SANUSI’S UNETHICAL DISPLAY OF REGALIA.

LAMIDO Sanusi has a penchant for courting controversy. Fresh from being turbanned a few days earlier as Dan Majen Kano, the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor waltzed into his office on Wednesday, June 13, 2012, causing an unnecessary stir. Wrapped from head to toe in traditional robes, he looked rather out of place in a central bank office; more like a dignitary at a local durbar than a banker, not the least the nation’s number one banker.

Though three years now on the job, many analysts have reminded the CBN chief that his office demands moderation in both his public and private lives. While there is nothing in the CBN Act or in the Constitution that bars a CBN governor from taking a local traditional title while in office, decorum should dictate to any occupant of that office that breezing into the offices of the nation’s symbol of financial sovereignty in full religious/traditional regalia is ill-advised. Sanusi’s drama was even more inappropriate as, just a week earlier, eight employees of the apex bank were reported to be among the 153 passengers that died in the Dana Air aircraft that crashed onto a building in Lagos, plunging the nation into mourning.

Was it necessary for Sanusi to have gone to the CBN headquarters in Abuja in his Dan Majen regalia? It was disquieting enough that he had staged the turbanning ceremony even after eight of his subordinates had just died in a plane crash; it was also insensitive as Kano, the city that honoured him, has been under a terrorist siege for months. Some analysts suggest that Sanusi should even have waited until after his tenure as governor to take the title in the first place.

No one begrudges Sanusi his often stated love for his roots and traditional institutions, but the office he currently occupies demands transparent impartiality in the discharge of his functions. In his role as CBN governor, therefore, he should not inadvertently give the impression that his declared ambition to become the Emir of Kano.

Do you agree with this thoughts? Do leave a comment.

CBN GOV IN REGALIA