Acentury ago, the Governor of the Hunan province famously began a censorship trend in China, that later reached its nadir under Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution, when he banned Lewis Carrol’s allegedly subversive literary waltz around the garden: Alice In Wonderland.
A few years ago, I found myself on the ragged borders of Hunan on an investigative trail that had taken me from rural Malawi to an obscure corner of China where 100 billion counterfeit cigarettes are mass-produced, literally underground, each year.
As I arrived to dig for tobacco, China’s pre-occupation with censorship continued to focus on the surreal in the present not just the past. Afraid that the so-called Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia would inspire similar insurgence in Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party had, as I drove across Hunan, declared an unlikely war on the small white flower, even banning its utterance from social media.
China likes to outlaw symbols of resistance. It regularly bans people too. Richard Gere and Brad Pitt, not exactly the most threatening of civil rights campaigners, will be unlikely to ever walk along the Great Wall of China thanks to their personal association with a humble Buddhist monk who has become the world’s most high profile blacklistee: the Dalai Lama.
The latest storm of controversy swirls around the South African government’s refusal to grant the Dalai Lama a visa to attend the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Cape Town in mid-October.
In 2014, as they have for much of the last 50 years, Beijing views Buddhism’s Yellow Hat as a meddlesome separatist trying to establish an independent Tibet. But he&#8217;s also a very effective tool that China uses to incrementally assert control in international affairs.
As far as Pretoria is concerned, we are in familiar territory. In 2009, Tibet&#8217;s exiled spiritual leader tried unsuccessfully to visit South Africa to attend a peace conference. Before then he had visited the country three times under Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki.
Two years later, in 2011, the Dalai Lama hoped to attend the 80th birthday celebration of his friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, but withdrew his request after not receiving a response from Pretoria. An angry archbishop later described his government&#8217;s handling of the visa application as mind-blowing.
A year later, South Africa&#8217;s Supreme Court of Appeal found that the country&#8217;s home minister at the time unreasonably delayed her decision on the Dalai Lama&#8217;s visa application and acted unlawfully in doing so.
Of course it is beyond dispute that the Rainbow Nation’s most recent point-blank refusal to grant entry to one of the world’s holiest figures has more to do with Beijing than Pretoria.
The furore around the rejection promoted the Dalai Lama’s fellow peace laureates, including Poland&#8217;s Lech Walesa, Bangladeshi entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus, Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Northern Irish peacemakers David Trimble and John Hume, to write a letter directly to President Jacob Zuma calling for a reversal of the decision. When the reversal didn’t come, the laureates cancelled their trip to South Africa.
What is most surprising to me is the low-key reaction to the latest rebuke in Asia. It speaks of a wider truth. Since China’s emergence as an economic superpower, the Dalai Lama is increasingly becoming the last person presidents and prime ministers would ever want to ‘Like’ on Facebook. As a consequence South Africa is far from the only nation in the world to ‘unfriend’ the 14th incarnation of the Buddhist holy seat.
Around the world, governments are increasingly limiting their contact with the Dalai Lama’s office. Most recently, Russia refused him entry. Those who refuse to kow-tow often feel the muscle of China. After the British Prime Minister David Cameron met with the Dalai Lama in 2013, after Beijing warned him not to, China effectively cut off diplomatic relations. Cameron’s administration then spent a year working to get back in Beijing’s good books.
A more startling row over the Dalai Lama’s presence took place in the last place you would expect. Norway. A nation that has shaped a reputation for tolerance. When the Dalai Lama visited Norway in May, government officials allowed him to enter the country but refused to meet him face to face. Norway had previously found itself in the cold and its salmon exports to China decimated after it had chosen the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo as the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. History wasn’t about to repeat itself.
In the midst of the latest scandal, South Africa&#8217;s foreign ministry has, of course, stressed its visa decisions were taken independently of a desire to cultivate closer ties with China, its largest trading partner and co-member of the BRICS club of emerging economies.
Regardless, the country’s economic relationship with China deepens. In late 2007, China made the largest single foreign investment in South Africa since the end of apartheid, a deal for the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the biggest lending bank in Asia, to take a 20% stake in South Africa’s Standard Bank, the country’s largest by assets. Last year, China emerged as South Africa’s foremost trading partner.
