Former CBN Governor reacts to President Buhari's Forex Policy. Sanusi who claims the Forex Policy makes make more Billionaires while more more Nigerians are going poorer.
Sanusi further threaterns President Mohammadu Buhari saying " If you run Nigeria aground, I will become opposition" SANUSI to BUHARI (This timeline is the only internet space with A full text of this speech - it is a damning REPORT CARD from one friend to the other!!! )
NO WONDER NIGERIANS CANNOT FIND THE FULL TEXT OF SANUSI'S SPEECH ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET. IT HAS ROCKED THE FOUNDATIONS OF ASO VILLA. BUHARI IS SAID TO BE VISIBLY SHAKEN BY IT. THERE ARE RUMOURS OF A MAJOR SHAKEUP. SURPRISINGLY MY APC FRIENDS Imo Ebong, Akan Ebenezer, Dm Ovada, Mohammed Adamu, John Ogunlela, Bassey Mark Effiong, Anthony Edet, Eno Adams, Edim Asanaenyi, Monday Ekong, Aniedi Akpan and Edim Asanaenyi, have cunningly avoided posting this news, too much naked shocking truth - I guess!
I am glad not everyone is a blind follower. Sanusi is the diamond in the midst of this dross!!!
Opinion: When Jonathan was persecuting Mallam Sanusi I refused to join the PDP bandwagon to criticise Sanusi. If I criticised him it was because of how he handled the revelation of the missing $20b from NNPC's treasury, a figure that keeps fluctuating till this day.
Sanusi didn't have a problem with Jonathan, Diezani the Minister of Petroleum was his target , there was no love lost between the two.
Unfortunately it all went quite messy. Like the proverb says, "Anyone trying to hit a servant hiding behind his master, will end up hitting the servant's master and causing more problems for himself"; and that's exactly what happened.
But I have always admired Sanusi, we met several years ago on a BA flight to Nigeria from London, he was with the Governor of Gombe State. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, my habitual dress code. He was casual - no formalities and very courteous. We spoke on issues concerning Nigeria and I immediately liked his opinions. It doesn't take me time to assess a man's character; over the years I have not been wrong about Sanusi's patriotism. The text of his speech says it all.
In becoming a traditional leader, Nigeria may have lost one of it's finest brains. This is one Moslem Northerner i'll gladly give my vote to lead this country.
I have painstakingly pieced his speech together from several newspapers quotations. It is unbelievably acidic. These are direct quotes from his speech captured from Daily Trust, Punch, Nation, Thisday, The Trent. Read the full txt below.
This text of his speech may not come in the right order, I had to piece the quotes together but it does give a guide into the emir's anger and frustration at Buhari, a close friend.
NIGERIA IN SEARCH OF A NEW GROWTH MODEL -
BY LAMIDO SANUSI
(1) If you run Nigeria aground I will turn into opposition - Sanusi
(2) Have we no shame - Sanusi
(3) You have to retrace your steps from the beginning - Sanusi
(4) You will end up like Jonathan - Sanusi
(5) You can't keep blaming Jonathan - you also have made mistakes - Sanusi
(6) You are some kind of idiot if you give a learner without a license a brand new car to drive and he crashes it - Sanusi
(7) The failure of Buhari to create jobs has made terrorism attractive to the unemployed - Sanusi
(8) Bottom line your policy is wrong and nothing will make it right until you change it - Sanusi
(9) You have made a new set of billionaires through forex exchange - Sanusi
(10) We produce tomatoes but cannot manufacture tomatoe paste , we have to import it from China - SAD! - Sanusi
(11) What kind of economy are we running - who are your advisers, i want to talk to them - Sanusi
FULL SPEECH
I am a friend of the present administration but if they decide to run Nigeria aground, I will become the opposition.
I will neither change nor be political by telling people what they want to hear. The truth is that there is nothing we are facing today that we did not know would happen. We made mistakes, many of them deliberate; we ignored every single warning.
“If you take a brand-new car and hand it over to a driver who doesn’t have a licence to drive it and you are involved in an accident, you can’t say you are surprised, unless you are some kind of an idiot.
“We should not just keep blaming the previous administration; we also made some mistakes in the current administration.
“They must retrace their steps. They have to retrace those steps all the way. We should not fall into the same trap we fell the last time when the government was always right. The bottom line is that if your policy is wrong, it means you must change it and nothing will make it right as it has to be changed.
“If this government continues to behave the way the last government behaved, it will end up where Jonathan ended.”
President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration may end up like the immediate past President Jonathan’s administration if it fails to retrace its steps on some policies.
Buhari defeated Jonathan at the 2015 presidential poll in what was described as a total rejection of the Jonathan-led administration by Nigerians.
