There’s a Dialectic To Regression, By Uddin Ifeanyi
...if the tension between an ill-bred people and its poor leadership will not result in a new qualitatively higher state for Nigeria, is there a reason why the currently flawed qualitative state prevalent in the country today may not resolve itself into its lower quantitative tendencies? SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind…
The Economics Of Social Upheavals, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Nigeria will be much poorer over the next couple of years than its been so far. COVID-19 will be a big part of the cause of our immiseration. Just as would the poor policy responses that have kept us hooked on the export of crude oil for foreign currency. In…
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Nigeria’s Worsening Finances, and the Untravelled Reform Path, By Uddin Ifeanyi
...the challenge before domestic economic performance, going forward, will about how we structure domestic incentives ― the obvious preference being for policies that are sector-neutral. And how we communicate these incentives ― preferably transparently, and via markets that function better than what we have at present. The numbers released, last…
Difference, Alienation, and Membership, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Even in matters as simple as how we look, difference elicits disturbing responses. 17 years ago, I grew a beard on a whim. The susurration started back home. There was an outside chance that I’d converted to fundamental Islam ― you just got the sense that a lot about this…
Flattening the Curve Of Our Economy’s Ailment, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Time now to build an economy worth that name. Not the autarkic construct that seems currently to be preferred by our policy makers – we have North Korea’s example as potent argument against this path. But one that leans heavily on the most important resource that the Nigerian nation has…
The Central Bank’s Benchmark Rate and the Rest of the Economy, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Despite the country’s large debt profile, the oil and gas sector remains a big driver of economic output. Until government demonstrates that it can more efficiently use domestic resources, ought we to continue policies that evacuate the citizens’ pockets in order to keep a profligate government supplied? The decision, last…
A Vaccine, a Seat Across From the IMF, and the Economy, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Effective policy responses will matter. But an autarkic mindset, a staple of our policy pronouncements to date, will hurt. Either way, neither offers a useful answer to the question: “How long, therefore, before we are again across the table from the IMF?” However this question is answered, one fact is…
The New Autarky And New Conditions Of Poverty, By Uddin Ifeanyi
A world in which every country compounded its own medicines and manufactured its own phones would evidently delight nativists and nationalists the world over. But it would equally disadvantage countries without an industrial base. They would not only be the source of the world’s new poor. They would just as…
How Not To Prevent Businesses From Furloughing Staff, By Uddin Ifeanyi
In a sense, the CBN has not strayed too far from this path. The snag is just that the non-inclusion of a sun-set clause in its communication on the ban on banks’ firing their staff will make for an unwieldy policy environment post-pandemic. When, recently, footage of the chief executive…
When The Old Time Religion Fails, By Uddin Ifeanyi
If history teaches anything, it is that in our present conditions, the toll from a second wave of infections will hurt more than that from the first one. Votaries of even a religion as secular as that to which our elite belong might find this prospect attractive. As cleansing of…