The deeper truth to the Dalai Lama’s exile and predicament can be found between the lines of academic study. According to a study by two European scholars, Andreas Fuchs and Nils-Hendrik Klann, inviting the Buddhist leader for dinner could ultimately end up costing you the earth.
In their study ‘Paying a Visit: The Dalai Lama Effect on International Trade’, they found that when a top leader meets with the Dalai Lama, that country&#8217;s exports to China will drop by at least 8.1% for roughly two years, and then return to normal – in the interim costing economies linked to China billions of dollars.
Perhaps it&#8217;s not surprising, then, that in 2001, the Dalai Lama met with 11 top leaders yet in 2013 met with only two. This trend of avoiding the Tibetan spiritual leader has been especially pronounced in northern Europe, not just in Africa.
But a greater reality in the modern world is the Dalai Lama’s political influence, like the strength of his tenure, spent entirely in exile, is fading fast. A man of compromise and dignity, he has long said he’d settle for autonomy within the Chinese state, but this has about as much chance of happening as China recognising Korea&#8217;s right to re-unification. Today, as China’s economy grows, Tibet’s state-supporters will continue to diminish.
Tibet has changed dramatically in recent years. On the political front, tension is still very much present but the wave of self-immolations that once dominated world headlines has diminished. Even the soldiers who were blocking most of the streets of old-Lhasa in 2008 are now gone.
Money seems to be having an impact on Tibet for better or worse. After having invested $15 billion on infrastructure in 20 years, and committing further $15 billion in the years to come, China has equipped Tibet with a reliable road network, five airports and a railway line anchoring it firmly to the nation. Greenhouse agriculture is developing, allowing a constant outflow of highly prized fruit and vegetables throughout the year. This year, 12 million, mostly Chinese, tourists made the trip, turning Lhasa into a tourist hotspot.
This, in itself, sadly lends a rather hollow ring to the words of the Dalai Lama himself: “Money and power facilitate, but it is clear that they are not the primary causes of happiness and solving the world’s problems.”

Why A Hello To The Dalai Lama Costs Billions

The ignominious ousting of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, arguably Nigeria&#8217;s most recognisable Central Bank governor in history, heralded a tidal wave of public opinion and sent shockwaves throughout financial markets.
Following allegations of financial misconduct in the bank’s 2012 annual report, Sanusi was questioned by Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan in May and suspended in February while on assignment in Niger. The timing has led some to conclude that it is a consequence of the embarrassment he caused the government by questioning the country’s national oil company over $20 billion that was missing from the national account.
The action caused debate over whether the president acted legally since the constitutional provision for removal of the Central Bank governor states it must be approved by a two-third majority in the senate. In the aftermath, the naira recorded a significant loss in value, trading at N169 to $1 from a previous day closing price of $163. This was described by Proshare, a market intelligence firm, as the worst single day drop in 15 years.
Sanusi was a symbol of Nigeria&#8217;s economic stability because of his prudent monetary policy regime. His achievements included reducing inflation of over 11% in 2009, when he assumed office, to single digit rates, as well as maintaining exchange rate stability which saw the naira strengthening against the dollar over the past 24 months. The overall performance of the system under his watch fueled confidence in Nigeria&#8217;s economy and led to heightened interest in the country’s bonds and investments.
Predictably, his abrupt removal was met by a panicked response from investors. The government moved quickly to reassure stakeholders, with finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala emphasizing that the prudent fiscal and monetary policies that had been pursued up till now, will be maintained.
While the minister’s assertion and a similar statement by the interim head of the bank, Sarah Alade, provided some calm, the system will continue to be characterized by uncertainty until at least several months into the tenure of the incoming helmsman, Godwin Emefiele, the CEO of Zenith Bank, one of Nigeria’s largest lenders.
Emefiele, a former university lecturer, is a veteran of the banking sector having been on the management team of Zenith since it was founded in the early 1990s. While his nomination is surprising, he is viewed favorably by industry observers due to his reputation as a steady hand.
In light of these events, Nigeria’s monetary policy authorities are faced with the formidable challenge of facilitating a stable environment that will enable continued growth of the economy. At the previous meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the bank’s policy making authority, key issues were identified which pose a challenge to monetary stability in the near to medium term. These include the depletion of the country’s reserves, dwindling flows of foreign investment, the widening gap between the official exchange rate and that of authorized dealers, and the upward tendency of inflation.
