SANUSI...THE MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS

 

 No, I don’t (want to be president). I have ambitions to be the Emir of Kano– Sanusi Lamido Sanusi in a 2009 interview with Financial Times.

 

His swagger, his princely assertiveness, his busy schedule, the privileges and his prestige of power were celebrated as gone by his enemies.  He was derided as using his intelligence and talent for the wrong cause.  A businessman caught on the wrong side of his decisions even said he would be Emir of Kano in jail.

But yesterday Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, immediate past Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) emerged Emir of Kano. He succeeds Alhaji Ado Bayero.

Blessed with good diction and clear articulation of his position, he captivates his audience when he talks and has won many laurels on account of his performance.

His emergence also means things just got tighter for President Goodluck Jonathan, who hounded him out of office. Kano is strategic to the 2015 presidential election in which Jonathan is expected to run. The state’s 5.1 million registered voters is  second only to Lagos’ 6.2 million. This can make a significant contribution to the overall score of a presidential candidate.

Lagos is firmly in the grip of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and thus out of the reach of Jonathan. Kano is also an APC’s state, but with some Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) sentiment. Now that Sanusi is Emir of Kano and given the way the Jonathan administration treated him, Kano has further become an uphill task for the president. Many believe there is little minister-in-waiting and former Governor Ibrahim Shekarau can do for him.

Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, who announced Sanusi’s choice yesterday, is a sworn opponent of Jonathan and was one of the five governors who left the PDP for the APC last November.

Sanusi’s rise to global prominence began when the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua named him as governor of the CBN on June 1, 2009. His appointment was confirmed by the Senate on June 2, 2009. That was in the middle of a global financial crisis. Sanusi succeeded Charles Chukwuma Soludo as the CBN governor.

His tenure, which recorded stability in the financial system, also witnessed some controversies. Sanusi, born July 31, 1961, was suspended from office by Jonathan on February 20, over alleged financial recklessness. But his tenure ended on June 2  and Godwin Emefiele, his successor, assumed office on June 3. He is still in court to challenge his suspension.

But many said it was Sanusi’s exposure of a $20 billion alleged unremitted fund in the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) currently under investigation, that led to his removal.

That Sanusi is a man who knows what he wanted was evident in one of his earliest interviews after assuming office as CBN governor. “No, I don’t (want to be president). I have ambitions to be the emir of Kano,” said Sanusi Lamido Sanusi in a 2009 interview with Financial Times.

He also made it clear that he needed no second term as CBN chief. According to him, he intimated Jonathan way back in 2011 that he would not be interested in seeking a second term in office.

“I informed the president going back to 2011 that I would not be interested in serving for two terms’,’ he told Bloomberg, adding that  “the job has been done, largely’’.

Sanusi, a career banker, is equally a respected Islamic scholar. The global financial intelligence magazine, The Banker, published by the Financial Times, gave Sanusi two awards, the global award for Central Bank Governor of the Year, as well as for Central Bank Governor of the Year for Africa. The TIME magazine equally listed him in its TIMES 100 list of most influential people of 2011.

In 1985, Sanusi worked at Icon Limited (Merchant Bankers), a subsidiary of Morgan Guaranty Trust Bank of New York, and Baring Brothers of London. He also worked at the United Bank for Africa (UBA) in 1997 in the Credit and Risk Management Division, from where he rose to the position of a General Manager.

It was in September 2005, that he joined the Board of First Bank of Nigeria as an Executive Director, Risk and Management Control, and was appointed Group Managing Director (CEO) in January 2009. He also served as the Chairman, Kakawa Discount House and was a Board member of FBN Bank (UK) Limited.

His reforms

After taking the banks to the cleaners in what is seen as one of the most radical reforms in the banking sector, Sanusi was applauded by both local and international stakeholders for bringing sanity to the hitherto troubled sector.

Aside sacking the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of eight rescued banks in 2009, Sanusi injected about $3.9 billion into the banks to keep them in business.

Sanusi mandated bank CEOs and auditors that had worked in the banks for more than 10 years to resign. He reduced non-performing loans from over 35 per cent to less than five per cent in most banks.

In all the steps taken by Sanusi, no bank has failed, no depositor lost money with the entire process executed with minimal cost. Capital adequacy ratios averaged more than 20 per cent.

Banks moved from buying government bonds and funding blue-chip companies to focusing on the middle part of the economy, where growth happens and jobs are created. The agricultural and industrial sectors of the economy, long neglected by banks are now receiving higher rates of credit.

The CBN has also been able to achieve low inflation rate as Nigeria recorded a 7.9 per cent rate as at end of April. There has also been a stable financial system, macroeconomic stability by maintaining zero-tolerance for infractions in regulatory requirements on data or information reporting.

During Sanusi’s nearly five-year tenure, the bank and all stakeholders became conscious of the institutional relationships and market interactions among the various sub-sectors in the financial sector.

