The Emir of Kano, Alhaji Mohammadu Sanusi, says the 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 had defeated Jonathan at the 2015 presidential poll in what was described as a total rejection of the Jonathan-led administration by Nigerians.
Sanusi, who was the chairman of the 15th meeting of the Joint Planning Board and National Council on Development Planning in Kano State on Wednesday, argued that the failure of the Buhari-led government to create employment opportunities for “the over 80 million youths in the country,” made terrorism attractive to the unemployed.
The session was organised by the Kano State Government and the Federal Ministry of Budget and Planning.
The monarch, who titled his speech, ‘‘Nigeria in search of new growth model,’’ said some policies of the government were bad for the economy, adding that Buhari must retrace his steps.
He noted that there were times when the Federal Government tried to get it right, adding that it failed to follow up, which contributed to the ongoing economic downturn.
He said, ‘‘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.”
The monarch tasked the ministry of budget and planning with returning to the drawing board to expand the economy through wise investment for the “economic growth and development of the country.”
He said, “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.”
While admitting that no system was perfect, Sanusi urged the incumbent administration to take the initiative to retrace its steps.
‘’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 people telling the government that if you devalue people will suffer are the ones benefiting presently. They bought the dollar at N179 and price their goods at N300.The poor pay the price of a devalued currency, the rich take the profit.
“You may not like it, but that is the truth. Any system that allows you, with one telephone call, to make N1bn without investing one kobo; the system is wrong,” Sanusi added.