These will persist in the coming months as the country prepares for national elections next year. Investors are likely to tread cautiously as the outlook evolves, hence authorities may resort to implementing extraordinary measures based on coordinated fiscal and monetary policy actions, in order to stem volatility. However, the recent high growth potential classification of Nigeria as part of the MINT countries, along with Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey, means overall interest in Africa’s largest economy in waiting is unlikely to wane.
Meanwhile, Emefiele will assume office as the 11th governor of the Central Bank. With a calm disposition that is the antithesis of Sanusi’s vibrant personality, he is viewed as having a temperament that is more suited to the role. Highly regarded by colleagues and observers, he will need to leverage his considerable experience to build on the achievements of the bank’s previous leadership, as he steers it through a period of uncertainty.
The manner of Sanusi’s removal has raised old questions about the independence of the Central Bank governor in a country where political leaders wield considerable influence. While he has confirmed that he will not go back to the job, Sanusi intends to challenge his removal in court in order to clarify the legality of the president’s action for the benefit of his successors.

Stormy Days Ahead?

“My name is Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, not Central Bank Governor. I enjoy my job but if you want me to quit, I will honorably quit.”
Those were the words of the Central Bank governor to a Nigerian Senate Committee in 2010. He was summoned to defend himself after attacking Parliament for consuming, in salaries and allowances, a quarter of what the Federal budget allocates to overhead costs.
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Back then, he didn’t have to quit. In February, almost four years later, a statement from the office of President Goodluck Jonathan announced his suspension on account of far-reaching irregularities. The following day, a 13-page investigative report, dated June 2013, surfaced online. It was produced by the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, an obscure government agency. The damning report appears to contain the evidence hinted at as Sanusi’s suspension was announced.
In the months before his suspension, it became public knowledge that Sanusi had fallen out with Jonathan after the leak of a letter he addressed to the president alleging that tens of billions of dollars of oil revenue was unaccounted for. It was reported that Jonathan was deeply embarrassed by this. Sanusi confirmed that the president asked him to resign for the leak. He refused.
Sanusi was appointed to the office in June 2009, five months after he was named CEO of First Bank of Nigeria, the country’s largest bank by assets. It was a critical time in the banking industry. The shock from the global economic meltdown was still reverberating across Nigeria. The stock market had crashed and there were rumors that many banks were only alive because the Central Bank was propping them up with cash.
One of the first things he did as governor was to carry out an audit of Nigeria’s 24 banks. Within his first four months, he sacked eight bank CEOs for malfeasance and poured nearly $4 billion worth of bailouts into the banks they ran. In boldness and scope it was the most momentous thing in Nigerian banking’s recent history. That action sealed Sanusi’s reputation as a no-nonsense banker. Most of what he did afterwards was viewed in that light. It was therefore not much of a surprise when he took on the powerful National Assembly a year later.
Under him, the Central Bank was widely respected. In January 2013, inflation fell to 9%  and stayed in single digits until the news of Sanusi’s suspension broke. He was fiercely committed to the stability of the naira; regularly tinkering—with mixed success—with forex regulations to keep the exchange rate stable.
Time had him on its Most Influential Persons list in 2011. In his final months, foreign investors expressed concerns about the future of the Nigerian economy post-Sanusi.
He was born into aristocracy. His grandfather was an Emir of Kano, one of Nigeria’s oldest kingdoms; his father a foreign service bureaucrat who went on to become Nigeria’s ambassador to China in the 1970s.
“He adored Chairman Mao Zedong’s China, which for him was one in which the black African—seen everywhere else at the time as inferior—was worthy of respect,” Sanusi wrote in the Financial Times.
It would have been easy to conclude that Sanusi shared his father’s adoration for all things Chinese, especially when he announced, in 2011, that Nigeria was going to take the unprecedented step of diversifying some of its external reserves into Renminbi. But the central thesis of that piece was that Africa must recognize that China is in Africa not for African interests but its own.
For a central banker he was extremely outspoken.
He had always been that way. In the 2000s, he regularly wrote and published in newspapers and online forums ardent opinion pieces touching on some of Nigeria’s most contentious issues: politics, religion and ethnicity.
