Nigeria shoots the messenger

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has suspended the governor of the country’s central bank, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, on charges of “financial recklessness and misconduct” and “far-reaching irregularities.” The dismissal followed by days Sanusi’s claim that $20 billion in oil revenues was missing from government accounts. The president’s insistence that the move had nothing to do with Sanusi’s whistleblowing is not convincing. An investigation 18 months ago reportedly concluded that tens of billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue was missing from 2002 to 2012. No investigation followed up on these allegations and no prosecutions resulted. Not surprisingly, there has been an outflow of currency since the dismissal of Sanusi and a sharp plunge in the value of the national currency.