 taxpayer’s expenses, 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
expenses.
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 these 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.”