He was a polygamous Muslim prince—with a degree in Sharia and Islamic Studies from the International University of Africa in Sudan, earned several years after his Master’s degree in economics—who boldly championed women’s rights. In April last year, he disclosed that the Central Bank had mandated Nigeria’s banks to reserve more board and management positions for women.
Last year, he announced that he had no plans to run for a second term. By Nigerian standards it was another unusual move; public officials never turn down the opportunity of a second term. But it may simply have been that the hard-nosed Sanusi had realized that he didn’t stand a chance.
In the end, it was a terse statement that ended his time at the Central Bank. For someone who made his name as an insider critical of what he saw as the government’s penchant for undisciplined public spending, it was ironic that the millstone that pulled him down came labeled with the same failings. For now, however, no one knows how true those allegations are.
In his appraisal of his final moments, Sanusi was as clear-eyed as he was when he inherited a deeply dysfunctional banking system.
“This is about consequences for decisions I have taken. This is something that is long overdue. I am surprised it took them so long.”

‘I Am Surprised That   It Took Them So Long’

The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else.”
So writes one Nigeria’s most prolific sons, Chinua Achebe, in his somewhat defeatist essay, The Trouble with Nigeria. His sentiments are part of a chorus bemoaning the fact that for all of Nigeria’s wealth, be it in the form of highly educated professionals or resource endowment, there is not enough patriotism. We don’t have functioning roads but I have a jet. We don’t have national security but I can hire a private security outfit. And so the logic goes. It is this ‘every man for himself’ attitude that erodes nationhood. With a population of 175 million jostling for a toehold, it is not surprising that this notorious spirit beats strongly throughout Nigeria.
One young woman who embodies the contradictions of the green-and-white nation is 24-year-old Orode Ryan-Okpu. To some, her claim to fame is as the daughter of Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, the governor of the Delta State.
Ryan-Okpu’s new claim to fame, however, is explained by two business cards. She offers me two – a pink one first and then a purple one. The latter is for Raum Oil Services, where Ryan-Okpu is the managing director. Raum Oil Services is the only upstream oil business in Nigeria owned by a woman. So far it has collected an impressive list of clients, including Nigerian lender Zenith Bank, pan-African energy group Oando, and oil and gas company Conoil.
Ryan-Okpu will be the first to tell you that she was born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. She will also freely admit that she has used her networks to get to where she is today. But she is quick to point out that, “to whom much is given, much is expected”.
A young woman working in the male-dominated oil industry, Ryan-Okpu is regularly asked why she wastes her time on such a challenging venture when she could get more than enough money from her financially successful parents. Surely she should be able to live her life as a lady of leisure? Or, at worst, get a ‘nice’ job?
As she answers these questions, one word keeps making its way into the conversation – legacy. A popular preoccupation of many young people on the continent, it is perhaps best encapsulated by the phrase: “I’m on my hustle”. For Ryan-Okpu, however, it is not an obsession with hustlin’ to make money, but rather, hustlin’ to leave the world with something to remember her by.
The second business card is emblazoned with the words, ‘Pink Pearl Foundation’ (PPF). A pet cause for the Nigerian version of China’s famed silver-spooned princelings? If so, she certainly puts a lot of effort into it. Motivated by the loss of family members to cancer, as well as by her own brush with the illness, Ryan-Okpu founded PPF six years ago. A university student at the time, she decided something needed to be done to educate and empower Nigerian women in the fight against cancer.
The foundation carries out advocacy drives across Nigeria, increasing awareness about cancer symptoms and the importance of regular self-examination. PPF holds free breast and cervical cancer screenings at mobile clinics and has developed a series of educational talks aimed at women in rural areas.
In July, it opened the Rubies School of Women Empowerment, which offers cancer survivors short courses in business management, catering, tailoring and jewelry design. Ryan-Okpu has also just wrapped up a film called “Happy Funeral”, which raises awareness about cancer symptoms and the need for regular checkups.
PPF has reached out to nearly 4,000 women every year since 2007. The foundation believes that if you can save a woman, you can save a generation.
Inevitably, the question of why she chose not to follow in the footsteps of her political family crops up. When I probe her on her political ambitions Ryan-Okpu concedes that she is interested in pursuing the family tradition. Just give me time, she says, explaining that she wants to achieve much more before entering the political arena.
