₦airaland Forum

#Meffy2023: A joke taken too far
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

8 May 2022


In November 2017, it emerged that the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, had significant interests in an off-shore company registered in Bermuda, which held an account with the UBS in London. The UBS is a multinational investment bank and financial services company with its headquarters in Basel and Zurich in Switzerland.
Disclosures released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in the Paradise Papers revealed that Emefiele owned 49% of Oviation Asset Management since 2009 and was a director in the company since January 2013.
According to The Guardian newspaper in London, “Oviation was part of a structure that imported two jets via the Isle of Man. The latest purchase, a $50m Gulfstream G550, arrived in November 2015. It replaced a $33m Gulfstream G450, imported in 2013.”
Fifteen months before the import of the second Gulfstream, in June 2014, Emefiele became the Governor of the CBN. In this capacity, he also leads The Mint, which prints Nigeria’s currency.

Section 9 of the CBN Act of 2007 requires of both the Governor of the Central Bank and his deputies that they “shall devote the whole of their time to the service of the Bank and, while holding office, shall not engage in any full or part-time employment or vocation, whether remunerated or not, except such charitable causes as may be determined by the Board and which do not conflict with or conflict with their full-time duties.”
This prohibition places three constraints on the CBN Governor: one substantive, another procedural, and a third, ethical. Substantively, it bars him from moonlighting in any other job or vocation, whether or not remunerated. Procedurally, he needs the approval of the Board of the CBN before taking on any role outside the bank. Implied in this is an obligation of full and honest disclosure on the part of the CBN Governor. As an (additional) ethical standard, the Act precludes the CBN Governor from putting himself in a position that conflicts with his full-time duties.
As the head of a “public corporation” (which the CBN is), Emefiele, as the CBN Governor, is also subject to the Code of Conduct for senior public officers contained in the 5th Schedule to the Nigerian constitution, which imposes on him standards of conduct with reference to asset disclosures, acceptance of gifts and donations, and holding of overseas interests.

For Emefiele, it seems these standards were ornaments of convenience. Three years into his office as the CBN Governor, his interests in Oviation were still intact. Contacted by The Guardian for an explanation in November 2017, Emefiele claimed that he “gave instructions for his shares to be handed back” to his former employers, a Nigerian bank, in 2014. For a central banker, this claim shows either a tendency for the cavalier or habit of casuistry. The former puts his professionalism in question and the latter is a question of character.
On or about May 4, 2022, Emefiele was a guest of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), in the Presidency. The following day, some characters claiming to be armed Niger Delta militants endorsed the CBN Governor for the presidential ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress, promising to lay down their arms if the party were to hand the ticket to him. It is too soon to say whether or not these two developments which appear unrelated have anything to do with what happened next.
Putting months of speculation and hide-and-seek to rest, it emerged on May 6, 2022 that one Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria and two other shadowy organisations had purchased for Emefiele forms to run for the presidency on the ticket of the APC. His political organisation goes by the brand “#Meffy2023”. The following day, May 7, Emefiele claimed that he was awaiting “God’s Divine intervention” which he hoped to receive “in the next few days”.
Emefiele has been nothing if not consistent in his convenient attitude to rules. As the CBN Governor, he has maintained a ruinous regime of multiple exchange rates, sustaining a deliberate scheme of profitable arbitrage which is conducive to cronyism at his discretion and insider abuse. The result is this his version of “Farmers Earnestly Yearn for Emefiele”.
He has got the CBN involved in schemes and scams that almost assuredly violate Section 34 of the CBN Act; from taking over the management of the National Theatre (despite pending litigation) to making himself a willing instrument for the persecution of #EndSARS protesters. Premium Times in a February 21, 2021 editorial fears that his tenure at the CBN will be remembered for having wilfully “shredded” the guardrails in the CBN Act.
In a country where consequences follow malfeasance, Emefiele will already be in prison. In Nigeria, he longs for the presidency.

The question whether Emefiele can run for the presidential ticket of a political party while also continuing to serve as the CBN Governor is both moral and legal. Premium Times addressed the former, pointing out that “the operational and administrative autonomy granted the central bank by its enabling statute was precisely to protect the governor from political influence.”

