Dear Lamido Sanusi,

Let me start by wishing you a very happy New Year and congratulate you on the near completion of your tenure as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. That can be no mean task, especially with the complexities of the nation and the unpredictability of politicians that you have to deal with.

I should also say that you seem to have played the politics of the office well, sometimes on the side of the people. I cannot finish telling of the number of times that you have blown the whistle on the tendency for profligacy among political office holders and the lack of accountability on the part of those in charge of our national resources. I remember your spat with the members of the National Assembly over how much they cost the nation in overheads. You can be counted amongst the few Nigerians who have identified the root causes of insurgencies and violent crimes that we see over the land. On a number of occasions, you have spoken about the dangers of not educating the children and not providing employment for millions of youths roaming our streets. You have given a mass-oriented, almost leftist bent, to the office of the CBN Governor.

I remember your philanthropic acts. I never heard any previous holder of your office who had been so kind to Nigerians, donating money here and relief materials there; you are just one in a class! You appeared ready for the politics, making some of our compatriots wonder whether you were a banker or a politician, sometimes.

Forgive me if I do not have the technical words to describe the impact of your tenure on the banking industry. I am just an ordinary Nigerian who does not have a good head for banking and finance terms. However, I am quite aware of what is going on in my environment and can break them down in the lay man’s language that I understand.

You approached your office with uncommon seriousness. Not long after you came into office, you raised the red flag about the activities of some of our banking institutions. You fired the management of five banks namely, Intercontinental Bank, Union Bank, Oceanic Bank, Afribank and Bank PHB. You did not just appoint interim management to superintend over these banks, you went ahead to change their names, a move which many say remains unprecedented in Nigerian history.

You spoke about unhealthy practices in these banks, promised that the perpetrators would pay and truly, this happened. Some went to jail for a while, some forfeited property, some went on exile while some are in court as we speak. All of this was, according to you, to sanitise the sector.

Nigeria has you to thank for the cashlite and cashless policy. That has undoubtedly moved the Nigerian financial system a tad closer to what happens in forward looking countries.

I remember the endless campaigns that you were a hatchet man. The ceaseless advertorials calling for your removal. Talk about your plan to entrench the interest of your sponsors. But those who appointed you did not dignify these campaigns as is evident in the fact that you have lived out your tenure.

I know that experts in the banking industry will soon take a look at your tenure, how you fared in office and how deeply your reforms have reflected on the economy but this correspondence has a totally different objective. As you are on the verge of leaving office, I am persuaded to send you this message with the hope that you might consider taking a few steps which might give Nigerians fond memories of your tenure.

For starters, it seems to me that the banks are just not out of the woods yet. Just before you came into office, it was an industry where a lot of young people aspired to work but that is not the case today. For so many reasons (which I cannot enumerate here), one of which is insecurity of tenure, banking is currently an unattractive industry for the best minds in the country. I suggest that you look into the extreme pressure under which fresh entrants and middle level officers in the industry work, even with no assurances that they will not be sent away without commensurate benefits the next day.

That brings me to the issue of the casualties of your intervention in those five banks. Hundreds of those employed in these banks lost their jobs in the wake of your reforms. While it is trite in labour law that you cannot force employees on an unwilling employer, it is bad that most of these people were sent away without any benefits years after they joined the employ of the banks. Imagine hundreds of bread winners suddenly out of jobs without any safety nets whatsoever. I do not think that the CBN, under you, should look the other way on this matter, given your position on the rate of unemployment especially.

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The second issue you might want to take a look at concerns the problems of unemployment and the challenges that business startups face in Nigeria. All over the world, small businesses are the engine of growth and employment. They are central to economic prosperity. Although so much is said about the desire for entrepreneurial development in Nigeria, not much is being done to provide the enabling environment for businesses to start and thrive.

Reading an article about the growing success of the BRIC nations recently, I discovered that increase in new business startups is said to be40 times faster in BRIC nations than other countries, a reason for which the BRIC economies are getting more robust. According to the report, one of the factors responsible for this is the continued reduction in the bottlenecks for business registration and the governments’ conscious efforts at seeing that banks lend to small businesses at reasonable interests rates, usually not more than one digit. Two things happen in Nigeria currently: One is that interest rates are unreasonably high. The second is that banks are not willing to lend to the productive sector especially small and medium businesses. It is therefore curious that we expect our economy to grow and unemployment to diminish. You have said on some occasions that it is not possible for the CBN to dictate interest rates but will things go on like this forever? Should we continue to hope that this economy will develop in spite of SMEs which have proved to be the backbone of other economies? Is it possible to do something about this before you finally leave office?

This then brings up questions on the general application of universal banking in Nigeria. I imagine that your administration would work towards the entrenchment of mortgage banking for instance. I am of the opinion that the lack of infrastructure for the provision of the basic necessities like housing, transport and such for Nigerians partly accounts for the disgraceful level of corruption in the country.

It is therefore unlikely that the shameless stealing and compromises going on in the country will stop without securing the future of civil servants and political office holders with measures like mortgages among others.

I do not know how much of all this makes sense to you or whether it is even possible for you to do anything more before you leave office. But you should at least ensure that you do not leave us with a story of the recklessness which you said was rampant before you came into office. We recently learnt that one bank sacked 200 employees in the same week in which it spent a whopping N200m on inviting an American singer to Nigeria. I agree that organisations have a right to spend their money anyhow but I do not see how to justify such expenditure in the wake of the dismissal of such a huge number of people. That cannot be the kind of practice that you want to leave behind.

I wish you the best in your future endeavours.

-Adedokun, a Lagos based public relations practitioner, wrote in via @niranadedokun

http://www.punchng.com/opinion/a-letter-to-cbn-governor/

Yes, they should tell him the truth, he needs to know that he is not acting well.

DonColz1: Dear Lamido Sanusi,


I remember your philanthropic acts. I never heard any previous holder of your office who had been so kind to Nigerians, donating money here and relief materials there; you are just one in a class! You appeared ready for the politics, making some of our compatriots wonder whether you were a banker or a politician, sometimes.

For starters, it seems to me that the banks are just not out of the woods yet. Just before you came into office, it was an industry where a lot of young people aspired to work but that is not the case today. For so many reasons (which I cannot enumerate here), one of which is insecurity of tenure, banking is currently an unattractive industry for the best minds in the country.

That brings me to the issue of the casualties of your intervention in those five banks. Hundreds of those employed in these banks lost their jobs in the wake of your reforms. While it is trite in labour law that you cannot force employees on an unwilling employer, it is bad that most of these people were sent away without any benefits years after they joined the employ of the banks. Imagine hundreds of bread winners suddenly out of jobs without any safety nets whatsoever. I do not think that the CBN, under you, should look the other way on this matter, given your position on the rate of unemployment especially.

Well said

Sanusi fvckedup no be small.