Buhari has replaced oil subsidy with forex subsidy - Sanusi

The Emir of Kano, Mohammed Sanusi II has warned the Buhari administration to retrace its steps to avoid ending up like the one it took over from.

The monarch said that the government has been creating billionaires by selling foreign exchange to businessmen at the official rate. He added that such businessmen had merely turned round to resell the forex at the parallel market, making huge profits for doing nothing.

Speaking at the Joint National Council on Development Planning conference in Kano on Wednesday, Sanusi explained that whereas the Jonathan administration created billionaires through fuel subsidy, Buhari has been doing the same thing by subsidizing foreign exchange.

“We have created our own billionaires since 2015 from foreign exchange subsidy," he said.

"They got the dollar at N197 and priced their goods at N300," he said in his speech tilled 'Nigeria: The search for new growth model.'

“For instance, when the CBN was selling dollar at N197 and people were buying at N300, if I sat down in my garden and picked up my phone I would have enough people to call in the industry to get 10 million dollars at officials rate and sell at N300 and make a profit of over N1bn and if I do that four times in a year, for doing nothing I would have earned N4bn.

“And people were telling us that this policy was to help the poor. We should not devalue because if we do the poor people would suffer.

“People that were profiting from this were the ones telling the government that if you devalue people would suffer; meanwhile they all got the dollar at N197 and price their goods at N300.

“The poor paid the price of the devalued currency and the rich schemed up the profits and it went on for one year and we talked and talked and talked. “If the present administration continues to behave the way the immediate past government behaved, we will end up where Jonathan ended. You may not like it but that is the truth.”

He said that the present system is wrong and unsustainable as manufacturers have abandoned manufacturing to engage in foreign exchange trading to engage in foreign exchange trading.

“What kind of economy are we running? Who is advising the government? I want know who is advising the government so that I can talk to the adviser.

“We didn’t have money, oil price has collapsed, avengers are blowing up oil wells and the scarce dollars we have we are selling cheaply to some few individuals.”