The image of Mr Godwin Emefiele, the suspended governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria looking all pathetic; holding a king-size King James Version Bible like an RCCG pastor and wearing a white jalabiya like an Imam and been supported and hand-led to the court by a woman who we later identified to be the court registrar so he won’t fall off the last time he was arraigned in court is yet to leave my head, I doubt if it will ever leave my memory.
How the mighty had fallen. Who would ever believe that Godwin Emefiele will ever find himself in this situation; even the best of the seers could never have predicted this.
Godwin Emefiele was one of Nigeria’s most powerful men just a few weeks back. In fact, he was the most powerful man in the financial sector in Nigeria. That made him power drunk and to some greater extent, he abused his power; took some arbitrary decision that suffered the masses, froze numerous bank accounts, and crippled some startups. I can still remember him while he was in his prime boasting and threatening AbokiFx CEO to come and fight him just a few months back. What was Aboki Fx’s offense? Aboki FX was posting and updating foreign exchange values and rates on the black market. Should we mention that Emefiele harassing and crippling Aboki Fx did not solve the foreign exchange disparity in prices problem.
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This is one of the things that come with power, politics and governance, once your tenure elapses, you are stripped of every immunity that was shielding you and the people that have been lining up to deal with you will activate their furry against you in full scale and those that were egging you on while you were in your prime will all disappear. Now they have reduced Mr Emefiele to a mere local tout, he is a shadow of himself now and you can only recognize him by his bald head.
Interestingly, nobody unless his immediate friends and family are really speaking up against his ordeal because he was a public enemy through some of the policies he initiated while he was at the helm of power at the CBN.
Godwin Emefiele really abused his power as the CBN governor and at best his ordeal can be seen as his recompense. Despite that, this is just a political witch hunt as he committed no crime, he was only discharging his duties as the governor of the apex bank, although he went to the extreme, but he was still within the bounds of his statutory duties hence why the State Security Services after over a month of detaining him found nothing on him to charge him with other than illegal possession of firearms, now they want to add funding terrorism charges to his crime. I can wish that the law takes its due course and also wish the former governor well.
The lesson in this is that Godwin Emefiele’s case should be an awakening to political officeholders and a reminder that power is but temporary; so be careful of what you do and the toes you step on while you wield that power, people may come after you when you leave power and no longer have an immunity to shield you.