Muhammad Sanusi, the emir of Kano, has denied
reports that he gave former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, N40 billion in cash donations while he was governor of Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN).

Speaking to Cable, Sanusi said:

“This is completely untrue. In the first place, I
understand the laws of money laundering. And it
is a criminal offence. The central bank is the chief
regulator charged with ensuring we put an end to
money laundering. “This is partly why we started
our cashless Nigeria project and why I started the
BVN project. I would never authorise that amount
of cash to be moved to the office of the NSA or to
anyone even if it was in their account.

I do not know where they are getting these strange stories. I was removed from the CBN in February 2014, and to the best of my knowledge, the EFCC is probing disbursements allegedly made made in late 2014 and early 2015 before the general elections, if indeed they happened.

I find it difficult to believe that this could happen
in the CBN that I know but we have to wait and see
what the investigations come out with. Certainly whoever is linking me to this did not even bother to look at the dates of the alleged transactions. I know nothing about them, period.

We never gave cash to anybody. If we did we disclosed it in published accounts under CSR. Our
interventions, be this to educational institutions or
security services, took the form of clearly identified projects or specified procurement, done through well laid-down procedures, including competitive bidding, award of contracts, and collection of no objection certificate from the due process office. We did not give cash to anybody.

The total amount disbursed by the CBN on capital
projects in my five years was N55 billion. And this
included contracts for CBN branches and our CSR
interventions mainly in the universities and secondary schools. How can anyone suggest that
we gave N40 billion to ONSA?”