‘Restructure Nigeria’ Emir of Kano says

Premium Times reports that Sanusi said this at the inaugural lecture and launching of a N250 million endowment fund for the Oba Sikiru Adetona Professorial Chair in Governance, Department of Political Science, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State.

The Emir of Kano said “If you really reflect on the problems of this country, it seems to turn common sense on its head.

“You sometimes wonder if anyone needs to tell any group of people that if you are a poor country, you do not need 36 governors, 36 deputy governors, with members of house of assembly, commissioners and advisers, Special assistants, a president, a vice president, 36 ministers, special advisers, federal legislature and so on.”

He also added that “Simple arithmetic will tell you that if you have that structure, you are first of all doomed to spending 80 or 90 per cent of everything you earn maintaining public officers. It is really common sense but it seems to be a problem for us to understand it.

“If you don’t free up the resources and put them up for capital projects, you are laying the foundation of what we are seeing today. We need to have structural reform.”

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The royal father also said “Kano State today is much smaller than Kano emirate, because there are two other emirates in Dutse and Ringim which were carved out from what was the Kano emirate just to create a new state. There are two governors in Kano and Jigawa, two deputy governors, maybe 40 members of the House of Assembly, 40 commissioners and advisers, 70 local governments, chairman and councillors but for nine years, Governor Audu Bako with nine commissioners, one governors and nine commissioner managed the entire territory and they were doing much better services than we are doing now. Is it not time to face reality?”

You will recall that the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammad Sanusi II criticised President Muhammadu Buhari’s endorsement of the CBN’s foreign exchange policy, arguing that the policy encourages corruption.