Lamido Sanusi’s speech at the Hallmark awards as captured by Peter OBIORA of InvestAdvocate, February 21, 2014.

I thank Emeka Obasi for not suspending this award. When he spoke to me yesterday and, I think I was still in Niger, and he was almost in tears when he heard the news, and then he said, “Are you coming for the awards?” And I answered, “I don’t think so.” I thought he knew that I would come because Sanusi never hides. And it’s extremely important at these times that we stand up and honour those who want to honour us.

I have been given the task of speaking on behalf of other recipients and obviously since my leader, the Senate Leader [Senator Victor Ndoma Egba] is there and there’s a former IG [Sir Mike Okiro], I have to make politically correct statements that represent all their views. And so, I am not going to make a long speech.

I’d like to, on behalf of all of us, thank you Emeka for this honour and congratulate you for how far your paper has come. We take this as encouragement to continue doing exactly what we’ve done that has brought us this far.
A few of us have long retired. Sir Okiro, I remember, I met, when he was IG and I went to market to him, looking for deposits from the Police Force. I had just been appointed MD of First Bank – midnight meetings – trying to beg him to move the account of the police to us. I am happy to see you looking even younger and healthier in retirement where we will soon join you.

I am honoured to be on the same platform as my leader, Senator Victor Ndoma Egba, whom we all know, is not just a brilliant lawyer, but a very fine, cultured and gentleman. Obviously, I belong to many states in Nigeria. Officially, I think, I am supposed to be from Kano. By census, my entire family is registered in Lagos. And, if you want to find me every December, I am in Calabar at the Carnival. So, each of those states, I am happy to say, has adopted me as a true citizen. And so, my leader [Senator Victor Ndoma Egba] is also a brother of mine from my state.

Obviously, it is difficult to overlook Governor Fashola, when you are thinking who to choose as Governor of the Year. He’s done so much and the good people of Lagos have been lucky to have his Excellency as Governor of their state. And I am sure that we are always proud to see him as an example of what leadership is – delivering service to the people and remaining focused, no matter what the costs are. So again Emeka, thanks on behalf of Tunde, for this honour.
Now, I have not met the Businessman of the Year, Chief Alex Okafor, who is here represented. I have listened to his citation and I’d like to thank you on his behalf; and I hope I’ll get to meet him and have a better understanding of him and his businesses.

Zenith Bank has just produced the next Governor of the Central Bank, also a fine gentleman; I was hoping I’d meet Godwin here – I have also congratulated him. I’d like to, through his representatives, again send my deepest and my most profound congratulations to Zenith Bank for producing the Governor. I am sure he will do extremely well. He’s been a very competent and hardworking member of the Bankers’ Committee.
And as you know, Godwin chaired the sub-committee on the biometric project. As I keep telling people, that biometric project, is the first of its type in the world – not the technology; but the use to which it is put. There’s nowhere else in the world apart from Nigeria where you would go and register with one bank and your biometric details are available to every other financial institution in the country. You don’t have to register twice.

And, I have said, when you think through the tremendous opportunity that opens up unto us – if you commit a fraud in a microfinance bank in Damaturu, and you try to transact business with a bank in Lagos, you will be picked up, because as soon as you put your finger on, you will be flagged from the database. If you borrow from one bank in Yenagoa and try to borrow from another bank in Sokoto; if you were a bad debtor, once you place your finger on, you’ll be flagged.

So, imagine what that does to culture – to the way of transacting business. People who are used to borrowing from banks and running away and going to the next bank; people who commit fraud here and got to take the money elsewhere – but also imagine what it does to the very poor and uneducated people who don’t speak English, who don’t know how to sign and can’t remember their PIN numbers – just go with your finger in your village and collect money transferred to you grandchild working in the city. That was the internet project that the Central Bank is going to finance, hopefully. It will transform radically, the way financial transactions are done.
So, I am happy that Godwin, whose sub-committee chaired the latest of our initiatives in the Bankers’ Committee, is the one who is going to go in and take it forward. So, congratulations Zenith Bank.

Now, for me obviously, there isn’t much to say. It has been five wonderful years serving this country and I am very proud. I am very happy with what we’ve done with the help of colleagues in the Bankers’ Committee and the Central Bank. The results are there. We were told to deliver single-digit inflation and we have delivered it for 13 to 14 consecutive months. We were told to keep the Naira stable; we have kept it stable for three years. We were told to preserve reserves; we have built them to over forty billion. We were there to protect depositors’ funds and I am proud to say that from the day I became governor till this day, not a single person has lost a deposit. No one has lost a single kobo in the Nigerian market. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters. As for the rest, it’s history.

As I said yesterday, I leave this job proud of the people I worked with, proud to have served this country, proud of what we have achieved. I have absolutely no regrets; absolutely no apologies to anyone. And, if you were to give me this job again and take me back, and I see the things that I saw, I would do exactly what I have done. We all know there are consequences for what we do and we will take those consequences. We pray that at the end of the day, our little contributions will move this country forward. That the change that we want would come from us and that we would recognise that if we don’t make that change, there would not be a country.

So, this is obviously on behalf of everybody and I thank you Emeka and I appreciate this and I look forward to seeing you very soon. Thank you.