There is no pretense that there is a concerted effort by some people to get rid of Nigeria ’s uncommon Central Bank Governor, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo. The campaign is looking increasingly like a kind of war where no prisoners are taken. In keeping with the belief that all is fair in war, a section of the media seems to have been snared.

Consequently, propaganda has been given a free reign in the media. Take three recent reports published in some of the leading national media. On Sunday, May 11, 2008, The Guardian reported in the front page lead story what it called the six major headaches of President Umaru Musa Yar”Adua.

Chief of the worries, according to the paper, is Nigeria ’s investment of 462 million dollars in the African Finance Corporation (AFC), which commenced operations only last November. The same day, The Nation reported that the investment should not have been made without a treaty which the country must first ratify since the AFC is an international institution.

Three days earlier, The Independent screamed in a banner headline that the probe panel investigating whether due process was followed in the equity investment had indicted the CBN Governor in a report which it claimed had been submitted to the government. But two days later the Attorney General and Minister of Justice issued a statement categorically denying that a report on this matter had been submitted, arguing that the panel cannot indict anyone since it has no judicial powers. The Independent also falsely claimed that the president of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has withdrawn from the AFC board.

It is self-evident that what is going on against Prof Soludo in the name of journalism is no journalism at all, but sheer campaign. Unless in the unlikely scenario that the editors of these papers are themselves involved in the propaganda war, they should have exercised discretion in publishing the reports by their correspondents, let alone giving them so much prominence.

One of the reporters who filed a story cited above the week before had alleged that Prof Soludo asked the probe panel to excuse his aides from watching the proceedings of the panel, and when they left he implored the panel to have pity on him because he is a young man whose mistakes should be forgiven! This fictitious report is not fit to be printed by a newspaper which prides itself as the flagship of the Nigerian press.

Perhaps the publication of this inelegant report emboldened the reporter to make the fantastic claim that Nigeria ’s equity investment in the AFC was unilaterally made by the CBN Governor. Not even the crassest of Prof Soludo’s critics has ever gone this far in the smear campaign. The critics are charitable enough to acknowledge that he received presidential approval during the time of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as Nigeria’s president to make the investment, as required by the Act setting up the CBN and outlining its functions and duties. In fact, they do not deny that a technical committee to look into the establishment of the Africa Finance Corporation was set up in December, 2006, and among the members was the present Minister of Finance, Dr Shamsudeen Usman, then the Deputy Central Bank Governor. This committee was given the widest publicity in the national media.

What Soludo’s critics are alleging is that the ever innovative CBN Governor ought to have obtained in writing the approval of Alhaji Umaru Yar”Adua who succeeded Chief Obasanjo in office. They have never alleged that Soludo acted all alone. It is, therefore, a conundrum that a respected paper would claim in a front page lead story that Prof Soludo “unilaterally” made the investment. Much as the critics’ position is respectable, there abound many people who do not consider obtaining in writing the new president’s approval necessary because the government everywhere is a continuum or is in what lawyers call perpetual succession.

Whether the new president’s consent in writing was obtained or not prior to the investment is, in my humble opinion, not a big deal. The big deal is that a new institution capable of promoting capital intensive infrastructure projects in especially Sub Sahara Africa has been borne. The AFC looks like a child prodigy. Established just last November and with headquarters in Lagos, it is already financing mega infrastructure in Lagos and Rivers States, as well as the development of the huge coal deposits in Kogi State . It is also developing stupendous infrastructure in Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau. These are projects which have for years not been able to attract the attention of the African Development Bank, to say nothing about the International Finance Corporation in Washington DC . Could either the ADB or the IFC assist Nigeria with a $2.8b facility in the development of its crisis-ridden electricity sector within a very short period as the government is asking the AFC to do?

The suggestion in The Guardian report that there is something untoward about government involvement in the establishment of the AFC, a private sector enterprise, could arise from insufficient knowledge of the emergence and growth of big enterprises in especially emerging economies. Government’s promotion of such enterprises is very common in those countries fondly called the Asian tigers. Here in Nigeria there is the example of the phenomenal success of Orient Petroleum Company in Anambra State which is starting oil production and refining of petroleum products this year.

It is a private sector led business. Orient Petroleum was promoted by the state government which not only invested substantially in it but also went to the extent of convincing people like Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the former Secretary General of the Commonwealth; Dr Alex Ekwueme, erstwhile Nigeria ’s Vice President; and Chief Arthur Mbanefo, Nigeria ’s ex ambassador to the United Nations, to serve on its board. Without the state government’s deep involvement, there is no way Orient Petroleum would have succeeded far ahead of all the companies licensed along with it some five years ago.

In the report published in The Nation already mentioned above, questions were raised about whether Nigeria ratified a relevant treaty prior to the $462m equity investment in the AFC. If such a treaty was indeed needed, should the CBN Governor be blamed for the legal oversight when the then Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Chief Bayo Ojo (SAN), was involved in the entire process?

The hysteria in a section of the media against Prof Soludo over Nigeria ’s $462 equity participation in the AFC is simulated. In the frenetic anti-Soludo publications, an unconscionable and determined effort is made to kill the AFC without an alternative vision of an institution to make Africa leapfrog. The directive by the probe panel that Nigeria ’s investment be withdrawn immediately and kept in an escrow account is a misstep against Soludo and the grand vision to fasttrack sub-Saharan Africa ’s development through the AFC. It is another sad story for Nigeria and Africa . If we continue in this direction, Africa may lose the 21st Century more calamitously than it lost the 20th Century. How long shall we remain in this mess?