by Fatai Bakare
Submitted on 2012/01/15 at 12:42 pm
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, goes a saying, and every sensible and genuine leader should have it at the back of his mind that there are prices to pay as a leader on just about every issue. I genuinely share the sentiments of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (SLS) and I seriously sympathise with him that a great burden is on his neck and as a genuine leader he wants to proffer solutions to our economic problems. He identifies with the surfferings of the masses despite the fact that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
To me, probably he would have been a better Minister for Finance than Okonjo Iweela considering the vantage positions he had held in the past, especially the corruption going on in the oil industry. Well, that’s Nigeria for you where we always put round pegs in square holes. Please, do not misunderstand me, he is a right peg in the right whole in his present job as the Governor of CBN, but as Minister of Finance, he would have been able to combine and use his experiences to be a better indigenous Finance Minister rather than somebody imported from abroad to implement IMF’s fiscal policies to see African countries in perpetual bondage to Europe and the US. Well, as God would have it, they are having their own shares of economic problems in the world now though creating more problems for Africa.
A country in Africa with the kind of resources we have in Nigeria would have been smiling to the world Bank, excuse the pun because I know that the World Bank is not the type of Bank people smile to unless you work there. We will have huge amount of external reserves now, if we had had our bearings on the right course and corruption has not been legalised by and for those at the top in the country, no thanks to IBB. It was right from his regime we had corruption introduced to every facet of our lives – all government ministries, civil service and parastatals. Only God can help us have a leader that will hold the horns of that bull (corruption) by the hand, and damn all consequences.
Yes, SLS said he wrote as a Nigerian economist and public intellectual; however, we cannot separate him as above from a public servant that he has been all his life. As an economist, he has acquired experinences from all the vantage positions he held as a public servant. How many Nigerian economists are opportuned to have his kind of experiences? Good as it is, since he has soft spots in his mind for the countless masses of the country who are suffering, he should not have become a ‘if-you-can’t-beat-them- then-join-them’ kind of person. This is what he is to me by supporting the removal of the so called oil subsidy that would compound the masses’ problems.
He should realise that for OBJ not to have dangerously removed the remaining subsidy on petrol during his time as he did on diesel shows he had his reasons for it. He gradually raised it to N70.00 before we started complaining and it might be that Soludo, then CBN governor, was not interested as SLS did to find out who were the real beneficiaries of the money paid by the Fed Govt as subsidies on petrol.
Sanusi should have cried to high heavens to remove the corruption inherent in the importation of petrol by the NNPC, PPPRA and the Customs men involved as he did in the salary saga of the senators. His would have been the only voice in the wilderness, he should not have joined them to perpetrate evils on the Nigerian masses. If, after fighting tooth and nail to the knowledge of the masses and GEJ et al. are still bent on adding more to the pump prices, he could have taken the honourable way and bow out of government. He would have been taken as a hero by now and praised to high heavens whether he joins in the protests or not.
It was a grevious mistake he commited to have joined in the hike of pump price. It was very unfortunate to have received the greatest of venoms from the public than GEJ or the architect of the hike in pump prices, Madam Okonjo. At any rate, if the insults had been to his person, it would have been okay but I personnally do not subscribe to raining abuses on the persons of his late father and grandfather. We should be mindful not to speak evils of the deads. Well, I want to lend him a saying from Yoruba language, “omo ose nii ko ponpo ba iya re” literarily meaning that “it is the fruits of the ‘orange tree’ that make people throw stones and sticks at the tree in order to pluck the fruits”. He should also learn from now on that public servants are mirrors and those who live in glass houses do not throw stones. Thanks.
January 15, 2012
Arts & Culture