The governor of Ondo State, himself a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Rotimi Akeredolu, puts it even more pointedly in a release issued on the same day that Emefiele collected the form to actualise his aspiration: “It is difficult to imagine that a person who occupies the exalted and sensitive office of the Governor of the CBN will be this brazen in actualising his ambition.”
A partisan politician grubbing for votes while hanging on as the CBN Governor messes with more than the statutory independence of the Bank. It is inconceivable that he can retain independence while seeking the presidency. On the same May 6, on which he collected his presidential forms, “news of Emefiele’s presidential bid sent the Naira close to a record low”, confirming that his is no ordinary ambition.
But this is, even more, a legal issue. To be sure, Emefiele, as an adult citizen of Nigeria, is entitled to run for any office he desires. Two of his predecessors have preceded him into elective politics. Clement Isong, the second Governor of the CBN from 1967 to 1975, became the first elected governor of old Cross-River State in October 1979. Chukwuma Soludo, who was the CBN Governor from 2004 to 2009, is currently serving as the governor of Anambra State, having been elected on November 6, 2021. Both Dr. Isong and Professor Soludo ran for office after the expiration of their terms.
Section 9 of the CBN Act makes it quite clear that the CBN Governor just cannot choose to run for elective office while still holding on to office. In any case, he has to first secure the approval of the CBN Board, which is not the case here. He could, of course, choose to resign in order to pursue his ambition. For this, Section 11(3) of the CBN Act requires him to give “at least three months’ notice in writing to the President of his intention to do so.”
So, Section 9 of the CBN Act precludes Emefiele from political activities and Section 11(3) requires him to give three months’ notice of resignation. As a matter of law, he should have resigned at least three months before the party presidential primary in which he is to be a contestant. The possibility that such a notice from the CBN Governor can be concealed for this long in a political season would require terminal skills in political self-immolation.
But, as with his holding in an offshore company despite being prohibited from doing so, Emefiele would wish this away as yet another inconsequential encounter with an inconvenient guardrail. The Presidency, however, is ultimately about guardrails. As Lincoln is reported to have said and many more since then have shown, it is a test of character.
In pursuit of his audacious project, Emefiele has not encountered any guardrails which he has not been willing to destroy. For those who wish to turn over to him the keys to the presidency at this time and in this manner, Governor Akeredolu’s words bear repeating: This is a joke taken too far.

In the end, it would appear that Emefiele is relaxed about having the fate of his ambition decided by a college of Nigerian judges. He carries on with the cockiness of a man who has assured himself that, as the boss of The Mint, he can issue enough notes to buy any number of judges on his march to whatever he fancies. If he ultimately suffers a bloody nose, it’ll be just desserts for a man who clearly believes everything can be bought and sold.
Prof Odinkalu, lawyer and teacher, can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu
Copyright PUNCH.

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MEMORIES OF MIDNIGHT:

By Simon Kolawole

It was midnight, not so long ago, when I woke up, used the toilet and returned to my bed to continue from where I stopped. For almost an hour, I closed my eyes in vain. I could neither induce nor seduce sleep. I was rolling from one end of the bed to the other, like a footballer faking injury. I decided to go into my study, to prove to sleep that I could use the time for something else. My study is a junkyard. I tip-toed through the wreckage of books, old newspapers and all sort, and aimed for a particular Ghana-must-go housing old magazines. I randomly picked three editions of Newswatch magazine and went back to bed.

The first was the March 12, 1990 edition, “Cult of Deaths”, on the growing horror of secret cults in Nigerian universities. I flipped through within one minute. I took the second. It was the February 20, 1989 edition. The cover story was “IBB’s Surprise Move: The Sacking of AFRC”. The all-powerful Armed Forces Ruling Council was the three arms of government rolled into one: executive, legislature and judiciary (it could overrule the Supreme Court). Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, the military president, had shocked the whole world by dissolving the body. I flashed back to the controversy that followed, particularly fears that IBB was about to become a full-blown dictator.

I leafed through the magazine again and shook my head on seeing the pictures of some of Nigeria’s most powerful military men at the time. David Mark, Nura Imam, Ndubuisi Kanu, John Shagaya, Gado Nasko, Larry Koinyan, Paul Omu, Yohanna Kure, Oladipo Diya, etc. Newswatch speculated that most of them would be dropped from the reconstituted AFRC. I looked at their 40-something-year-old faces and shook my head again. “Nothing lasts forever,” I muttered to myself. Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall. Fact of life. So whenever I see the “men of power” today chasing us off the road with their siren, I imagine where their convoy would be heading in 2027 or 2037.

On page 19 of the same edition, I saw a story on the arrest of Chief Chris Okolie, publisher of Newbreed. His magazine had written a story, “A Harvest of Generals”, following a spate of promotions in the army. The military authorities did not like the story. Punishment? He was detained without a word. That was the fate of journalists under military rule. A little story considered to be an irritation was met with excessive deployment of state power. Today’s publishers of fake news would not have survived under a military regime. You didn’t need to publish fake news to be jailed. Just publish anything considered nauseating or “radical” and SSS or DMI would snatch you.

Flipping to page 31, I saw a short story in which Chief Ernest Shonekan, then chairman of UAC, warned that “there is little prospect for a return to the petroleum price which we enjoyed five years ago”. He was referring to the 1984 price of $28, comparing it to the $18 in 1989. He was wrong. Oil would later sell for $147 in 2008. Nigerians did not “enjoy” it, though. So maybe he was right. He also said the 20-fold increase in oil revenue in the 1970s killed productivity and only encouraged local assembly and packaging industries which “rather than become locally self-sufficient, depended on imported raw materials”. He was very right. And we are still saying the same thing in 2017.

I threw the magazine aside. I then made the mistake of my life: I picked the May 30, 1988 edition. I wish I hadn’t. I still believe it was the work of the devil. The cover design was completely black, but for the two big eyeballs in darkness as well as a slender white outline and a thick red border. It screamed: “NEPA — A Nation in Darkness.” It was a special focus on Nigeria’s power problems. This edition could have been reproduced 29 years after — I mean this year — with just little changes: the principal characters and the anecdotes. At the risk of exaggeration, I would say things were even better in those days than today, especially comparing the expenditure with the results.

