The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, has criticised President Muhammadu Buhari’s economic policies, warning that if the President does not change tactics, he may run the country aground.
Sanusi is the immediate past governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria who was hounded and sacked by President Buhari’s predecessor, Dr Goodluck Jonathan for issuing similar warnings and blowing the whistle on certain acts of corruption in the system.
The emir warned that since President Buhari is now making the same poor choices made by Jonathan, he may end up like his predecessor.
Sanusi urged officials of the present administration to stop the obsession with talking about the rot of the past and concentrate on correcting the mistakes.
The emir who delivered a paper entitled, “Nigeria In Search Of New Growth model” at the 15th meeting of the Joint Planning Board and National Council on Development Planning on Wednesday in Kano 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. You have to listen.”
He continued: “You don’t have to be an economist to know that any system that allows you to sit in your garden, and with a telephone call, make one billion naira without investing a kobo, that system is wrong. It is unsustainable.
“And just so we are not always blaming the previous administration. We have also made mistakes in this administration. We have started retracing our steps or we have to retrace those steps.
“And if we fall into the same holes that we fell into the last time where the government is always right… If a policy is wrong, it is wrong. Nothing will make it right and it has to be changed.”
Sanusi also slammed the people taking decisions on behalf of govermment, saying the ecomomists in the administration are incompetent.
“And many of them are not economists. They are demagogues.”
“Look, I’m not going to change. I am never going to be political. I will never tell people what they like to hear. There is nothing we are facing today that we did not know will happen. That is the truth. We made mistakes, many of them deliberate. We ignored every single warning.
“If you take a brand new car, and give a driver who doesn’t have a license to drive it and you have an accident, you really can’t say you are surprised unless you are some kind of idiot.”
The Emir said he would like to know those advising the present government so he could talk to the advisers themselves.
He blamed past administrations for failing to diversify the nation’s economy during the oil boom, saying Buhari should not make the same mistakes.
He Jonathan of refusing advice given to him on how to turn the economy around.
“Warnings of impending economic doom were also ignored by the former president,” Sanusi said.
The traditional ruler expressed concern that the Buhari administration was toeing the same path like the Jonathan government.
“In a situation where we cannot process tomato. Tomato paste is being imported from China. It is sad,” he lamented.
He said there was urgent need for the country to return to the drawing board on the deepening and expansion of the economy.
“If we do not expand the economy through wise investment, we can end up in classical Malthusian situation,” he said.
The traditional ruler reiterated his support for the removal of all forms of subsidies, saying the subsidy system make a few rich and impoverish the majority.
