Suspended Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has been advised to avoid reckless, sensational and politically tainted sentiments and comments in the media capable of heating up the polity and tarnishing Nigeria’s image internationally.

The advice is coming from the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), which described as unnecessary the raging war between Sanusi and the Presidency over his suspension, last Thursday, by President Goodluck Jonathan over alleged financial impropriety.

HURIWA in a statement issued in Abuja also advised the government to implement to the fullest, the recommendations of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) of Nigeria which allegedly indicted Sanusi and some of his colleagues at the apex bank “to avoid the pitfall of government’s action being classified as punitive and selective witch-hunt of the erstwhile Central Bank boss known for his anti-government rhetoric over the past few months.”

“Conversely, HURIWA wants the suspended CBN Governor to accord respect to the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and to concentrate his energy towards clearing his name of the groundswell of allegations of fraud and monumental misappropriation of public fund while he held sway as the governor of CBN,” the statement jointly endorsed by HURIWA National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and National Director of Media, Miss Zainab Yusuf, said.

HURIWA, meanwhile, asked President Jonathan “to instruct his personal aides to stop forthwith the ongoing propaganda against the person of the erstwhile governor of the CBN so as not to create impression that the suspension has political undertone.”

Part of the statement said: “We have watched with considerable trepidation the seemingly unending media war and propaganda between the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the person of the immediate past Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and we wish to state that the public spat is not in the best interest of the global image of Nigeria as one of the economic giants on the black continent of Africa and these verbal exchanges read around the World would further rubbish our international rating. We hereby ask the suspended Governor of CBN Mallam Sanusi and the officials of the Presidency and their media cronies to stop behaving like quarrelsome roadside traders but to carry themselves with decorum.”

•Photo shows suspended CBN Governor Sanusi.

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