The Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum (SMBLF) has told President Muhammadu Buhari to sack SSS director-general Yusuf Bichi for hounding CBN governor Godwin Emefiele with secret agents.

In a statement jointly signed Monday by the SMBLF leaders, Mr Bichi was reprimanded for attempting to arrest Mr Emefiele. The statement was signed by Edwin Clark, Leader, South-South/PANDEF; Ayo Adebanjo, Leader, Afenifere; Pogu Bitrus, President, Middle Belt Forum and Okey Emuchay, Secretary-General, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Worldwide. 

“SMBLF demands that he should be relieved of his position, without any delay, for being disloyal and discourteous to the President and the nation. Mr Yusuf Magaji Bichi should also be made to render an unreserved public apology to the nation and to the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele,” stated SMBLF. “We are not in the least surprised at the way and manner Mr Yusuf Bichi has been running the DSS since he assumed that office; his appointment as Director General of the DSS itself, in the first place, leaves much to be desired.”

The SMBLF noted that Mr Buhari, “not minding that appointments in the top hierarchy of the military, paramilitary, security and intelligence-related agencies were already skewed and grossly lopsided in favour of the North,” appointed on September 18, 2018, Mr Bichi (Kano indigene), who had retired from the service, to replace Matthew Seiyefa, from Bayelsa, who was appointed as acting SSS director-general on August 7, 2018, by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (acting as the president then), following the sack of Lawal Musa Daura.

“Truth be told, there are elements within, and outside, the Buhari administration that do not want Mr Godwin Emefiele to remain in office as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria; the reasons are not farfetched,” claimed the Southern and Middle Belt leaders. “Recall that barely forty-eight hours after the announcement of the redesign of the country’s currency by the CBN, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Hajia Zainab Ahmed, disowned the policy.”

The SMBLF hailed John Tsoho, the chief judge of the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, Abuja, for his December 9 ruling, rejecting the SSS’ application because the state police failed to provide sufficient evidence to warrant the issuance of an arrest warrant against Mr Emefiele.

The SSS began a clampdown on Mr Emefiele after the latter announced a sudden redesign of naira notes, which would have rendered any previously stockpiled banknotes invalid for use in the country’s general elections.