My Krossroads

No one ever died in peace, or of natural ailments. He must have died of supernatural causes. It is unfortunate that we have not been able to cure some of our people of this malady of paranoia. Such is the dilemma of a writer. No matter what you do, some people must read motives to your action. Anyone who has followed my career would know how I have remained committed to writing with passion and conviction. In reality, how many Nigerians can criticize their friends or tell them the home truth when they are in control of power, wealth and influence, the way I have done these past 20 years? Is it not to my credit that I’m bold enough to risk my friendship and business for our nation by telling powerful rulers what they hate to hear? 
As we grew up, I was always fascinated by the hunter’s tales. And those tales served a didactic purpose.  The hunter was always depicted in many forms. He was a man of power. He was a man of magic. He was the fearless one who paraded the thick forests in search of animals to hunt down. On a bad day, and there were always many of such days, he may have returned home with nothing but wasted bullets, and bruises to his body. On other days, if he was lucky enough, he may have returned with some squirrels and grass-cutters. But on a special day, he may have shot down the antelope, the king of bush-meats. That’s when the whole village would come out to gossip about the big catch of the day. No one ever remembers what the hunter went through to get his antelope.
That is the story of the embattled Chief Executive Officers of some Nigerian banks who were summarily sacked by Sanusi Lamido Sanusi two weeks ago. Those who reacted against my article of last week, “The Rise and Fall of Man”, certainly missed the point. My opinion on the subject was simple and straight-forward.  The job of an opinion writer is not to follow the crowd. It is to lead the crowd. Since I understand the temperament of our people, it was my duty to attempt to lower the temperature of the raging debate. And remind our people that we must always hold the rule of law sacrosanct in a matter where there was equal support and opposition. Expectedly, since we did not support the kill-and-go approach, I and others like Ijeoma Nwogwugwu must have been bought by our friends, the oppressors, according to their jejune theory.
 Out of the five MDs that were guillotined, I knew only two, Dr Erastus Akingbola and Mrs. Cecilia Ibru, of Intercontinental Bank and Oceanic Bank, respectively. Intercontinental Bank never advertised in Ovation magazine in the over 13 years of our existence. As fate would have it, I had even called Akingbola on August 13 to complain about how his bank had failed to support our international magazine but was busy advertising on the walls of Heathrow Airport and on CNN. He was removed the following day. If I was a vindictive person, like some of those shouting “kill-them” now, this is the time to take a pound of flesh. But my faith has not taught me so. No one can deny the immense contributions of these embattled bankers to the development of banking in Africa despite the present hullabaloo. As for Mrs. Ibru, we only met once in her bank many years ago, and on three other occasions at public functions. No more. Unknown to our attackers, the rich and powerful mostly fear, and usually patronize, those publications that are capable of bringing them down. And we are not in that category.
I will defend the fundamental rights of anyone regardless of the alleged offence he may have committed. The reason is very simple. I have been a victim of success and rumour-mongering in my life. I also know what it is to build an institution. It is similar to the tale of the hunter and his antelope. No one ever saw me as I crawled through the bush of Cotonou to escape from Nigeria under General Sani Abacha. Not many people saw us when my wife and I slept by our son on a single six-by-four bed in London. There were not many to turn to at the time we had no money to buy ordinary duvet in wintery London. No one saw us as I dragged my wife who fell into labour at night, and our kid, into a taxi to get to a London hospital. Nobody saw us when bailiffs kicked us out of our offices for owing debts due to lack of funding. No one was there to see how our landlady came to evict us with the help of a Jamaican thug, and I cried like a baby. I can go on and on. No one could ever feel our pain the way we did. It was the pain of the hunter and his antelope.
But some of my staff almost went on riot when they heard I bought a house in London, and just imagine that it was bought on mortgage. And when I bought a second-hand Bentley at 42, for less than the price of a new Honda Accord, some friends grumbled that I was too flamboyant. Suddenly, I had joined the class of oppressors. No one remembered that some students I taught at A-level in 1982/83 were already Bank Directors. To them, I was not entitled to any such measure of comfort in life even if I had worked tediously and could afford it. Must we all look wretched to show that we love the poor? Our country can discourage anyone from doing good as I told Oby Ezekwesili days ago. Dr. Tai Solarin had been accused of selling out, just for wearing an unusual agbada at a People’s Bank function. Please, how did this constitute a problem to Nigeria?
 Just imagine that I run a magazine that is largely pictorial. In the early days, some people had complained that we published a photo album. But when it became popular, the same people said we glorified some rogues by showing their events on our pages. I’m labeled a praise-singer for using our cameras to capture the reality of our existence as fun-loving people. I’m to blame if a man decides to marry his tenth wife. Or decides to bury his father in grand style. But the musicians, event-planners, comedians and MCs, caterers, aso ebi (uniforms’ sellers), make-up artists, ushers, security guards, officiating priests, tailors, television stations, photographers, newspapers and magazines, undertakers, jewelers, area boys and others were free to do business, except me. The price of success must indeed be heavy. I try to imagine what those bankers have gone through to climb to the top, which Sanusi has wiped out with one stroke of his pen.