If Ryan-Okpu is an indication of the future of Achebe’s Nigeria, a new generation obsessed with what they leave behind, then the green-and-white nation may just be on the right track after all.

Hustlin’ for a Legacy

Professor Njuguna Ndung’u, the governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, and one of the country’s most influential men in economic matters, is not known for being talkative. Partly because of his reticence, the few public remarks he makes are studied carefully.
These days, however, Ndung’u is displaying a wholly different side, allowing himself to be caught up in spectacular public squabbles with politicians over deteriorating economic indicators reflected in high inflation, a weak Kenyan shilling and rising interest rates.
“Policy making is very challenging,” he says. “You have to understand what  the right policy is and understand which tools to use.”
Booking an appointment was a lot easier than actually sitting down with the governor on the day. He postponed twice—from 10am to noon, and then to 3:30pm—so he could attend a grilling from the parliamentary committee on the controversial award of a currency printing tender to De La Rue of France. You would think that facing unforgiving legislators in an unforgiving part of the world would be about the worst thing for a banking regulator who is used to dealing with polished economists and bankers.
“There are no worse days for me,” he says calmly, as he sinks into his black leather seat which squelches in protest.
“I work day and night. There’s no worst day or best day. Today it could be inflation; tomorrow a parliamentary committee wants certain statistics; and so on,” he says.
But looking back, it is obvious that as far as bad days go, some are worse than others. In 2009, the global financial crisis started trickling down to Africa, especially in countries connected to the west like Kenya and South Africa.
Even worse, the financial melt-down—which began in the US with the collapse of the mortgage market—came to Kenya when the country had barely recovered from the violent two-month political crisis of January and February 2008 which had not only scared away foreign investors, but also slowed economic growth and production.
“That recovery was painful. It was painful because 2008 was a difficult year, and 2009 was devastating because by the time we were dealing with the post-election aftermath, the economic crisis hit us,” he says.
When there’s a crisis in Europe or the US, skittish investors fear it will spread to developing countries. In 2009, Ndung’u, who is an associate professor of economics at the University of Nairobi and holds a PhD in economics from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, was a worried man.
“We tried to understand our
internal crisis, but with the global financial crisis, you were waiting every day, waiting for something to happen.”
For a man who implements quick yet well-thought out actions, the waiting game was unbearable.
It was just past 5pm on a cold Friday in August in 2009. In a dimly lit office at the Central Bank headquarters in Nairobi, Ndung’u, an economics author and a fan of Shakespeare, stared blankly at the markets trading board, his lower lip trembling at the gravity of what he was witnessing. This was tragedy worthy of Macbeth.
What was happening was crazier than anything he could have imagined. Global stock markets were swooning, currencies were being crushed and financial systems across the world were punch-drunk.
From his third floor office, looking out at the skyline of East Africa’s strongest economy, Ndung’u’s well-tuned economic antennae began picking up danger signals. Too late for him; Kenya’s financial system and stock market were already in panic, and the numbers were not looking pretty.
“There was not much we could do. It was the public panic that we were waiting to contain,” he says.
That day, when the global financial crisis hit and he could do nothing about it, was his worst day.
Helpless, he could merely watch as it triggered events that would challenge his reputation as Central Bank governor and plunge Kenya’s economy towards recession. The economy grew by 2.6% that year, compared to 7.1% in 2007. It was all work and no play for the professor.
“We were looking at all avenues to manage it. The other crises we knew [about] were speculative attacks from Europe. But now we were, day and night, looking at what we could do without contradicting domestic policy. Because we had signed Article 4 with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and so we could not restrict forex controls like South Africa and Tanzania.”
This meant that the humble Kenyan shilling was left to the mercy of the crisis. It was pummelled daily as investors dumped it and scampered for safety to international currencies like the dollar.
This was not good for Kenya, as it further squeezed an economy emerging from intensive care.
This is the man named after a leprosy outbreak, that hit Kenya in the fifties, who takes struggle in his stride. With a smile, he remembers the famine of the 1960s, when the country was forced to eat maize, and the multiple political economic crises of the 1980s.
“Crises will always come and go. Any crisis is a lesson and any challenge must be surmounted,” he says.
Ndung’u is a tall, tireless 60-something with an angular face, a modest voice and a smile that rearranges everything on his face, ending with deep dimples on either cheek. Armed with years of experience in theoretical economics, teaching at the university and working for a number of organisations, he intended to beat the global financial crisis.
