— Says he’s a Voodoo Statistician
Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, has lambasted suspended boss of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, saying he is a voodoo statistician.
Sanusi had accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation of not remitting crude oil revenue to the tune of $48.9 billion to the federation account.
Speaking to newsmen immediately after appearing before the Senate Committee on Information to defend the Ministry’s 2014 budget yesterday, Maku said that the “whistle blower” image ascribed to Sanusi was a product of negative reportage by a section of the media who fell for the latter’s manipulated statistics.
He said: “Sanusi is not a whistle blower as governor of Central Bank of Nigeria. The perception making him so, is fed by negative reports from the media. I have not heard in any nation where the central bank governor is a whistle blower. He is the manager of the nation’s monetary policies as an adviser to the president of Nigeria on those issues. So the fact that he has moved from being the CBN governor to whistle blowing is a problem in itself.
“Remember Sanusi said $49.8 billion was missing, how much do we earn? That means there was a free fall. But the story changed to $10.8billion before he jerked it upward to $20 billion at his last appearance before the Senate Committee on Finance, so nobody knows the exact figure he was alleging then to be missing from the NNPC accounts, It is voodoo statistics and not whistle blowing that are coming from the CBN governor”
He added further by saying no CBN governor make statement on his nation’s economy without verifying the way Sanusi did yet according to him,
Maku however said that the suspension of Sanusi as explained by President Jonathan on Monday night during the Presisential media chat, has nothing to do with the voodoo statistics he churned out to Nigerians on alleged unremitted monies into the federation account by NNPC but rather on issues raised by the Financial Reporting Council on the 2012 budget of CBN.
His words: “But the reality of what has happened is that there are issues with the account of CBN of 2012 as the president explained. The financial reporting council has said that there are issues that should be addressed so the president returned it back to the council and the council again returned it with some of the items with even more questions that are needed to be answered.