As for my column last week, there was no where I suggested that the Bank MDs could not be sanctioned by the Central Bank of Nigeria. There was no where I said the MDs were not culpable in the acts that violated and compromised their positions as custodians of people’s money. There were mistakes made, like all humans. As analyzed by the great banker and entrepreneur, Atedo Peterside, in a text he sent to me last Saturday: “The sad truth is that, anywhere in the world, relying continuously on liquidity support from your regulator (Central Bank of Nigeria in this case) as a ‘lender of last resort’ is a dangerous game. If the ‘game’ continues for too long, your ‘liquidity’ problem will become synonymous with insolvency and as CEO of that institution you become very vulnerable because the regulator will inevitably wield his axe someday”. He is right.
But I insist that Sanusi, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, went overboard and certainly beyond his mandate. He apparently did not weigh his hasty actions against the general interest of our country as well as the historical dialectics of our nation. He would have realized the problems of Nigeria were far greater than that of those five bank executives. Scapegoatism has never worked in Nigeria. He should look back at the recent past when a few governors were being impeached in the middle of the night. And some Nigerians hailed the action. I will continue to say that we can’t set a whole village on fire just to catch a few rats. What have we gained in concrete terms? Nothing drastic has been done to investigate and prosecute the former President, the multitude of governors, ministers, legislators (States and Federal) special advisers, board members, and others who have served these past ten years. The same fate shall befall this crusade.
I have three reasons for my assertion. The present composition, and the very origin, of this administration, makes it impossible for any meaningful war to be fought and won. The second is that only a benevolent and visionary dictator, and clear-headed revolutionaries, can truly fight the cancer that corruption has become in Nigeria, because nearly everyone is guilty.  Even the elder statesman, Alhaji Maitama Sule said that much last week. My third theory is that the likes of Nuhu Ribadu, Nasir el-Rufai, Oby Ezekwesili, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and company, would only be able to push their revolutionary ideas when they are able to acquire executive powers at the very top. The Nigerian State is run by a few oligarchs who are intricately intertwined, and too difficult to disentangle. Sanusi would soon be frustrated like Ribadu.
I believe Sanusi was too much in a haste to show his bite. If he was not in a hurry, he would have audited all the banks at once. And award penalties without favour or discrimination. The criminalization of a few people, when less than half of the banks have been audited is, to say the least, reckless and disastrous. There was no indication that he spent sufficient time with the indicted MDs to pursue the possibility of redemption. The same Sanusi who told us at home that he would give the banks back to their owners if they can meet some stringent conditions went abroad to gleefully announce that the banks were up for sale. He must have been encouraged by the applause he got from the kill-and-go choir.
What stopped Sanusi from publishing the complete list of all debtors in all the banks? Why didn’t he throw all these debtors into jail the same way he dealt with the Bank MDs? Why is the Federal Government diverting our attention from the lack of progress in the investigation and prosecution of so many members of its ruling party? And in truth, it is an established fact that the government is a pathological debtor, and one of the veritable sources of the huge debt portfolio of some of the banks and businesses. Why did we not adopt the less destructive measures of the Americans?
 The global economic crisis was largely due to the subprime mortgage lending fiasco of the US economy, where banks greedily invested their deposits as loans to the mortgage sector. This was the same way our Nigerian banks made the terminal mistake of over-exposing themselves to the Stock Market. The higher the return in any business, the higher the risk. The crisis in America nearly wiped out the capital base of some of the biggest financial icons, such as Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sach.  Also, top European Banks like UBS, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, and Barclays were affected.
Their home governments rose to the challenges by rolling out workable packages, under strict terms, but without our own theatre of the absurd. Foreigners were not invited to take over the banks, and their assets were not sold off, like it is being threatened in Nigeria. Those foreign banks have since recovered and are bouncing back to profitability, in an atmosphere devoid of rancor and gangsterism. 
Finally, I’m not a lawyer, but I have a fair knowledge of Jurisprudence. There are three principles that we must consider. The first is NEMO JUDEX IN CAUSA SUA (A man shall not be a judge in his own cause). It is difficult to see Sanusi as a total and unbiased umpire. The second is NEMO DAT QUOD NON HABET (You can’t give out what you don’t own!), which is what Sanusi has done by sacking the MDs. And by dishing out their banks to outsiders of his choice, without making recommendations to their board, or giving them warnings and deadlines; by harassing them and their homes with forces of coercion, by freezing their personal accounts, by publishing confidential bank statements of clients etc, he has already convicted them!
The damage is total and almost irreversible in a country like ours, even if any of them is cleared tomorrow. In fact, what Sanusi has breached is the third principle of AUDI ALTERAN PARTEM RULE (The right to fair-hearing), and some of us are too forward-looking to allow such lawlessness to stick. Sanusi has combined the duties of a Complainant, Prosecutor, Advocate for the Prosecutor, Star witness, the Bailiff, and the Gaoler. It is very tragic.

Dele Momodu