Imports, International Trade, and David Ricardo, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Extrapolate this Ricardian insight to industries and economies, and it is obvious that neither trade nor imports are the problems with underperforming economies. At the margins, arguments may be made for identifying and supporting champions in an economy, and then protecting these from competitors. Listening to the chatter on social…
Chief Awolowo, the CBN, the Ill-Starred N100 Note, By Uddin Ifeanyi
This, alas, has nothing to do with Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Instead, it has everything to do with clangers being dropped at the apex bank. In fact, it is arguable that by leaving our currencies in the abysmal state that they currently are, the CBN brings into some disrepute the persons…
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Cynical Governance As the Source of Fake News, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Unable to find a forward gear, the Buhari government has had to explain its stasis through dynamic narratives. This, alas, is the fountainhead of the growing penchant on the part of both sides of the argument for and against the administration for deploying fake news in aid of their respective…
What Is The Budget?, By Uddin Ifeanyi
For as long as the National Assembly has not whittled down the space for capricious conduct by the executive, nothing has changed (in the way we’ve run this country since 1960). Except of course that by capriciously expanding its own footprint on our fiscal space, the National Assembly may have…
The Naira’s Exchange Rate And Our Trade Numbers, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Prices are a useful signal of the direction the markets are heading. By keeping any price artificially low (or high), the authorities do not just distort market responses, they deny to themselves the chance to feel the pulse, in real time, of the economy. Not surprisingly, their preferred nostrums will…
Of Strongmen, Public Holidays, Democracy’s Institutions, By Uddin Ifeanyi
President Buhari may have rectified a “historical wrong”. (The post-announcement debate is massively in support of this reading). But our democracy is stronger the more it relies on institutions rather than on the whims of hopefully well-intentioned leaders. Sometime in January 2013, The Gambia’s then president, Yahya Jammeh, lopped Friday…
Agriculture: The Paradox of Rising Employment and Low Productivity, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Looking in through a different window, therefore, two things have happened on the back of the Buhari administration’s policy preferences. Yes, agriculture has hoovered up more of the available labour in the country. But it has done so at the cost of much lower productivity levels. It would seem that…
Of Joseph, Middlemen, and Lucifer’s Spawns, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Without his hoarding/speculation, the Egyptians of his time would have wallowed in rivers of grain for seven years and died of famine over the next seven years. Ironic, then, that Joseph’s tale is renewed today as an example of the successes of one who found favour with God, while his…
Still On Budget 2018, By Uddin Ifeanyi
No aspect of the budgeting process is more Sisyphean than the pro-cyclical nature of the philosophy of its funding. In theory, there has been no administration in Nigeria that was ignorant of the need to break the chains of dependence between the economy’s outcomes and the outlook for crude oil…
Malaysia’s Elections, Electoral Reforms, and Vote 2019, By Uddin Ifeanyi
One danger of the Buhari government’s failure to institute electoral reforms is that the 2019 vote could fail to give expression to the will of the people. An immediate consequence of any such failure is that the loss of legitimacy that will afflict any government beneficiary of a flawed elections…
