- Sanusi takes the heat off my zone over relocation of some CBN’s departments from Abuja to Lagos
Hell has literally been let loose since the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced its intention to move some of its departments down to Lagos from Abuja about two weeks ago, so as to facilitate operations in those departments as well as save cost.
The departments pencilled down for relocation are Banking Supervision, Other Financial Institutions Supervision, Consumer Protection Department, Payment System Management Department and Financial Policy Regulations Department.
As usual, all manner of experts have suddenly sprung up denouncing the move and indeed asking that the apex bank rescind the decision. A senator of the Federal Republic even threatened that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should be ready to face the political backlash for daring such a move. The Northern Elders Forum (NEF), one of the earliest groups to reject the move, said the decision would “widen economic disparity between Northern and Southern Nigeria”. How? It didn’t say. In a statement by NEF’s director of publicity and advocacy, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, the body said “It would require significant financial investment as the CBN would need to allocate funds for setting up new offices, purchasing or leasing properties, relocating employees, and other infrastructural requirements. This would strain the CBN’s budget and divert resources away from other essential functions and initiatives.” Like the moribund and catastrophic Anchor Borrowers’ Scheme?
It also said that the decision could lead to loss of expert members of the staff of the bank who may not be willing to relocate; that the relocation would entail the newly-posted people getting used to their environment and that valuable time would be lost to such adjustments. It added that the movement of the sections would hinder cooperation among the bank and other government agencies with which it must work together in Abuja, etc. Is this a way of saying the policy was not well thought-out or just wanting to weep louder than the bereaved?
The Northern Senators Forum (NSF) also joined the group of critics, including also the Arewa Consultative Forum. As a matter of fact, the senators forum said it may consider legal action on the matter even as it appealed to their constituents to remain calm while they explored all opportunities to make the government rethink the decisions.
I must say I was not surprised that the reactions have come the way they did. I know the government too must have factored that into consideration while preparing the grounds for making the decisions public.
It is instructive that Sanusi essentially chose to comment only on the CBN’s relocation; he was silent on the relocation of the FAAN to Lagos. I can understand why; apparently the CBN is his familiar turf, having been governor of the bank before. I would toe a similar path, even if I must mention that I also saw reason with the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, for moving the FAAN headquarters to Lagos.
Sanusi may be a northern aristocrat, he is no doubt more cosmopolitan than most of the other people who are not comfortable with the decisions. Not only that, he has the experience, having once served as governor of the apex bank. As a matter of fact, he not only supported the relocations of some of those departments to Lagos, he said he would have done the same thing if he had stayed longer at the CBN governor. Hear him: “In my mind what I would have done was to move FSS and most of Operations to Lagos such that the two Deputy Governors would be largely operating out of Lagos or, even if they were more in Abuja, the bulk of their operational staff would be in Lagos. He crowned it all by saying that “It makes eminent strategic sense. And I would have done this if I had stayed.” So, what are the critics talking about?
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It gladdens my heart that a man who is eminently qualified to speak on such a matter, a former governor of the CBN, a northerner of repute and an aristocrat of northern extraction could get that blunt in approving an issue that the prominent Northern Elders Forum (NEF), the Northern Senators Forum (NSF), among others, have vehemently rejected.
I am impressed with Sanusi’s candour and clarity on the matter. There was nothing like ‘on the one hand, and on the other’. Indeed, his position is in tandem with the one-time American president, Harry Truman’s who insisted on having a one-handed economist. ”Give me a one-handed economist. All my economists say ‘on the one hand…, then ‘but on the other…” This is not the time for such ambiguity.
As Sanusi rightly observed, ”ethnic and religious bigots will always shout” over such decision but it should not deter the CBN from forging ahead. Sanusi described the move ”as an eminently sensible move” adding ”my advice to the governor is to go ahead with his policy.
Indeed, Sanusi said something of note that some of us knew as reason why some people are opposed to the CBN move but which we could only mention in hushed tones because of the high wire ethnic dimension that would be read into it if such sentiment had come from this part of the country. Thank God Sanusi took the heat off our zone by bursting the speaker, as it were: ” The problem we have now is that many employees (of the apex bank) are children of politically exposed persons and their Abuja life and businesses are more important than the CBN work.
“The CBN is just an address for them and if they have to choose between their spoilt Abuja life and the job, they would gladly leave the CBN.” Would we say that Sanusi does not know what he is saying?
This, indeed, is the main reason behind the noise. If you ask me, such people should go in peace. Neither the country nor the bank requires the services of such spoilt brats. What the CBN needs now are dedicated members of the staff who are ready to earn their pay. The country cannot be spending so much on their welfare only for them to be part-time workers in a business that requires more than 24 hours in a day!
But, Sanusi also made some valid points that the CBN would do well to consider. The apex bank’s governor, Olayemi Cardoso, should not only take the sweet part of the pieces of advice given by the ‘expectant’ former Emir of Kano. He should ponder the not-too-sweet aspects as well. There is no doubt that Sanusi is right in his assertion that many of those who have joined critics of the decisions did so because the apex bank has not been able to find its feet, especially concerning the high exchange rate that has made nonsense of business projections, especially in recent times. This is the ‘koko’. I agree with the former CBN governor that once the CBN gets its bearing right on its core mandate, some of the noise now making the rounds will simply fizzle out.
Although I disagree with Sanusi’s position on the capacity of the CBN office in Abuja when he said ”I don’t like the idea of arguing that the office structure cannot handle the staff numbers. I am sure Julius Berger would refute that if they wanted to engage”. The only reason I would agree with the former CBN governor on this is if he disagreed with the capacity quoted by the apex bank as the maximum the building could carry; in other words, the over 1,000 extra personnel the building is carrying does not matter? Be that as it may, we are not supposed to agree on all aspects of everything.
Perhaps the only thing Sanusi did not say that I love to add is that we need to take it easy with people who feel aggrieved with the policy decisions rather than start calling them names or wondering why they cannot see reason despite the unassailable reasons given for the relocations in the two instances. Matters such as this are usually emotional matters in our kind of country. If anything, what Sanusi’s experience with his licensing of Jaiz Bank and the issue at hand reminds us is the mutual suspicion we still harbour about ourselves despite professing to be one Nigeria. It is only sad that the political elites are exploiting such suspicion for their personal interests while they paint the picture as if their position was informed by some national interest.
All said, Cardoso does not have to pander to political pressure. “My advice to the Governor is to go ahead with his policy. Once the CBN starts bending to political pressure on one thing, it will continue doing so”. I am fascinated by this latter part of the argument of Sanusi because it would seem to me that the immediate past governor of the CBN, Godwin Emefiele, began with some ‘just little sins’ when he started pandering to political pressures, until he landed in the ocean of trouble that he put the entire country eventually.
But then, the CBN governor has to think deeply before making sensitive decisions. The job, as Sanusi said, is a thankless job. And, having taken this path, both the Federal Government and the CBN must watch out for the backlash because the affected beneficiaries of the decadent system that is being dismantled would always fight back. They had been eating corruption and it is very sweet in their mouths. To wean them off it or vice versa would take extra-vigilance on the part of both the government and the apex bank.
