Central Bank Governor Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has urged Nigerians to place less emphasis on where political office holders come from or his or her religious inclination.
Sanusi in his acceptance speech as the ‘Silverbird Man of the Year’ at the award ceremony in Lagos at the weekend said such things were immaterial, and rather, emphasis should be placed on what the person has to offer in solving our development problems and his capacity to deliver on them.
He said those at the helm of affairs in various endeavours and at whatever level owed it a duty to mobilise the enormous resources and deploy them judiciously for rapid transformation of the country. He noted that Nigeria had recorded remarkable growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the years but such growth was vulnerable as no concerted effort was put into realising the growth. According to him, growth recorded from a natural phenomenon like vegetation or rain fed agricultural production or high oil prices is not sustainable and therefore called for genuine efforts aimed at transforming the potential to reality for the benefit of the present and future generations. He further said , “let us build a society that has options for the people”.
Still on leadership, he urged the younger generation to rise to the challenge of changing the status quo and stop passing the bucks to elders, most of whom are in the twilight of their endeavours.
The CBN Governor further noted that nothing stops the country from attaining double digit growth yearly with the resources at our disposal provided that critical infrastructure like electricity and roads are developed. He cited the on-going transformation in some neighbouring African countries like Ghana, Togo and Mozambique which strove to fix their infrastructure, even in excess of their present requirements.
Mallam Sanusi also compared Nigeria to her contemporaries like Malaysia, Singapore and Brazil at independence in the 1960s, all of which have become economic successes by taking their destinies in their own hands when it matters most.
On the need to reposition agriculture, he stated that in realization of the fact that agriculture still has the potential for economic transformation of the country, the Central Bank of Nigeria is collaborating with the banking system to fix the value-chain in agriculture. He said the agricultural sector contributes about 45 per cent to the GDP and lamented that only one per cent of the entire bank lending goes to the sector due to the risks inherent in agricultural production in Nigeria”. As such, efforts are being made to de-risk the sector through the creation of value-chain covering the entire production and marketing processes capable of generating chains of employment and income. He noted, “no country has developed through the exportation of primary products”.
On the recent call for the devaluation of the Naira by the IMF, Mallam Sanusi vehemently disagreed with the logics of the Brettonwood Institution, noting that Nigeria has no capacity for export and therefore questioned the rationale for prescribing currency devaluation for an economy that is import dependent.
He thanked all Nigerians who voted him as the ‘Silverbird Man of the Year’ and promised not to let them down.
Earlier in his address, the chairman of the occasion, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Odein Ojumogobia, in his speech extolled the qualities of Mallam Sanusi “for his sincerity, resilience, creativity and vision”. He said Mallam Sanusi had shown courage beyond the call to duty by adhering to his personal philosophy of speaking the truth to power.
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