The CBN also supported women entrepreneurs, who were underrepresented in secure wage employment, through implementation of gender sensitive policies as well as making them relevant in the CBN.

The CBN under Sanusi introduced cashless policy in order to change the cash-driven economy and reduced operational costs usually passed on to customers through other means. The policy is expected to go nationwide come July 1.

The cashless policy was designed to promote financial intermediation, financial inclusion, minimise revenue leakages, eliminate incidence of robbery and also to reduce the amount of cash payment and encourage electronic payment.

It was also under Sanusi that the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) was established to takeover non-performing loans from banks and free the lenders’ balance sheets for lending.

Sanusi hasn’t shied away from controversy. In December 2010, lawmakers demanded he apologise for saying a quarter of the government’s spending on overheads went to parliament and that was damaging for the economy. He refused, saying his estimates were correct. In 2012, lawmakers attempted to curtail the bank’s powers by proposing an amendment to the CBN Act that would strip Sanusi of his position as chairman of the bank’s board. They also pushed to include more external members on the board and have parliament approve the bank’s budget.

More recently, he criticised China’s role in Africa, saying it was contributing to “deindustrialisation and underdevelopment” in the world’s poorest continent. Africa must shake off its “romantic view of China” and see it as a competitor that’s “capable of the same forms of exploitation as the west,” Sanusi wrote in the London-based Financial Times on March 11.

On sustainability of the CBN policy, he said the policies he put in place were sustainable because top management of the CBN and bank CEOs were carried along, a trend, he said was enough to create continuity.

He said his decision to do only one term was mainly to get the final test of walking away and watching the system continue from there. “Maybe I want to walk away. I spent the last one year trying to create sustainability on what we have been doing. I think it is going to work,” he said.

Sanusi, speaking at the Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie (Barristers and Solicitors) 30th Anniversary Lecture in Lagos, said some people had forgotten in a hurry, the bad old days. “Today, people have forgotten how bad things were before the new CBN regime. If you want to get somewhere, you need to annoy some other people so that they can help you,” he said.

The CBN boss said it was difficult to have stability in banking system, if bank CEOs or bank management were allowed to treat depositors funds like personal property.

Sanusi said he found it difficult to accept the CBN job because he had after the 2007 elections criticised government.

“After 2007 elections, I had come out to say that Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had rigged elections. I wrote articles supporting General Mohamadu Buhari. I did not see how I was going to find myself working with a government that I had so openly criticised.  I got a few phone calls asking: ‘I heard you were appointed CBN Governor’, and you were saying ‘No.  Don’t you make that mistake? If they offered, you have to accept’. Anyway it came,” he said.

His education, his life

Sanusi holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Economics from Ahmadu Bello University and a B.A. degree (1st Class Honours) in Shariah and Islamic Studies from the International University of Africa, Khartoum, Sudan.

He is one of Nigeria’s leading public intellectuals with dozens of papers and articles delivered at seminars and conferences, locally and internationally and published in newspapers, books and journals.

He is not one to shy away from debates, no matter its dimension. In an article in the Weekly Trust in September 2000, he said the problem of reconciling “belief in the universal and eternal applicability of the Shariah with the need for a wholesale adoption of its historically specific interpretation to meet the requirements of a particular milieu. Even a cursory student of Islamic history knows that all the trappings of gender inequality present in the Muslim society have socio-economic and cultural, as opposed to religious roots.”

Speaking at a conference the same year in Kaduna in a lecture on ‘Institutional Framework of Zakat: Dimension and Implications’, he said although the collection of zakat was the responsibility of the state, it might be the responsibility of the Nigerian government rather than the emirs in Northern Nigeria.

In July 2003, he presented a paper titled ‘The Shari’a Debate and the Construction of a ‘Muslim’ Identity in Northern Nigeria: A Critical Perspective’ at a seminar at the University of Bayreuth. In August 2003, he presented ‘Democracy, Rights and Islam: Theory, Epistemology and the Quest for Synthesis’ at an international conference on Shari’ah Penal and Family Law in Nigeria and in the Muslim World in Abuja.

As controversial as the subsidy debate was, Sanusi did not shy away from it. Sanusi said the subsidy was heavily biased in favour of the small middle and upper class.

He has also been awarded honorary doctorate degrees by the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, the University of Jos, Bayero University Kano, the University of Benin, and Benue State University, Makurdi.

Sanusi is recognised for his contribution towards developing a risk management culture in Nigerian banking and the fact that no depositor lost money in any of the banks throughout the global financial crises.

Now Sanusi’s lifelong dream has been realised. He has succeeded his father-in-law. He is married to one of the late Bayero’s daughters. The late Bayero conferred on him the traditional title of Dan Majen Kano in 2012.

The new Emir of Kano’s grandfather, Muhammadu Sanusi, was emir of Kano from 1953 to 1963. He was the eldest brother of the late Ado Bayero. The late Sanusi was deposed in 1963 after falling out with his distant cousin, the Sardauna of Sokoto, the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, then premier of the old northern region.