A group under the aegis of Agbor Stakeholders has appealed to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to be magnanimous in victory and release former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, from detention.

Emefiele, erstwhile managing director of Zenith Bank and a prominent Agbor, Delta State son, has been locked up in various detention centres in Abuja since he was picked up from his Ikoyi, Lagos, residence on June 9 this year by operatives of the Department of State Service (DSS) .

In a statement signed and issued by Kachikwu Kanene for the group, the Agbor Stakeholders frowned at the seeming trivialization of the arrest, detention and charges preferred against the former CBN Governor for offences not clearly stated, warning that the hard-line, scorched-earth approach of the federal government to the resolution of the Emefiele saga ridicules the principles of justice and fairness that the Tinubu Administration, like any other in the land, should uphold in the conduct of public affairs.

The group pointedly accused President Tinubu of victimizing Mr. Emefiele for carrying out directives from his former boss and immediate past president of the Federal Republic, General Muhammadu Buhari, regarding the naira redesign policy of the former president’s government, wondering why the former CBN Governor should be treated like a common criminal for obeying his boss’s orders.

“We, the stakeholders and elders of Agbor stock have watched with concern and indeed, consternation, the relentless hounding and persecution of our brother and mentor, MR GODWIN EMEFIELE,” the statement by the Agbor Stakeholders read, in part. “Emefiele who has been the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), for the past nine years is currently being sequestered and shackled like a common criminal by the Nigerian state he has served so diligently over these years.”

Recalling how barely a week after Tinubu’s inauguration (on June 9, to be precise) Mr. Emefiele was suspended from office as Governor of the CBN for no stated reason, even though his position was “tenured and still subsisting until his removal was announced while he was still in detention”, how he was “virtually abducted from his Lagos home by officials of the Department of State Service (DSS) and flown to Abuja in a manner fit only for a renegade,” and how, six months after, the former CBN Governor has remained in detention, Agbor Stakeholders lamented what the group described as “the flagrant disregard" of several orders of courts of competent jurisdiction in Nigeria for Emefiele’s release by the fedral government,” a situation many fear are "ominous signs" for Nigeria's fledgling democracy.

Taken the foregoing and many other issues together, Emefiele’s kinsmen, thus, insisted that the former CBN boss committed no offence by simply obeying directives from former President Buhari, to warrant his arrest, detention and treatment like a common criminal by the federal government in the past six months.

The group, therefore, called on President Tinubu to use his good offices to order the release of Mr. Emefiele from detention so that he too could go home and rest like other appointees of former President Buhari, after serving his fatherland meritoriously.

“On this note, we appeal that with the elections over, and the diadem won and lost, President Bola Tinubu should be magnanimous in victory and allow our brother to return home with some honour and dignity to take his well deserved rest along with other former Buhari appointees who have returned to their homesteads unmolested.

“We make bold to say that but for the ugly political turn of events in the APC, Emefiele was serving out his term as a hero of the Buhari era,” the group surmised.

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