The troubled Emir of Kano and former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has said that Nigerian elites and ruling class do not understand what poverty means in real terms.
Sanusi confessed that he got to know what poverty truly is when he mounted the throne as an Emir as against when he was CBN Governor.
Sanusi said this in a goodwill message at a public lecture with the theme: “Weaponization of poverty as a means of underdevelopment: A case study of Nigeria,” commemorating the 60th birthday celebration of former Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, in Abuja, on Saturday.
The former CBN Governor said, “Many of the elite in Nigeria do not know what poverty is. As an economist, former CBN Governor, I see the numbers. I did not know poverty until I became Emir.
“And you go to the village and see the water they drink, the houses they live in, they two block classrooms without roofs.
“Do we actually love the people or do we just love ruling over them? What are our priorities. We make overheads and underpasses for ourselves in the cities while there in the rural areas cannot reach hospitals. We are in crisis, how do we get out should be our focus.”
Sanusi charged those saddled with the responsibility of leadership to inculcate the virtues of empathy with those they’ve been given a responsibility to lead.
Also speaking at the event, former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai expressed concern that Nigerians kept repeating the same mistake of electing the worst among us into leadership positions.
According to him, “We keep electing people who only know how to grab power but don’t know what to do with it.”
A former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, Prof. Usman Yusuf, in his intervention, explained that most of the cases being handled in hospitals were not medical.
Yusuf blamed corruption and bad governance for the multidimensional poverty in Nigeria. He said unless citizens live up to their responsibilities and vote for what is right.
The speeches at the event dissected the true psychology of leadership in the Nigerian political space