Sanusi: Shake-up looms in CBN 
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi said this yesterday in Benin, Edo State, at a seminar for finance correspondents and Business Editors with the theme ‘The Blueprint for Banking Reforms in Nigeria: Issues, Challenges and Prospects’. He said documents are being prepared to be presented to the National Assembly to know what happened, those involved and “who did what.”
He hinted that by the time the documents are presented to the National Assembly, former staff and officials of CBN who were involved in the crisis would be summoned and any of them found culpable would be made to face the book.
Sanusi also said that the sacked bank MDs will soon be charged to court for criminal theft. He said the apex bank is investigating some of them who granted their personal companies loans with no intention to pay back, as well as those who collected loans using depositors’ names.
Asked why the apex bank did not take the same measure of punishment against CBN staff as it did to the troubled bank chiefs, Sanusi said, “You can’t be at war and light fire near your leg. If you are fighting a war, you must win the war first and you need your staff to win the war. It will come to that.”
On the criminal litigation against the sacked bank MDs, the central bank governor said, “We are going to charge people with theft. If you steal money, you’ll be charged with theft. I don’t know how to convert words; if you steal I will say you stole.”
He also said that the banks that were bailed out with N620 billion last year still have up to N900 billion bad loans in their books and even when the Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) buys up the loans, there will still be about N500 billion left.
Reacting to criticism that he talks too much, Sanusi said that sometimes what people say are informed by what they see, and “I have never had the desire to speak what makes other people happy,” but what is right.
He said he will continue to say what is right because “ideologically I am a Marxist.”
He said that critics are welcome but advised the media to always engage in constructive criticisms. He said that newspapers should not allow themselves to become vehicles for attaching reforms. “By the time people are bringing about N500, 000 for advertisements on something that has no value for so many months, people should ask questions”, he said. According to him, criticisms will not get him removed.
Sanusi said, “I welcome criticism, I do not have any objection to criticism but I think we should all remember as Nigerians and as members of civil society that what happened in the banking sector was only symptomatic of what is happening in different parts of this country.
“The banks are not the only people who have been breaching trust. Corruption is not a matter that is limited to the bank and what we do in terms of our actions to those who fight against corruption will determine the willingness of other people to work.
“There are reform minded people in other parts of government; they will look at what is happening to Lamido Sanusi. I don’t mind. I never surrender.”