How This Pandemic Is Changing Everything, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Currently, the harmful side-effects of the coronavirus have had the most immediate showing in the loss to businesses. Airlines, the hospitality and retail sectors largely have seen their custom evaporate. Governments may be trying to lockdown bankruptcies. COVID-19 has taken a severe toll. Deaths? Yes. And across the globe. “Older…
COVID-19 and The Tasks Before Managers Of Our Economy, By Uddin Ifeanyi
In the best of all possible worlds, Nigeria’s easiest route out of this crisis would be the kind and level of spending that boosts a recovery in the global market for crude oil. It's not just that we do not have kind of money. We never had that level of…
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Managing the Economy Out Of this New Crisis, By Uddin Ifeanyi
If, indeed, government’s policies on the economy were as competent as some sectors of the commentariat advertise, the FDI component of capital imported annually into the economy ought to be up and rising. Yes, in order to have invited more of this type of inflows, we would need to have…
A Weakening Naira, Shrivelling Reserves, and Economic Saboteurs, By Uddin Ifeanyi
...a currency is useful only because it can be used to settle transactions, to account for a business’ performance, or as a store of value. Breach any of these and it is just a potpourri of mere paper and metal. The main threat to the naira today is that it…
The Global Oil Market Sneezes and We Break Out In A Fever, By Uddin Ifeanyi
...we must remember that we remain this vulnerable to what is now a primordial threat to our economy, only because of our failure to implement policies that improve its resilience. “Every man for himself, and may the Devil take the hindmost!” That looks like the calling card Russia dropped at…
De-risking Parts Of a Two-Tier Economy, By Uddin Ifeanyi
In the end, it is all bad economics. Markets and institutions ought to be as self-sustaining as possible. And the economy capable of plotting its courses without guidance from a nanny state. And where a nudge may be needed to right failures (market-based or otherwise), the beneficiaries, the gains to…
Of Dogs and Merchants of Hot Money, By Uddin Ifeanyi
The pertinent question is not so much, then, why we are offering these many backhanders to foreign portfolio investors. It is rather “Who will bear the costs arising from this policy?” And what are these costs? As we speak, a large part of the balance on our gross external reserves…
From “Comrade” to “Come Raid”, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Forward back in time. And that news report was of one of the more intellectually exciting of that gang. And his metamorphosis but a metaphor for the journey most of me fellow travellers have completed over the last thirty years. From passionate “comrade” to vicious “come raid” proponents, nearly all…
On the Partial Ban On “Okadas” and Motorised Rickshaws In Lagos State, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Conceptually, the conversation around the ban involves another error. The “masses” – on behalf of which this culture war is presently waged – are nought but a convenient stalking horse. Always argued as if the concept were a blank canvas, it allows different agglomerations of interests to project unto it…
Still On the Border Closure, By Uddin Ifeanyi
It would seem, once again, that our policy ostrich has opted to bury its head in the sands, in the hope that this problem will go away. But the bigger threat is not that this problem of low levels of productivity and a lack of domestic competitiveness will be there…
