Amalgamation Day in Lagos, 1914

Amalgamation Day in Lagos, 1914

20 February, 2010

Central Bank Reorganization

I first became aware of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi through essays and speeches posted to the internet. Sanusi variously commented on political, socio-cultural and economic issues, and while I did not always agree with him, I always enjoyed his commentaries. Much discourse and debate in Nigeria in these regards is bereft of substance, of quality, or of value to understanding Nigeria's past, to making the best of Nigeria's present or to planning for Nigeria's future. Sanusi's views always had substance, and even if I disagreed with a point here or there, it was the sort of disagreement that makes for proper politics.

What I mean by proper politics is the ability of citizens to choose between different, equally valid, viewpoints on particular issues. He could say the best way to handle an issue is XYZ, I could disagree and say it is ABC, and the citizens could vote. That is what "proper politics" is, not this mess where we seem to have moved from the ethnic, religious and regional chess of the First Republic to the Godfather/Oligarch/Plutocrat chess of the Fourth Republic, via the hypbrid Second Republic and the truncated militaro-civilan Third Republic. Our politics have always been empty, not just lacking answers to the vital questions but making no attempts to find answers to the vital questions. Heck, our politics from Day One had little understanding (or attempt at understanding) what the questions are to begin with. What we have always is a rugged, zero-sum, oft-violent game of power politicking, where the goal is power for its sake.

In this context, as I read more from Sanusi over the years, even when I disagreed with him I found his views refreshing, in many ways superior to the fulminations of the so-called "progressives", those do-nothings who consider themselves the guardians of Nigeria's substantive discourse. I chuckled last year when Sanusi accused the "progressives" of living in 2009 while speaking the language of 1953. At one point, years ago, I even had a brief correspondence with the future CBN governor, sending him an email to tell him I appreciated his commentaries and hoped he kept writing because their was an audience out there for his essays. He responded, thanking me for my kind words and promising to keep writing.

I was hopeful when Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was appointed Governor of the Central Bank. In Nigeria (and frankly all over Africa ... no, make that all over the world), men and women usually express positive points of view when outside government, but revert and become defenders of the negative status quo once they are in government. I hoped that Sanusi remained true to his beliefs, because if he did, Nigeria would have an intelligent, thoughtful monetary policy chief who didn't just reflexively carry out old-schoold ideas that never worked in the past, don't work in the present and will never work in the future.

I have observed the so-called Sanusi "tsunami" in the banking sector. It is clear the banking sector was full of rot, but it is too early to judge whether the CBN has done the right things in terms of cleaning out the rot. I have written many blog posts on the "toxic assets" issue in Nigerian banking, and (before Sanusi came into office as CBN Governor) discussed the question of how Nigeria could bail out the banks and reform the sector so we don't have to face this issue in the future.

The Sanusi-led Central Bank of Nigeria, the Arumma Oteh-led Securities and Exchange Commission and the Farida Waziri-led Economic and Financial Crimes Commission have certainly been busy. Some of what they have done has been controversial, and some (like the proposed Asset Management Company for toxic assets) are issues I hope to study and then discuss on this blog. Sanusi has pumped a HUGE amount of money into the banking sector, and I am somewhat perturbed by the fact that "analysts" have not really substantively discussed this. If you are looking for a sign of how shallow discourse can be in Nigeria, note that for a lot of people the fact that Sanusi is a Fulani from Kano is more worthy of discussion (viz-a-viz claims of "Northern domination") than the substantive import and impact of his monetary policy decisions. Let me say here and now that Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Arumma Oteh and Farida Waziri are among President Umaru Yar'Adua's best political appointments since 2007.

Waziri in particular gets a lot of flack for not being Nuhu Ribadu, but both Ribadu and Waziri were and are constrained by a simple fact; the Nigerian political system is built on financial and economic misconduct of one kind or another, so it would be suicide if that same political system permitted anyone (Ribadu or Waziri) to actually fight corruption. Ribadu and Waziri were both appointed to give the outward appearance of fighting corruption, while the system remained broadly corrupt. For all the praise lavished on Ribadu, the fact is the years between 1999 and 2007 were the most corrupt in Nigerian history; and unlike Farida Waziri, Nuhu Ribadu was an active and deliberate participant in the corrupt politics that drives the system, particularly ahead of the 2007 fake-election.

But I am digressing from the central reason for this blog post.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has announced plans to expand the number of CBN departments, divisions and offices. In a time when Nigeria should be consolidating things (not just banks, but states and local government areas, federal and state cabinets and ministries, etc), the Sanusi-led CBN is expanding its bureaucracy. The reason given for the expansion is technocratic gibberish:

“The development of a more functional organisation structure, alignment of the structure in line with the Bank’s mandate and strategy, promotion of efficient and effective operations, building synergy with both internal and external stakeholders of the Bank, facilitation of information flow and integrated data management, and facilitation of the achievement of key deliverables of management in conformity with global best practice.”


It is the sort of language politicians, "world leaders", technocrats, diplomats, non-governmental organizations and multilateral agencies use when they either (a) haven't the foggiest clue about something, or (b) intend to do something they know a majority of people oppose, and so are trying to avoid ever admitting bluntly what it is they are doing.

Whatever "synergies" Sanusi is trying to achieve, I am sure he can do it with the same number of directorates, departments, divisions and offices that existed before. I am not so ideological as to demand he reduce the bureaucracy, but I am certainly not so lax as to support expanding it.

Of course the article does not say much about the practicalities of the plan. It is conceivable this new structure will be operated by the same number of staff and managers. In other words, maybe Sanusi is redeploying existing staff to the new departments, as opposed to expanding the bureaucracy per se. I hope this is what he is doing, because if he is doing the other thing, then he is acting like a normal Nigerian politician whose approach to everything is the expansion of bureaucracies, political units, and political-administrative jobs.

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