The Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sunusi II, yesterday, warned President
Muhammadu Buhari against making the same mistakes of the government of
former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Speaking at the 15th Joint Planning Board (JPB) and National Council
on Development Planning organised by the Federal Ministry of Budget and
National Planning in collaboration with Kano State Government entitled
‘Nigeria: The Search for a New Growth Model’, Sanusi insisted that
Nigeria has to retrace its step in terms of economic policies.
Sanusi said: “If you get on repeating same mistakes, you will only
end up like Jonathan government’s mistakes of not taking advices on
economy as well as refusing to invest money generated in the nation.
“We will not continue to blame past governments. Right now, mistakes
are being made on hourly basis and we should retrace our steps to
drawing board and see how we will make progress.” Emir Sanusi was
worried that things are not right even now.
His words: “If this government continues to behave like the last
government behaved, we will end up where Jonathan ended. You may not
like it. But that is the truth. You have to listen.
“You don’t need to be an economist to know that any system that
allows you to sit in your garden, with a telephone call and make N1
billion without investing a kobo is wrong.
It is unsustainable.” He said today Nigeria was witnessing so many
voodoo economists parading around and many of them are not economists;
they are just demagogues.
“The first thing I want to say is that there are many voodoo
economists parading around and many of them are not economists. They are
demagogues. They tell poor people that anybody that wants you to
devalue wants you to pay more,” he said.
He argued that urgent steps should be taken to make things right
because “as a nation, things are not going smoothly.” The monarch said
that urgent steps should also be taken to correct mistakes made by
previous govern-ments on the economic viability of Nigeria. He said that
if not done, it would have devastating effect on the country in the
long run.
He said: “In 2010, when I was Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria
(CBN), the government increased minimum wage to N18,000. I protested,
but they went ahead and borrowed money to pay. In 2012, as Governor of
CBN, I said that this is an unsustainable wage bill.
We need to reduce the size of public service, which fell onto deaf
ears. “I believe we have started retracing our steps and we have to
retrace our steps. If a policy is wrong, it is wrong and it has to be
changed.”
Jonathan, who became Vice-President to the late President Umaru Musa
Yar’Adua in 2007, acting president in 2010 and President of Nigeria,
from 2011 to 2015 was overwhelmingly voted out by Nigerians following
allegations of massive corruption, wrongheaded economic policies and the
inability to contain the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East.
In his place, Nigerians voted for Buhari, who promised to fix the
ills of the 16 years of ‘bad governance’ of the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP). Buhari came in on the ticket of the All Progressives Congress
(APC).
He has since tackled Boko Haram head-on in a war many believe his
government has almost won. But the economy has been bleeding under the
Buhari administration.
Analysts attribute the poor state of the economy to three things,
namely – the declining prices of oil, the major foreign exchange earner
for Nigeria; the policy of the Single Treasury Account (TSA), which has
left revenue of the government domiciled in one account and the
reluctance of the CBN to devalue the naira early enough in the face of
the sliding oil prices.
The apex bank recently announced the flexible exchange regime, which
“even investors are still viewing with skepticism.” During Jonathan’s
regime, Sanusi, who was the CBN governor, had open running battles with
the government, which led to his eventual removal. He had particularly
blown the lead on massive corruption in the petroleum industry, with
emphasis on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and some
unremitted funds.
He was also concerned that the government was not saving enough. The
monarch, who reiterated his support for subsidy removal, said few
people were using it for their own selfish ends. He also supported the
devaluation of the naira because the manufacturers, who used to benefit
from it, ended up recycling their wares with the profits going to their
personal pockets at the expense of Nigerians.
Sanusi further advised the Federal Government to copy from Lagos
State in terms of formulating policies that can boost trade, business
and attract investors, adding that the Lagos example can bail the
country from its current economic woes.
He decried over-dependence on oil, pointing out that more investment
in agriculture, power sector, manufacturing and infrastructural
development and attractive incentive to investors would enhance the
growth of the nation’s economy According to him, “I just saw that we are
always blaming the past administration. But we have also made mistakes
in this administration.
“There is nothing that we are facing today that we did not know it
will happen. Nothing. We made mistakes, many of them deliberate. We
ignored simple economics warning. Yes, this is not a perfect time.
Over and over, there are certain things that you do that you get
certain consequences. “If you take a brand new car and give a driver who
does not have a license to drive it and he has an accident; you can’t
really say it is a surprise except for some idiots. “You can’t just be
borrowing money to pay salaries and not building roads, and improving
power to boost the economy.
“We are spending 30 to 40 per cent of every naira we earn servicing
debt. The new borrowings were simply recycled into much higher recurrent
expenditure. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was growing largely due
to consumers’ items.
Credit:newtelegraph
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