The Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II, has insinuated that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has created more billionaires in the past months.
Speaking at the 15th Joint National Council on Developmental Planning meeting in Kano, Sanusi said: “We have created our own billionaires since 2015 from foreign exchange subsidy.”
Continuing, Sanusi said: “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,” he said.
The Emir also added that no one needs to be an economist to realise that any system that allows someone to make N1 billion profit through a phone call without investing a dime is a wrong system and is not sustainable.
The former Governor of CBN also warned that if wise investments isn’t used to expand the Nigeria’s economy, it might be heading for worse.
“If we do not expand the economy through wise investment, we can end up in classical Malthusian situation,” said Sanusi.
The Emir has been giving tips and ideas on how the Nigerian economy can bounce back from its current economic state following the declaration of recession by the Federal Government.
