PRESIDENT BUHARI AND THE CENTRAL BANK JOBS SCANDAL – by Sharon Faliya Cham

Since the scandal that the Central Bank of Nigeria secretly recruited 909 workers, mostly drawn from among the children of the rich and influential, broke open, I have noticed the consistent attempt by Nigeria's lovers and promoters of corruption to drag President Muhammadu Buhari into the mess by craftily insinuating that the whole charade happened under his administration and with his consent, which is a blatant lie!

At least, this is how the newspaper that broke the scandal open reported it:

"The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) recruited 909 staff in two years without advertising the vacancies, Daily Trust investigations have revealed …..the exercise was lopsided in favour of certain sections of the country contrary to the provisions of the federal character.

"Details of the recruitment, carried out between June 2014 and February 2015 showed that out of the 909 staff engaged, 213 of them are from the South-South region, CBN governor's geo-political zone.

"Others are North Central, 178; South West, 176; South East, 158; North West, 104 and North East 80…."

(Front page Headlines and page 5 of the DAILY TRUST newspaper of Wednesday, March 16, 2016)

So, what are the facts that stick out from this story?

1. The fraudulent and lopsided recruitment was done between June 2014 and February 2015!

2. President Muhammadu Buhari was not President at that time; in fact, the election that brought him into power as President was conducted on March 28, 2015. So how could any …..attempt to link him up with this charade?

3. And if we pretend that President Muhammadu Buhari was the one who ordered and consented to this fraudulent recruitment at the CBN, then could he have, in all good conscience, allowed the marginalisation of his own geo-political region in the exercise?

Funnily, it is the areas with the highest number of Wailing Wailers that benefited more from this fraudulent and lopsided recruitments at the CBN that are making every noisy effort to link President Buhari with this charade, and this is why I will now lift up my voice to demand that President Muhammadu Buhari should sack the Governor of the Central Bank with immediate effect! The man has already been linked with more than enough scandals, ranging from DASUKI-GATE to the curious "Boko Haram" stolen public funds traced to Zenith Bank where he was MD before Goodluck Ebele Jonathan made him CBN Governor, and to this job scam!

President Buhari cannot afford to continue to keep this man as CBN Governor a day longer!

Well, in all these attempts by The Wailing Wailers to link President Buhari with this CBN jobs scam, I sincerely blame the President's media team for not waging a relentless media battle to educate the public with facts and figures concerning this charade, and that's why those …… appear to be having a field day in their wild attempts to twist the facts and figures so as to continue to make both themselves and their followers as ….. as ever!

Honestly, there are times I think our President doesn't have an effective media team. Those I constantly see defending and projecting him in positive light are people totally outside his official media team. His media team must wake up. Effective publicity brings up any man or government, and lack of it can bring down any man or government!