On request from the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) I was seconded from the African Development Bank Group as Deputy Governor of CBN in May 2005. I left a highly paid and pensionable post as Chief Economist Planning and Budgeting to serve at the CBN at a much lower salary. I have always believed that serving one’s country is one of the noblest tasks anyone could be called upon to do.
In early October of 2006 the then Governor of the CBN, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo brought a proposal to the Board to the effect that he wanted 14 of our commercial banks to take part in the management of our external reserves in partnership with foreign banking associates. He explained that it was rather unfair that only external custodians such as J. P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and others were having a piece of the action. At the time, we were feeling rather triumphal. The banking reforms had been a success. We had managed to reach a deal with the Paris Club of international creditors. The economy was booming. Our foreign reserves had grown from a lowly US$10 billion in 2004 to an impressive US$38 billion in 2006, reaching an impressive peak of US$62 billion by July 2009. We had just launched the FSS2020 project which aimed to position our country as the financial hub of the continent by 2020.
As I recall, there was a lively debate on the matter. On the face of it, it seemed a good idea to allow our banks to have experience of managing our external reserves as a means of socialisation into the complex world of financial engineering and global financial markets. I had a modicum of doubt, but, alas, could not voice it. The professor was a Mister Know-All with an ego of the Order of Lucifer. The Curse of Mephistopheles. Moreover, he always brandished his closeness with Aso Villa to neutralise any dissent. There was a whispering campaign about me being “the black sheep” that would not play ball. I was offered billions from the banking reform fallouts which I totally rejected. I remain proud of the fact.
At the end of the day, the majority carried the day with regard to local participation in foreign reserves management. I must emphasize – for the avoidance of doubt – that at no stage did anyone get even the remotest impression that it was meant to be a loan, bailout or forbearance. Of course, it would be another matter entirely if the banks, as an afterthought — after more than a decade– would now prefer to give a different interpretation to that financial deal. This should be confirmed from the archival records of the CBN. The banks had a mandate as fund managers of the US$7 billion that was distributed to them; of which principal and interest were to be returned within the agreed tenor. But I was not privy to those details.
On 26 March 2007, while busy at my desk in the early afternoon, news came on national radio that I had ceased to be Deputy Governor and had been moved to the presidency to a 419 position as Special Adviser to the President on Political Economy. I resigned myself to the will of God. I had worked alone in the office up to midnight of 31st December struggling to meet the IMF liquidity targets set for us under the Special Support Instrument. Unfortunately my colleagues deliberately sabotaged me. That may have explained my unceremonious departure. I later got to know that late President Umaru Yar’Adua, having studied my dossier, had instructed that I be reinstated immediately. Unfortunately, that same week he went into coma, never to recover. His presidential directive was never obeyed.
I mention these events in order to explain that, from October 2006 when the reserve funds were allocated to the 14 banks, up to the time I left in March 2007, was only slightly over 5 months. The Directorate for Economic Policy which I headed is the most important function of any central bank. But it is the one Directorate where we do not handle money. We work with computable models for monetary policy while undertaking research and statistical-analytical work to drive economic development.
I was therefore surprised when, two weeks ago, a friend in the security services sent me a circular emanating from the Villa in which my name had been included on a list of 30 people slammed with a travel ban under Executive Order No. 6. Dated 11 December 2018, it was signed by the Chairman of the Special Presidential Investigation Panel (SPIP) Okoi Obono-Obla. I managed to trace their office to a sprawling nondescript building in the outskirts of Asokoro. There, I met a squadron of investigators who gleefully welcomed me as a new captive. I was detained for questioning for the whole day and had to fill wads upon wads of paper about a “missing $US7 billion dollars” during my time at CBN. It was an astonishing scenario. Without the benefit of my lawyer, I wrote what I knew. I also had to go through the humiliating ritual of reading out aloud what I wrote in the humiliating manner of an ignoramus parrot.
Later that same evening they followed me home to confiscate my passport. The following day the same charade continued. At some point I asked them if this is not a political witch-hunt. One of them made the Freudian slip of asking why I would not join Buhari and the APC so that “everything would be alright”. I retorted that I myself was wondering why Buhari and APC would not join my party, the African Democratic Congress (ADC), to save themselves from disgrace and contumely. I also demanded to know why I who was responsible for a Directorate had nothing to do with the transaction was being questioned while the people who had more direct responsibility as heads of the Directorates of External Operations, Banking Supervision, Currency and Finance were deemed to have no question to answer. I did not get a satisfactory answer. I have been told that a few people who were also questioned – with more hands-on responsibility for CBN finance – were also questioned, but their passports were never confiscated. I am left with no choice than to read religious, ethnic and political factors as the influencers of the way I have been treated.
My travel passport was temporarily released to me to attend an international economics conference in London. They played on my nerves to breaking point, releasing my travel document only the night before I was due to travel. I am expected to return it to their custody in a week’s time. Interestingly, the forms I was required to fill in my questioning were those of a “Witness” rather than a “Suspect”. But my treatment leaves me feeling more like the latter than the former.
Without prejudice to the ongoing investigations, my position is that whatever monies that were given to the banks to be managed on behalf of CBN must be returned with principal and interest. I feel duty to share with the panel all that I know about this case. But I will first affirm my legal rights to be treated above board as a witness rather than suspect.
The way I have been treated so far evokes bitter memories. My time at CBN was one of the worst in my entire professional career. I was to discover only after I left that my coffee was doused with poison on at least 3 different occasions. It is a miracle that I survived. After I left I developed a strange illness that left half my body paralysed for almost a year. I recovered miraculously, thanks to Jehovah Rapha. As I recovered, my own beloved son went down with a strange, very evil sickness. The poor boy is still suffering to this day. My wife’s car was fired at in broad daylight in the heart of Abuja. They obviously thought I was in it. The bullet hole is still on the body of the car, in case anyone is in doubt.
I have spent most of my professional life outside Nigeria. I have enjoyed honours and privileges. My most recent job was as Chief of Staff of the 79-member African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States in Brussels. I coordinated more than Є50 billion of development and investment funds. Throughout my sojourn abroad, I have no police record for a traffic offence, let alone financial fraud. It is a shame that I can be treated with such humiliation in my own fatherland. Some of my parting entitlements at CBN remain outstanding. I was meant to perish. My family have paid a heavy price. Touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm, says the Lord!
Obadiah Mailafia
