By His Royal Highness, Muhammadu Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Emir of Kano has voiced out his stand on Buhari led administration while in Kaduna yesterday. Emir Sanusi who is a former CBN governor is well known for his forecast on most of the economic issues the country is facing right now.
The Emir said, “I’m a friend of this administration but if they decide to run Nigeria aground, I will become the opposition. You are not good friends if you sit down with Government officials and do not tell them the truth. I will continue to say the truth”.
He added that Nigeria must drop the habit of borrowing to pay salaries and service recurrent expenditures. He lamented that Industrialisation potentials of Northern Nigeria was documented by Ahmadu Bello in 1962 and 54 years after, there’s nothing to show. Sanusi said billionaires were created from Oil subsidies in the past and Nigeria is making the same mistake with Forex Subsidies.
In his exclusive statements, he said “As an Emir, I can seat in my garden and make phone calls to access $10M at N197 per $ then sell it off at nothing less than N300. With just a phone call, I’m making a profit of over a billion naira. That is what people are doing now. Any system that allows you sit in your garden & make a billion naira without investing a Kobo is a wrong system. We created the recession we are in now and I hope the President won’t make the mistakes Jonathan made. We are not being sincere when we say we are in a recession because of the fall in oil prices. What happened to other sectors?
“I understand it’s painful when we pay for expensive fuel but we must understand no system is perfect. Petroleum subsidy empowers a small group of criminals rather than the poor masses it was meant for. If you must subsidise anything, please it should be for production rather than consumption. In 2011, we earned $16B from Oil revenues. $8b was spent for LCs while the remaining $8b was spent on subsidising fuel. We spent a whooping $8billion on subsidising fuel. Not a dime was spent on infrastructure, education or schools”.
The Emir has however highlighted remedies on how to get out of the recession;
-FG must set the FX rate to incentivise capital inflows, catalyse FDI & FDI funding.
-FG must set interest rates at levels that deter capital flight dollarization.
-FG must eliminate wasteful and abuse prone subsidies.
-FG must address failure in the power sector value chain starting with the DISCOS.
-FG must digitise state land registries and streamline relevant legislations.
-FG must re-priotize public spending towards investment in human capital.
-Lastly, the FG must protect infant industries specifically labour intensive manufacturing.
Following the emir’s subsequent credible forecasts, there is high tendency that the federal government of Nigeria would heed to his advice.
