•The choice must figure in professionalism and the independence of spirit
IN a few months, the office of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor will be vacant, and it is important that Nigerians show interest in who succeeds the incumbent. We shall not assess the performance of Lamido Sanusi until he eventually bows.
But we want to peer into the post-Sanusi era, with a view to suggesting what we need from the new boss of the apex bank. Since independence, the occupier of the post has often served as a kind of potent fly on the wall. We knew he worked but we were hardly drawn to his doings as the man who regulates the outflow and inflow of money in the financial system.
The last two heads have stirred emotions in the country, including Charles Chukwuma Soludo and Lamido Sanusi. Their predecessors operated as though below the radar.
But some explanations can put this in context. Most of our CBN chiefs were appointed by the military and there was little fractious temper because partisan politics was antipodal to the high hand of military rule. The second explanation is that the Nigerian economy has gradually slid into tumultuous times, tossed by inflation, the descent in the value of the Naira, overdependence on oil, diminishing productivity and decaying infrastructure.
The third reason is the impunity and vainglory that have attended the rebirth of the political elite in this republic. This has engendered the politicisation of the office, and policies have failed to earn the trust of the divides of our politics.
Hence we witnessed the consolidation move conducted in the Olusegun Obasanjo era under the direction of Soludo, and the gains and losses are still matters of contention. Of course, his attempt to revalue the currency in the guise of saving it fell upon the rock. The Sanusi era has been marked by a wave of policies viewed by some as populist, others as partisan. Some other policies have been seen as anti-establishment and another group saw other actions as servile.
In Nigeria today, it is difficult to be neutral about money. Yet at no time in our history do we need a steady hand on top of our money flows. That is why whoever takes over from Sanusi must serve the nation with wisdom, professionalism and patriotism.
This does not call for the jettisoning of what the person meets on ground, especially in an economy where questions have quaked the air over missing trillions of Naira, over what constitutes real and unreal subsidies, over where political interests interlock our paternity.
The person will winnow the good from the dross, the pure from the meaningless and contentious. The presidency and the National Assembly must be wary of our needs as a country in picking this person. We do want a CBN governor who can speak the truth, even if we recommend that he be more grand than grandiose, less reticent, not servile, and decidedly professional.
Having an equable temperament does not recommend silence but an understanding of the weight of words to push the economy this way or that. He must be a seasoned economist with a deep grasp of the interplay of the economy and society. He must not be so doctrinaire as not to adapt to the dynamics of a modern economy in a state of flux. He must distinguish – and coalesce – the economic and the financial, which means a nexus must be found between productivity in the real economy and the level of money flows in the system. That way, neither runs away from the other, and crisis is averted.
Given the charged polity, we hope that whoever emerges strikes a bi-partisan pose and poise, with a strong sense more about how to redeem a dying money than how to satiate a particular interest.
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