No longer would the Central Bank of Kenya sit and wait for an onslaught by the big boys, he resolved. But like many central bankers across the world, Ndung’u was merely chasing shadows.
“Even America didn’t understand until Lehman Brothers collapsed and that’s when we started mapping out who was trading with Lehman and who was holding the toxic assets.”
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial services firm and the fourth largest investment bank in the USA after Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. It conducted business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales and trading, investment management, private equity and private banking.
On September 15, 2008, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following the massive exodus of most of its clients, drastic losses in its stock, and devaluation of its assets by credit rating agencies. This is believed to have played a major role in sparking the global financial crisis.
The domino effect spread through the global financial system, and fuelled capital flight from markets thought to have been overly exposed to the so-called toxic assets.
“The beauty of it is that we have a strong financial industry in Kenya. And it has developed. Only we don’t have faith in it; but in CBK we have faith.”
Ndung’u says his academic background combined with his years of experience gave him the upper hand in managing the crisis. He used all the monetary tools at his disposal, such as interest rates to reduce the cash supply in the economy and increased vigilance on banks and other financial institutions, to ensure they were operating within the required liquidity levels.
In spite of the best that his arsenal could muster, the impact of the financial crisis – which is still being felt in certain quarters, especially through inflationary pressures and currency swings—saw the governor being voted as worst performer in Africa by Reuters in 2011. He takes the dubious honor in his stride.
“I don’t fear being rated; it makes you think fast. If you ask them to give you the previous ratings of governors, they won’t show them to you. Rating is a family of indicators and having to control inflation is a weak way of rating. If there’s a shortage of maize and there’s a rise in prices, you cannot say you are going to rate the governor on that. People will laugh at you. But I don’t fight with the media. That’s their business.”
With a demanding job that requires a stiff upper lip, the governor says he unwinds by playing golf on Sundays. But even his madness has a method, and the reason he enjoys golf, he admits, is because ultimately it is about strategy.
“Golf is about the brain: you have to be relaxed in mind and you have to have a strategy. I used to play lawn tennis until I realized I was growing old and my legs were wobbling,” he says.
But it is his football stint during his school days that he talks passionately about.
“My advantage was that I could dodge with the left or right leg and I would use both legs for scoring as well. That’s why you can see my hands are injured and not my legs,” he says, exposing three scars on his left arm from his footballing days. His ambidexterity and the game’s ability to stimulate intelligence, vision and strategy stood him in good stead both on the football field and in the wood-panelled offices of the Central Bank.
A nation passionate about football could not wish for a better captain guiding their economic future.
“Soccer requires intelligence, good vision and strategy. And all these qualities are applied in managing the economy,” he says.
Except when a striker, in the shape of a world financial crisis, is tearing your defense apart.

Crisis 1 Governor  0

&nbsp;
<h3>SANUSI LAMIDO SANUSI</h3>
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<h3>Governor of the Central Bank  of Nigeria</h3>
In a country plagued by corruption, fraud and money laundering, no-one had expected such a radical, and by his own admission, “sudden” and “very risky” move. A mere two months into the job of Nigeria’s Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi fired, in one fell swoop, five CEOs of the country’s leading banks for mismanagement and corruption.
In a place where those who end the careers of others get theirs abruptly ended too, Sanusi, as some of his critics retorted at the time, had gone too far; he had overplayed his hand. His answer: “Well they should tell me exactly where I should have stopped. People have stolen money and run banks to the ground. Was I supposed to leave them?”
Considering the fact that he knew some of the executives personally, and the initial five institutions that were affected by his action accounted for a big chunk of the country’s bank deposits—his move was to be a litmus test for the resilience of Nigeria’s financial services industry, to say nothing of his own character and principles. But when further investigations revealed that at least a third of the country’s banks were being toyed with, he was given more reason to put public interest before his and “stand for those who couldn’t stand for themselves”—even if that meant “taking difficult decisions that were painful” to him personally.
Sanusi would later tell pan-African television network, CNBC Africa, that although the three weeks he spent arduously contemplating the axing of the bank executives was “the most difficult part of my life”, he was “pleasantly surprised” at the amount of support he subsequently got from the people of Nigeria, across the board and including the country’s politicians, many of whom are known to be weak-willed and dependent on business people to bankroll their lives.