Ray Ekpu, the editor-in-chief, started his weekly note thus: “Sometime in 1981, the then president of Nigeria, Shehu Shagari, was poised to make a budget speech to the National Assembly… Everyone was seated and as the president began to make a speech, the brightly lit hall turned into pitch darkness. For 15 minutes the hall was enveloped in darkness and it remained so.” He also wrote about the embarrassment Babangida faced in Kano on April 16, 1988 when he was entertaining Flt. Lt. JJ Rawlings, Ghana’s head of state, to a state dinner. There were three power cuts during the event. Everybody was embarrassed, but Rawlings managed to make a joke of it.

Ghana also had power problems at the time. Today, Accra, its political and economic capital, enjoys uninterrupted electricity. Nigeria? Now don’t get me started. According to Newswatch, NEPA’s installed generation capacity as at 1988 was 4,000 megawatts. It wrote: “This is expected to increase to between 10,000 and 12,000 megawatts by the year 2000.” I’m not joking. A few days ago, some 29 years after, the ministry of power happily informed Nigerians that power generation has now hit 3,000-4,000mw again. I’m not joking. Between 1988 and 2017, we have spent at least $30 billion on the power sector to generate uninterrupted darkness.

Let me amuse you a bit. In 2001, my landlord had promised to buy a generator big enough to power his flat and mine. Someone was relocating to the US and wanted to “fling” his generator. Suddenly, my landlord changed his mind. “If you noticed,” he lectured me, “power has improved in recent times. President Obasanjo has finally fixed the problem. There is no need to waste money on generator.” I nodded stupidly. According to official statistics, power generation had hit 3,000mw by 2001. It was time to roll out the drums. And so, 16 years after, we are still rolling out the drums to celebrate 3,000mw. Can you believe that?

When Obasanjo came up with Vision 20-2020, we were promised power generation would hit 10,000 megawatts by 2007 and 35,000mw by 2020, when Nigeria was expected to be among the 20 biggest economies in the world. The projections were brought in dead. When Obasanjo was leaving office in 2007, we were still celebrating 3,000mw of power supply. The plan, reviewed and re-presented by his successor, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, projected that installed capacity would grow from 6,000mw in 2009 to 20,000mw by 2015. Ladies and gentlemen, this is 2017 and we are still so glad to announce that we have hit 3,000mw again. A round of applause.

The excuses, or let me say the reasons, for epileptic power supply in 1988 are virtually the same excuses, I mean reasons, in 2017. Mr. David Oyeleye, then NEPA’s general manager, told Newswatch that “we cannot run many of the machines at Egbin because gas is not there yet… the amount of high pour fuel oil, HPFO, which is needed is not even produced in the country in sufficient quantity”. There was also the regular excuse, I mean reason: “Low level of water at Kainji and Jebba dams.” There were less than 80 million Nigerians in 1988; we are now well over 170 million. And we’re still celebrating 3,000mw. Another round of applause please.

After allowing the devil to torment me for 30 minutes, I said “No Más”, like Roberto Duran, and moved to the next story: “Why Food Prices Are Up”. An Agege housewife said she used to feed her family of six with a weekly budget of N20. “A mudu of garri now sells for N16 [so] where does that leave my N20?” she asked. At that stage, I told myself I had had enough. Get thee behind me Satan! I flung the magazine far away like Christmas banger, switched off my bedside lamp and cuddled my pillow, muttering: “But where do I get this reckless confidence from — that Nigeria will change someday?” God so good, I lapsed into unconsciousness, snoring away my midnight sorrows. Zzzzzz.

PS:
I send out this story in the hope that we all as Nigerians will do what is right and honourable. It is important who rules us but even more important are we that vote them in.

MAGG0T:
[s][/s]

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preciouslanre:
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Pls inform of what else (legitimate thing) to do to get an adoptee sooner. We really don't mind visiting another state for that purpose. You may reach me here: preciouslanre@aol.com

Pls, give us candid options
Thank

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The process

The bank will need to be contacted by a relative of the deceased person. After contact has been established, the bank will request a letter of administration and then proceed to restrict outflows. The funds in the account are then transferred to the estate of the deceased person.

Joanney:
Good morning guys.

So my uncle passed away in December 2021 and we just finished his funeral rites last weekend.
His survivors (wife and two daughters) want to claim the money in his bank accounts but don't know how to start.

He died in an auto crash and left no will.

Did he leave any will? If no, you will need letter of administration (LOA)

If you love her marry her immediately

Spot on

Mumben:
Out of the Abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The truth is her type will not hesitate to inflict bodily harm on you if she catches or suspects you cheating on her and this is because she feels insecure and also has trust issues.

Things are really happening in marriages of nowadays Sha, in Igbo parlance it is said "afia onye n'azu ka oma anya ya" meaning you are knowledgeable in the kind of trade u are doing.

IamCookie:
Unpleasant!

very very