Jonathan surrounded by crooks – Sanusi

Embattled Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who was suspended last Thursday by President Goodluck Jonathan, yesterday accused Jonathan of surrounding himself with fraudsters.
In an interview he granted the AFP, Sanusi said the President’s advisers are incompetent and fraudulent, and would not speak frankly with him.

In what many perceived as an attempt to shut him up as a whistleblower, Sanusi was suspended over alleged financial misconduct, after he had accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) of misappropriating $20 billion oil money      .
“When you sit with President Jonathan himself, he appears a nice, simple person who is trying his best to do his best.”
“His greatest failing, obviously, is that he is surrounded by people who are extremely incompetent, who are extremely fraudulent and whom he trusts,” he said.

The apex bank boss, who learned of his suspension while on an official assignment in Niger, immediately returned to Lagos, where agents from the Directorate of State Services (DSS) seized his passport.
“I thought taking away my passport was the beginning of infringement on my fundamental human rights,” Sanusi told AFP, explaining why he had already sought court protection.

“Since 2009 I have been annoying the government… You’ve got people who think I have the wrong friends, people who think may be I have not distanced myself enough from people who are seen to be opposition figures,” he further said.
The list of his enemies may have been built up over years, but the NNPC affair appeared to be the final straw.

“I think everybody has known that NNPC is rotten. I don’t think it has ever been as bad as this,” he told AFP.
“If I am sacrificed in whatever way, my freedom or my life…if it does lead to better accountability it will be well worth it,” he said.