Swap It, Don’t Break It – Feyi Fawehinmi
Imagine you are China. You sell a lot of stuff to the world. In fact, your whole economy is based on selling things to the world. You have an incentive[…]
Ajaokuta — The Beginning
As you’ve probably seen in the news, steelmaking in Britain is facing an existential crisis. After losing about £5bn in total, TATA are understandably fed up and have now thrown[…]
Thoughts of a “Tanker Chaser”
After spending three hours on a fuel queue on Sunday, at the end of which I bought fuel at N150 a litre, I could not but reflect on two phases[…]
Taming the New Inflation
“Surprise” was the most popular verb associated by most commentators with the outcome of last week’s meeting of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) — its[…]
Inflation, Monetary Policy, and Poverty
At the height of the arguments around the pros and cons of a naira devaluation, President Buhari had argued that he needed to be convinced of the utility of the[…]
NNPC: The Pendulum Swings Again
First a bit of brief history. Oil was discovered in Nigeria in 1908 but actual production in commercial quantities only started in 1957. In 1959 the federal government (more like[…]
What I Learned From Reading *Made In Africa*
From a policy point of view, this is potentially the most important book concerning Africa that will be released this year. And timely too, given the collapse in commodity prices[…]
How Did We End Up Here?
“Who would have thought”, a friend asked me over a weekend spent queue jumping in the search for fuel, “that nearly a year into the Buhari administration, Nigerians would still[…]
Are Nigerian Banks Round-Tripping Forex In Broad Daylight?
Here’s the background to this story. Sometime last year when the naira started to come under pressure, the bankers and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) sat down in the[…]
Of Bagpipes, Tartan shorts, Budgets, and National Priorities
Those bagpipes?! Set against the many difficulties confronting the Nigerian state, it does come across a wee bit crass to cavil at the fact that on his return from one[…]