Angry losers in the race in the race to succeed ousted CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi are up in arms against President Jonathan’s nominee for the post, Godwin Emefiele, the incumbent Group Managing Director of Zenith Bank Plc.
The aggrieved contestants have shifted their battle to the floor of the Senate where Emefiele is awaiting confirmation as the new governor of the apex bank.
Notable among the aggrieved losers was a onetime Group Managing Director of a new generation bank who quit his job, not long ago, after staying more than the mandatory 10 years stipulated by the financial industry regulator. His bank ‘imported’ an American female act to celebrate his retirement and it generated a crisis in the industry.
The aggrieved banker who also hails from the Niger Delta never hid his ambition to sit on the CBN governor’s chair and was at different times touted as anointed replacement for Sanusi with whom he maintained a very close personal and business relationship.
He was said to have used his connection with the CBN governor to elongate his tenure by about a year and a half so as to close the gap between when he would assumed the CBN top post and his time of retirement. He and the former CBN governor and a two term governor turned senator were fingered in the dubious takeover of another financial institution whose former CEO is still in court battling numerous allegations of graft, as part of the trio’s joint business interest.
Touted as a very close ally of President Jonathan, it was his closeness and business links to Sanusi and the ex-governor turned Senator that got his name off the list of those in consideration for the choice post.
Confidants told National Infinity that part of the aggrieved loser’s propaganda to block Emefiele was to portray the new CBN governorship nominee as an Igbo and that it was not yet the turn of South East to produce the CBN governor because Sanusi took over from Charles Soludo, an Igbo man from Anambra whereas Godwin Emefiele is from Delta State, South South Nigeria.
Another aggrieved loser is the Group Managing Director of a first generation bank. Said to be from South West Nigeria, His own contention was that it was the turn of the Yorubas to fill the post of the CBN governor. The banker who runs one of the big banks in Nigeria was a close follower of Sanusi, and was banking on the pressure on President Jonathan to pacify the Yorubas with choice appointments in his government especially that 2015 is around the corner but he was shot down when they told him that the President just appointed a Yoruba as his Chief of Staff.
Industry sources described Godwin Emefiele as a very professionally sound but quiet banker with a strong intellectual background in banking and finance and that he is the type of person that can save the industry from the stress it has gone through in the hands of Sanusi.