The failure of Buhari-led government to create employment opportunities for “the over 80 million youths in the country, has made terrorism attractive to the unemployed.
Some policies of this government are bad for the economy, Buhari must retrace his steps.
“The Ministry of Budget and Planning is the most important ministry. The ministry needs to think beyond the Federal Government plans on the way forward.
“The country has not been able to attract investment. We need to move from our present mode of investment.
“Lagos is the story of what Nigeria can do with itself. The country should not be obsessed with oil.
‘‘Those who want to break up the country because of oil should stop. Oil will soon be nothing. The world is already developing alternative sources of power.”
‘’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, the GDP will grow.
‘’Countries like Nigeria and Angola are among the lowest growing countries of the world, growing with the rate of Europe and Latin America. We are the worst performers in terms of investment.’’
‘’We can always talk of the policies of the previous administration and we talk of oil subsidy and how it turned people into oil millionaires. But we have created another set of millionaires since 2015 from foreign exchange.
The practice whereby Nigerian businessmen obtain dollars at official rate and resell at a higher rate at the parallel market is still continuing, �
“We have created our own billionaires since 2015 from foreign exchange subsidy,” the emir said in a speech at 15th Joint National Council on Development Planning meeting held in Kano yesterday.
“For instance, when the CBN was selling dollar at N197 and people were buying at N300, if I sit down in my garden and pick up my phone I would have enough people to call in the industry to get 10 million dollars at officials rate and sell at N300 and make a profit of over N1bn and if I do that four times in a year, for doing nothing I would have earned N4bn.
“And people were telling us that this policy was to help the poor. We should not devalue because if we do the poor people would suffer.
“...People that were profiting from this were the ones telling the government that if you devalue people would suffer; meanwhile they all got the dollar at N197 and price their goods at N300.
“The poor paid the price of the devalued currency and the rich schemed up the profits and it went on for one year and we talked and talked and talked. “If the present administration continues to behave the way the immediate past government behaved, we will end up where Jonathan ended. You may not like it but that is the truth.”
You don't have to be an economist to know that any system that allows someone to make N1bn profit through a phone call without investing a kobo is a wrong system and unsustainable.
For every one billion dollars that was taken from the federation account and sold by the CBN at N197, the states have lost N100bn that can go into salaries, into agriculture and into healthcare.
At the same time the states are going back to borrow from the same government on the bailout when the government was selling its dollars to a group of people.
“What kind of economy are we running? Who is advising the government? I want know who is advising the government so that I can talk to the adviser.
“We didn’t have money, oil price has collapsed, avengers were blowing oil wells and the scarce dollars we had we are selling cheaply to some few individuals.”
Manufacturers have abandoned production and embarked on foreign exchange business at the expense of unemployment and local production.
It is unfortunate that while other countries are developing Nigeria has no ambitions as a nation, saying “Do we really love our country? Do we feel any shame when we see Malaysia that collected palm oil seed from us is now exporting palm oil?”
Nigerian public sector wage bills went up from N443bn in 2005 to N1.7trn in 2012, in 2010 when the government increased minimum wage to N18, 000, I personally protested because government would basically rely on borrowing to pay salaries and that would not be sustainable.
Nigeria is not all about oil since oil contributes only 15 per cent to the GDP, adding that if the entire Nigeria’s oil reserves were sold today, the proceeds would only add 1164 dollars per head compared to GDP per capital of 3,000 in 2016.
“So those that are making noise about oil should stop and those that are afraid about oil should stop. Oil is just a working capital ... that when we sell it we get the dollars that we can use to import. If we can have another source of working capital we can do without it.”
I commend the FG for making some changes in the economic system including removal of wasteful subsidies, the country should rather subsidise in production not consumption.
Nigeria is spending 6-7 billion dollars per annum on fake subsidies and all the money goes to private jets, expensive jewelleries, and properties abroad and so on and so forth, noting that nothing goes to the economy.
Nigeria earned 16 billion dollars from the oil sector in 2011 but not a single dollar went to education, roads and or power sector. “Every dollar we earned in the oil sector went back to petroleum subsidy in 2011.”
FG should focus on power generation and land reform as well in its effort to diversify the nation’s economy.
I am a friend of the present administration but if they decide to run Nigeria aground, I will become the opposition. You are not good friends with government officials and don’t tell them the truth. I will continue to say the truth.”
There is an urgent need for the country to return to the drawing board and expand the economy through wise investment for the economic growth and development of the country.
“If we do not expand the economy through wise investment, we can end up in classical Malthusian situation.
In spite of the past experiences we had on our socio-economic challenges, this country is still making the same mistakes we cannot process tomato paste.“Tomato paste is being imported from China. It is sad.
VINTAGE
LAMIDO SANUSI
