The Emir of Kano, Mallam Muhammadu Sanusi II, on Thursday stated that Nigeria’s economic growth and development, is being hindered by the emergence of those he tagged as “briefcase billionaires”.
Sanusi said this while speaking at the end of a three-day Northern Regional Conference on Security, Justice and Development: Effective implementation of intervention measures’.
The former apex bank boss said when people get wealth they did not work for, “what follows would be disastrous for the nation.”
“When people just get wealth they didn’t work for, what that signifies was that, many injustices were permeating round many quarters of the society, meaning there is something wrong in the system that was put in place for a very long time of our national history.”
He added: “How many of our briefcase billionaires can show you their business plants and the number of people they employ in their companies? The companies are non-existent in the first place. So, what are we talking about?”
Sanusi made it clear that the more the society produces briefcase billionaires, the more the masses would get more impoverished.
“We need to build an economy that looks at people; not that which further creates gaps, unimagined gaps between people. You cannot call this capitalism either. It is through such kind of arrangements that end up in creating an insecure society. We all created the insecurity we are suffering from. Justice is one of the key and fundamental issues that can address our predicaments,” he said.