On Thursday, former President Goodluck Jonathan refuted claims that he fired Muhammad Sanusi, the Emir of Kano, as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) due to allegations that $49.8 billion had vanished from the nation’s coffers.

According to Jonathan, Sanusi was placed under suspension when his tenure expired and the Financial Reporting Council questioned CBN’s expenses.

He claimed that, in contrast to Sanusi’s assertion, an international audit firm was hired to examine the CBN and it was found that no money was lost.

Jonathan gave a speech at the book’s debut. Shamshudeen Usman, a former minister of finance who also held the position of minister of planning in his administration, co-wrote the book with him.

Jonathan states: “Let me say that I disagreed with a few points brought up by one of the contributors. But since he’s our royal father, I don’t plan to get involved in any disputes. And here he is.

“It’s not quite accurate that he said he was fired for raising the alarm about the Federal Government losing $49.8 billion. He was placed on suspension rather than fired as a result of the Financial Reporting Council’s enquiries over CBN’s spending. Additionally, there were significant violations that required examination.

That was the cause.

But the time was limited in some way. Therefore, his tenure expired before we were done. He most likely would have received a callback.

Regarding $49.8 billion, I’m still not convinced that the federal government lost that much money.

And we had a $31.6 billion budget for that year. Therefore, no one seemed to care that a nation with a $31.6 billion budget lost roughly $50 billion yet salaries were still paid. More investigation is required by the researchers who wrote this book.

Furthermore, when the statistics were proposed by our esteemed royal father. $49.8 billion at first, followed by $20 billion and then $12 billion. I am not even sure which is the right one.