'Nigeria's economy Can't Avoid Surgery'
From Emmanuel Ugwu, Enugu
Like a patient with a terrible ailment, Nigeria's economy cannot survive without surgery, the managing director of Standard Trust Bank (STB), Mr. Tony Elumelu, has said.
He expressed this view in a lunch talk he delivered in honour of the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Prof Charles Soludo, who was honoured by the University of Nigeria Nsukka at its 44th Founders Day celebration, saying that the economic reform agenda being executed by the professor of economics is akin to a surgical operation conducted by a qualified and experienced surgeon to save his patient.
But Elumelu noted that surgery "is usually associated with pain" hence there was need to select "a man of peace, a man of good judgment, a man of great insight and above all, a man in whom education and business must be in sync."
According to him, it was the ingenuity of President Olusegun Obasanjo to have discovered all these characteristics in Prof Soludo and consequently called him "to turn things around for his nation and provide succour for the battered economy."
The STB boss stated that the choice of Soludo was not an easy task because the quest for authentic leaders who will lead us out of the our morass is the greatest challenge facing our generation today."
Said he: "We must find leaders in the academia, politics, the professions, government and industries.
Leaders upon whom such scarce talents as the power of strategic visioning, focus, dedication to quality social service, drive momentum and integrity are richly endowed... To identify such people is the crux of society hence the age old question, 'who shall I send.'
The STB MD, who said that the aspiration of his bank "is to become the lion king of Nigerian banking industry" described Soludo's reform agenda for the nation's banking system as "bold and heroic."
He advised that the reform programme must be "anchored on the platform of courage, decisiveness, incisive insight, dogged sense of purpose and a disarming sense of urgency," which according to him "forms the levers of success today, all over the world."
Elumelu, whose speech was laced with Biblical quotations said that Nigerians owe Prof Soludo "a simple duty of encouragement to support this noble cause and divine choice" in order for the CBN Governor to achieve his task of taking Nigeria's economy "away from the precipice and unto the mountains."
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