The immediate past Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammad Sanusi II, yesterday bared his mind on the state of the Nigerian economy, giving reasons why the country is underdeveloped.
The Emir of Kano who spoke while inaugurating the remodeled secretariat of the Kaduna Chamber of Commerce, Industry Mines and Agriculture (KADCCIMA), at the Kaduna International Trade Fair Complex said, the major problem of the country was that it imports what it has and exports what it does not have.
The Emir said, it is unfortunate that Nigeria has crude oil but imports refined petroleum products for its consumption, as well as it has gas but could not generate electricity from it, except to import generator.
According to the Emir, “I have always said it, the problem of this country is that, we are in a country where we import what we have and we export what we don’t have. It is only in Nigeria we do that. We have cotton, but we will not process it to make cloth, except we go to China to buy clothes. We have crude oil, but you cannot go to filling station and get fuel refined in Nigeria, except we take our crude to England and go there to buy refined products. We have refinery here in Kaduna, but the fuel you will buy is not refined here.
“We have gas in Nigeria, but we are always burning it, it is flaring into the air. Instead of us to generate electricity with it, we rather go abroad to import generator to get power and we have gas that can generate electricity for us, we have coal and we have water to generate electricity.”
He added, “From time immemorial, tie and dye used to be one of the major businesses of Kano people, but now, it is Chinese that bring dyed clothes for us to buy. Kano people now select design for Chinese to go back to China and bring finished product back to them,” he lamented.
He, however, said there is no way Nigeria will move forward or develop, except the country corrects all the anomalies highlighted.
“This correction is not something difficult, since God has blessed us with what to do. We have tomatoes, we have cotton, we have gas, we have crude oil. From any day Nigerian refineries begin to solely refine our petroleum products, from the day we produce plastics from our petrol-chemical companies, from the day, we begin to generate our electricity from gas and produce fertiliser, we produce our clothes from our cotton, Nigeria will develop.
“The textile industry use to employ over 600,000 people, but now, it will be difficult to get 30,000 people under textile industry employment. Here in Kaduna industrial estate, both Muslims and Christians were working and their children living and playing together, but the moment the factories closed down and workers disengaged, the children who used to play together started seeing themselves as Muslims and Christians and started killing themselves during crisis.
“All the crises experienced in Nigeria, including the current Boko Haram insurgency were caused by the death of the Nigerian economy,” he explained.
Emir Sanusi however argued that the way out of the nation’s economic woes is to support government by not patronising products smuggled into the country, saying such goods were responsible for the collapse of the nation’s industry.
On the hardship currently experienced in the country, the Emir said the Buhari government deserves commendation, for the fact that, despite the economic situation, workers were not retrenched or their salaries cut.
Earlier, the President of KADCCIMA, Abdul Alimi, said the Emir of Kano assisted the chamber greatly when he was the CBN Governor, especially towards the success of the KADCCIMA secretariat project.
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