CONTROVERSIAL Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has said that he will not seek to have his contract extended as the Apex Bank chief when it expires next year.
Sanusi made this disclosure while also stating that it was never his intention to stay longer than one term, even as rumors about him having political ambitions linger.
Typical of most local officials in Nigeria who appear to give foreign organizations and entities more regard, the Central Bank governor preferred to reveal his future to a foreign media organization, CNBC Africa, in Abuja.
If Sanusi Lamido showed that he was shy of local organizations, preferring to show more regard for foreign media organizations in granting interviews for important revelations, he was the opposite in handling critical work in his line of duty as banking chief.
Appointed in the midst of a debt crisis, Sanusi, 51, fired the chief executives of eight financial institutions within four months of taking office, after an audit found evidence of mismanagement and reckless lending.
He also pushed for stability in the currency and helped bring inflation down below 10 percent, while at the same time antagonizing lawmakers at the National Assembly in Abuja by criticizing their spending, while courting controversy for his outspoken views, most recently on China’s role in Africa.
“That quality of character, that boldness is a quality that will be difficult to find amongst policy makers in Nigeria,” Bismarck Rewane chief executive officer of Financial Derivatives Co., a Lagos-based business adviser, told Bloomberg Financial, the source of this news report, by phone today.
Sanusi led the Monetary Policy Committee in increasing the benchmark interest rate by six percentage points to a record 12 percent from September 2010 to October 2011 to bolster the currency and curb inflation.
The government should name his replacement soon to help ease investors’ concerns and manage the transition, said Samir Gadio, an emerging-markets strategist at Standard Bank Group Ltd.
In 2009, former President Umaru Yar’Adua didn’t name Sanusi as a replacement to Chukwuma Soludo until two days before his term ended.
The naira fell 0.2 percent to 158.95 per dollar by 3:32 p.m. in Lagos, taking its decline this year to 1.8 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Yields on Nigeria’s $500 million of Eurobonds due January 2022 fell 10 basis points, or 0.1 percentage point, to 4.23 percent.
“He has a strong personality and a lot of people invested in the country just because of the personal relationship and the trust in Sanusi, and the confidence that Sanusi inspires,” Gadio said by phone from Lagos, the commercial capital
In criticizing China’s role in Africa, Sanusi said the country is contributing to the “deindustrialization and underdevelopment” in Africa, adding that Africa must shake off its “romantic view of China” and see it as a competitor that’s “capable of the same forms of exploitation as the west,” Sanusi wrote in an editorial published by the London-based Financial Times on March 11.
The Chinese government said it was concerned and dissatisfied with the comments, Xinhua reported on March 14, citing Hua Chunying, spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry.
Sanusi was chief risk officer at United Bank of Africa Plc and First Bank of Nigeria Plc before becoming chief executive officer at FBN in January 2009. A grandson of the 11th Emir of Kano, Sanusi studied economics at the Ahmadu Bello University in the northern state of Zaria and Islamic law at the International University of Africa in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
“The next governor will probably have a different outlook or perspective,” Yvonne Mhango, an economist at Renaissance Capital, said in a phone interview from Johannesburg today. “He came into office there was a banking crisis, the currency was depreciating and he had mid-teen inflation. He’s turned that all around.”
Rumors of Mr. Sanusi’s interest in politics surfaced late last year, after he donated joined other influential Nigerians in donating a total sum of N320 million naira, for a mosque project initiated by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Although Mr. Sanusi donated just 5 million naira of the entire sum, it did not stop Nigerians from guessing that the financial expert had future plans for politics in mind.