Interview of Emir of Kano with Forbes TV, says Jonathan threatened him after he exposed fraud in NNPC

Forbes TV has published the full interview with Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II where he spoke about his relationship with former President Goodluck Jonathan, former Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke and other key members of the last administration.

Sanusi in the interview alleged that the former President threatened him after he exposed the massive fraud that was at the time going on in the NNPC. Sanusi had written a letter to Jonathan in 2013, informing him that billions of dollars were being diverted from the accounts of NNPC.

He said the letter he wrote to Jonathan became public after it was leaked to former president Olusegun Obasanjo. He said this did not go down well with Jonathan whom he alleged threatened him.

"In the middle of all these, the president called me and said I should see him at 3pm. I turned up at 3pm and the entire place had been swept. There was no one apart from security services. Eerie silence. I got to his office, it was just me and him. It was as if everybody had been asked to go. And so he says to me, he’s calling me because he is surprised that letter I wrote to him got to Obasanjo. I said I’m surprised too. He said he’s calling me because he thinks I know who gave Obasanjo the letter and I said no I don't. He said the letter must have been leaked from the Central Bank and I said no, the letter was in different places. It was in the villa, it was in petroleum, it was in finance, it was in CBN. Either way, Obasanjo has been president so he lived in this villa for 8 years and he is more likely to have sources in this villa than inside the Central bank. He said he is convinced that the letter went from the central bank to Obasanjo, and I had 24 hours to find who leaked the letter or sack somebody; the director who prepared the letter or my secretary and if I did not sack them, that was proof that I leaked the letter and therefore, I should resign. I said to him that I’m surprised that I’m being asked to resign for raising an alarm over missing funds and the minister in charge of the portfolio is not being asked to resign. From then I knew I had signed my equivalent for death warrant. But I basically said I was not resigning. I said I had no intention of resigning. He got very angry once I mentioned the minister and said whether you like it or not, you’re going to leave that office, I cannot continue to work with you, either you or I will leave government.”

He said he had to inform people that Jonathan had threatened him.

"I was amused that leaking the letter is far more crime than leaking money. I went straight to the office of the principal secretary to the president, and I met him with a gentleman from Kano, who was foreign minister Ambassador Aminu Ali. I said to them, gentlemen, I’m coming to you because I just had a meeting with the president, and there were no witnesses, and the president had threatened me and I repeated what happened and said to them I am going to tell people close to me, if anything happens to me, it is the president. I don’t think I was really in fear of my life.”

He said he knew that him investigating Diezani who was the most powerful minister in Jonathan's government would get him into trouble as nobody who touched Diezani survived.

“I knew that taking on NNPC was taking on the most powerful minister in Jonathan’s government, and nobody who had touched Diezani had survived. It was not a question of what would happen, I just didn’t care at that time. I did not want to go down in history as having seen this and kept quiet"he said