Former Emir of Kano and ex-Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Lamido Sanusi, has urged Nigerians not to vote for any candidate who promises to make everything easy once elected in the 2023 general election.
Sanusi said with the current state of the economy, any candidate who makes such a promise is a liar, noting that politicians must prepare the minds of Nigerians for tough decisions ahead of the next year’s polls.
He said this while speaking at the 7th edition of the Kaduna Economic and Investment Summit in Kaduna on Saturday.
“Please let me request from our politicians. You must prepare the minds of Nigerians for difficult decisions.
“Anybody who tells you that it is going to be easy, please don’t vote for him. It is either he is lying to you or he doesn’t know what job he is going to get.
“You cannot with this level of debt service, with this level of collapse in revenue, with this level of poverty, you cannot take corrective decisions. Tariffs on the electricity sector will have to be corrected. Tariffs in the oil sector have to be corrected.
“But before we correct that, we have to deal with the opportunities for rent-seeking. You have to close off the inflated numbers, the false numbers,” Sanusi said.
The former CBN Governor added that President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor must probe petrol subsidy payments, saying: “They must give names of the ships that came and we must verify if those ships were in Nigeria on that date.
“You must bring evidence. That is what the law says. There must be proof before you pay the subsidy.”
Others at the event were President Buhari, who was represented by the Minister of State, Industry, Trade and Investment, Maryam Katagum; the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu; Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai; Aliko Dangote, among others.