Premium times is
reporting the biggest Nigerian love story
and it involves the CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido and one of his mistresses, Punani…though it kinda looks like a
script out of Nollywood, but it’s not.
Read the interesting, mind blowing story of how the Governor is
spending our taxpayers money running after punani………
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 at Sanusi’s unnamed Abuja hotel, seeking to keep the date and
help address his 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’ expenses, 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 expenses.
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.”
MR SANUSI DEFENDS WHY MRS YARO WAS HIRED BY CBN
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.
MR SANUSI REFUSES TO COMMENT ON THE LOVE ALLEGATIONS
“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.”
contacted by PREMIUM TIMES.
MRS YARO SAYS SHE HAS NOTHING TO SAY
“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 WAITED FOR HIM IN JALABIA…………hehehehe
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 these 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.”
WOW……this is some love story!