But if politicians and Bretton Woods thought that because they had supported Sanusi, he was in their pockets, they were so wrong. In Sanusi’s book, it soon became apparent, there are no permanent friends.
The legislators discovered this some months ago when Sanusi told a public gathering that 25.4% of the nation’s overhead cost was spent on Parliament, something many surmised as a veiled criticism of the way the country’s budget was allocated. Furious with him for “deliberately inciting” the populace, the lawmakers summoned him to Parliament and after a lot of tongue-lashing asked him to apologize.  Sanusi stuck to his guns. He told the politicians: “If I do not believe that I am wrong, I do not apologize.”
A month later Sanusi butted heads, again. This time with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a suggestion that Nigeria should devalue its currency. He slated them for advice that was “simply not based on sound economic logic”.
When the FORBES AFRICA team informed Sanusi that he had been short listed for the Person of the Year, we asked him whether, after having stepped on so many toes in such a short space of time, there was ever a time he considered, well… er…taking it easy?
“No, I never did,” he said pointedly, “on the contrary—I sometimes thought I didn’t step on enough toes. I think that part of my responsibility as a Nigerian is to ask what are the things wrong in our society and that need to be changed and what can I do in my position to change it.”
Change has indeed come to Africa’s most populous nation—thanks, in no small measure, to Sanusi among others.
“His quick and firm actions likely prevented a systemic banking crisis,” the IMF notes in its latest report on Nigeria.
“The core function of a central bank is to provide financial system stability, exchange rate stability, and price stability. Therefore, to have been able to provide stability in the last two years when the rest of the global economy has been in turmoil has been the principal achievement,” Sanusi says.
“Everything we’ve done in terms of the recapitalization of the banks, mergers and acquisitions, governance reforms etc are all aimed at financial stability. We’ve been able to do that while achieving stability in the exchange rate and keeping inflation relatively under control. Obviously, we’ve had volatility in interest rates and exchange rates because you can’t have price, exchange rate and interest rate control at the same time. But I think we’ve achieved our core mandate.”
Business confidence has surged and Africa’s third-largest economy is expected to grow above trend, with favorable medium-term prospects. A 7% real GDP growth is relatively high, even though it is below the double-digit levels the country requires if it is to become one of the world’s top 20 economies.
“It’s just an arithmetic fact that at current growth rates we’ll take over from South Africa in terms of share size. But this is a country of 167 million people and growing and 7% growth at the moment does not improve the welfare of the people of Nigeria and we need a higher rate of growth than we have at the moment,” Sanusi says: “The focus should not be on GDP, but GDP per capita, human development indicators and the quality of life of the population. Inclusive growth is the challenge.
Double-digit growth will be a function of the right policies, he says: “We already have 7% growth without power and infrastructure. Growth that has come largely from telecoms, wholesale and retail trade and the good fortune of rainfall for agriculture. It’s a no brainer that if we begin to move, for instance, agriculture production towards global averages we can probably double growth in that sector and build manufacturing by fixing power and infrastructure, moving from 7% to 12 or 13%.”
Born on July 31, 1961, of a public servant father who headed the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1960s, Sanusi has BSc and MSc degrees.
Between 1983 and 1985 he taught economics at his alma mater, Ahmadu Bello University, before joining the private sector.
He was the CEO of First Bank when, some day in late February 2009, he received a call from the then Nigerian President, Umaru Yar’Adua.
“We spent about 15 minutes chatting about family,” Sanusi recalls. But it wasn’t until May 8 of the same year that Sanusi got another call, this time the head of state informing him of his wish to make him the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. It came as a big shock to Sanusi, who had never met his president before and thought you had to lobby to get such jobs.
Little did he know that two years on, he would have behind him such accolades as World Central Bank Governor of the Year 2011, Sub-Saharan Central Bank Governor of The Year 2011, African Central Bank Governor of The Year 2010 and People’s Person of The Year 2010.
He is most likely to arrive at the Forbes Africa Person of the Year awards ceremony in Lagos wearing a bow tie, for he refuses to wear a conventional tie. A bow tie, he says, is “cute” and speaks to his “instinctive sense of being different”. What else would you expect from a banker who never runs with the herd.

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