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
Sanusi's unnamed Abuja hotel, seeking to keep
the date and help address her boss' craving for a
kiss. (Insiders say board members, including those who live in Abuja, are usually lodged in hotels
ahead of board meetings). 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
taxpayers' expense, 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' expense. 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 those 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."
