The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
Christopher Kidanka
22 May 2008
The Government has treated the death of former Bank of Tanzania governor Daudi Ballali the same way it has handled queries on his whereabouts - as atop secret.
It has not been easy to get information on the condition of Dr Ballali before his death at the weekend. His purported resignation at the height of queries about External Payments Arrears (EPA) account was refuted until President Kikwete opted to sack him. News of his death on Friday wasn't conveyed early.
Officials could not volunteer any proper information, as technically he was staying in the US as a private citizen. That is what the US embassy had also stated in the past after his tenure as governor was formally rescinded. In December last year, after months of being assailed in public rallies as the key operator in the multibillion-shilling EPA scandal, he reportedly resigned from office, but the Government opted not to confirm the move, saying merely that he was in the US for medical attention.
His resignation letter read in part: "As you are aware, I have been hospitalized for nearly three months in Boston, USA, after a major surgery...due to the complication of my medical condition there is no indication as to when I will fully recover to enable me resume my responsibilities at the bank." Both the appointing authority and BoT kept mum on the matter, until the resignation letter was published in a newspaper.
State House spokesperson Salva Rweyemamu had at the time affirmed that he was not aware of any communication between Dr Ballali and the President. The State House refuted the report that Dr Ballali's resignation was received on December 19, at around 4pm.
When asked for comment, President Kikwete said: "As far as I am aware, Mr Ballali is in the US for medical attention owing to his health problems." The hospital he was attending and his ailment remained a well-kept secret, unavoidably. Tanzanians were later told that the President had fired the BoT chief. It was speculated that the President had considered Dr Ballali's resignation as a pre-emptive initiative after the completion of the BoT External Payments Arrears (EPA) account audit conducted by an international firm, Ernst and Young.
The investigation affirmed that 22 companies were paid Shs133 billion improperly, with media directing the criticism at the governor. Relevant authorities like BoT board members, the top leadership and the Treasury all directed responsibility at the governor. The money, according to experts in the Ministry of Infrastructure Development, is sufficient build a 443km tarmac road.
Authorities sought to prevent information concerning the governor's resignation becoming public until when it deemed fit. And the singular reason for this attitude was that the government had also vested interest in the media line of investigation that the BoT scandal was entirely the work of Dr Ballali. Therefore so long as the chief presumed culprit was silent, or his whereabouts not known, the government was safe.
Moving to fire the BoT governor was also meant to confirm this line of thinking, that the government also feels that all these things were just one person's actions, with good friends he dished out Sh133bn for their business interests, in the absence of government awareness and approval. That was the big lie the big lie the governor had to endure and live with, until his death.
Of late, while the top-level State taskforce committee investigating the whereabouts and occasioning the return of EPA funds was examining the case for the former BoT governor's prosecution, his whereabouts remained a top secret.
State House spin doctor Rweyemamu said last week that the government can locate and bring home whenever it needs him. There was no mention of acute degeneration of his illness; the government wasn't disclosing it, and the media had no contacts capable of saying so; their ears and eyes were focused elsewhere.
There were reports circulating late on Tuesday that Dr Ballali had died, but State-owned radio TBC Taifa in its morning news bulletin was skeptical on the news. TBC investigations were confined to a source in the US "who went searching on the death registry for Daudi Ballali's name in vain." With the death of the former governor, the principal line of investigations that the EPA payments were personally the handiwork of the governor collapses as a question of media pursuit.
Reports in an afternoon newspaper yesterday said he left behind a "loaded message" so that he does not leave with secrets in his heart, but it was unclear who the close relative with the message was, nor indeed whether it was meant for public disclosure. The last few months of the governorship of Dr Ballali was the most controversial ever to have occurred at the Bank of Tanzania, and could in part be mirrored in the Bank of Tanzania Act of 2005.
It gave the governor full mandate to make decisions of any kind, so long as he has consulted with deputy governors, one of whom has to be from Zanzibar. The payments reaching nearly one trillion shillings that the former governor was assailed with did not excessively raise inflation, whose rate has climbed well after he left office, relating to other causes and not the payments.
To a certain extent as well, Dr Ballali was the most authoritative of past governors of the central bank, eclipsed only by his successor Prof Benno Ndulu in terms of academic achievement and experience in international financial organisations.
Dr Ballali was in the IMF for nearly 20- years and then at the State House after having serves as BoT Director of Research up to 1976, while Prof Ndulu is a well-known research director and World Bank country and Africa-wide economist, eclipsing the late Dr Ballali's record. But it also serves to demonstrate that whatever errors or unexplained decisions occurred at the Bank of Tanzania, the reason wasn't incompetence or lack of acumen on the part of the governor. When reacting to allegations against him which were being circulated in the internet in July last year, Dr Ballali suggested that he had important information.
He was quoted by a local newspaper saying "all accusations posted on the internet against me are lies that have been spread by people who are fighting over something... There are some businessmen who want to borrow money, and when they are required to repay their loan they create enmity," There is more to be told then that, but "fare thee well."
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