.Emir of Kano
The Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II, a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has warned President Mohammadu Buhari of an impending economic doom in the country if the President continues with the current economic policies which he described as anti-investment and detrimental to national development.
He said the Buhari administration was being run by “voodoo economists” who were running the Nigerian economy like unlicensed drivers behind the wheels of a brand new car so it would be idiotic to expect that such unqualified drivers would not crash the economy.
Sanusi spoke in Kano on Wednesday during a lecture he delivered at the second day of the 15th Joint Planning Board and the National Council on Development Planning organised by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, in collaboration with Kano State Government.
He said: “The first thing I would like to say is that there are many voodoo economists parading around and many of them are not economists, they are demagogues.’’
Sanusi, who delivered a lecture titled: “Nigeria – The Search for a New Growth Model”, declared that while the immediate past administration of Jonathan created “oil subsidy billionaires” while the Buhari government is churning out “forex billionaires.”
He said: ‘’If this government continues to behave the way the last government behaved, we will end up where Jonathan ended. You may not like it, but that is the truth. Any system that allows you with one telephone call, you make N1 billion without investing one kobo, that system is wrong. It is unsustainable, no matter how you think about it positively.
“We created billionaires from oil subsidies in the past. We are making the same mistake with forex subsidy,” he said in an apparent reference to the dual exchange rates in operation at the CBN.
“As an Emir, I can sit in my garden and make phone calls to access $10 million at N197 per dollar and then sell it off at nothing less than N300,” he said.
After taking an overview of the economic policies of the Federal Government, Sanusi concluded that nothing has really changed under the administration of President Buhari except blaming the past administration of Jonathan for its current woes.
Sanusi lamenting that the incumbent administration had not learnt from the mistakes of those before it.
Sanusi advised the members of President Buhari’s economic team to retrace their steps and formulate policies that can grow the economy, pointing out that the current economic situation is forcing untold hardship on Nigerians.
He lamented the overdependence on oil, pointing out that more investments in agriculture, power sector, manufacturing and infrastructural development and attractive incentives to investors will enhance the growth of the nation’s economy.
He urged the government to revisit its borrowing style, as he said: ‘’the funny thing is that you did not stop borrowing; all you have to do is borrow the right amount and apply them to the right purposes. It doesn’t matter whether it is consumption spending or investment demand. GDP will grow.
‘’We made a choice of what we wanted. Do we want votes and popularity or we want palliatives. So long as people are getting high minimum wages, they will keep quiet about all the ills in the economy that we have been talking about,” he said.
He stated further that those who are advising the government not to devalue the naira were the one benefitting from it.
According to him, ‘’We are not devaluing because if we do, the poor people will suffer, the people profiting from this are the people telling the government that if you devalue people will suffer. Meanwhile, they all bought the dollar at N179 and price their goods at N300.The poor pay the price of a devalued currency, while the rich skim off the profits.’’
He advised the Federal Government to embrace the Lagos State Government’s model to bail the country out of its current economic woes.
