₦airaland Forum

43Ronin:
Peter obi, atiku, tinubu they are all the same, useless political elites. we the people need to organise ourselves form our own party like a new founding fathers party... institute a death penalty to all corrupt offenders who refuse to tender their stolen wealth willingly but drag the matter to courts. Anything corruption, death! you steal you die, bribery, contract inflation, begging in airport all na die... Nigeria will be good.

The preceding comments on this very thread show why what you hope for will never transpire. As long as Nigerians continue to pretend that the only sinners are those from other tribes, while acclaiming even the most blatantly corrupt of their own tribe members as saints, there will never be common ground to overthrow the elites, however useless and corrupt they may be.

From the way all of those mentioning Ibori's association with Tinubu are going on, one would be forgiven for not remembering that Peter Obi not only happily shared PDP membership with Ibori for many years, he actually began his own career in public life by taking a position from Sani Abacha, the biggest thief of all, after which the "saintly" Obi recorded such "achievements" in his career as being nabbed red-handed transporting "security vote" cash to Lagos, diverting public funds into backing his family's private ventures, and establishing an offshore tax shelter 4 years into his governorship under his (underage) daughter's name. "Saint" Peter Obi then crowned this glorious career by willingly running as the VP running mate of Abubakar Atiku, a man whose manifest corruption barred him from visiting the USA until he paid a lobbying firm millions of US Dollars to get him an exemption just in time for the 2019 electoral season.

These same people projecting this thieving mediocrity as a paragon of virtue also happen to hold an almost complete monopoly on international drug trafficking, yet they have no shame whatsoever in accusing Tinubu of being a "drug baron" merely for being the recipient of dubious funds, even though it's likely that not a village in their entire region hasn't had members who have similarly accepted the proceeds of the drug trade they dominate so thoroughly. They boast incessantly of their superiority and domination over others, yet are quick to cry persecution and discrimination whenever things don't go their way. They insult the members of other tribes incessantly, yet moan endlessly about being "hated", supposedly for no more reason than "envy", rather than drawing the obvious conclusion that you don't endear yourself to others through arrogance and abusiveness. How is one to make any kind of common cause with such people, knowing full well that the moment the spotlight turns to one of their own, they will immediately circle the wagons and cry discrimination no matter how brazen the person's guilt?

Let's be honest with ourselves: Nigeria is nothing more than an artificial creation drawn up by British empire-builders for their own self-interest. It's clear that most of us feel little true affection for one another, especially when it comes to a certain clannish and hate-filled group which is endlessly threatening secession while never taking any meaningful concrete steps to achieve it.

SmartyPants:
If Tinubu wanted to sell the refineries, by now they would have started the bidding process. On the contrary, they have started repairs to one of the refineries indicating that government will continue to run them.

Having seen my share of privatization procedures across the globe while working in finance, I can tell you categorically that merely designing the bidding scheme for a privatization can easily take a year, let alone seeing it through to conclusion. The notion that a new government which hasn't even appointed its ministers can carry out a proper privatization in 2 months is bordering on science fiction.

You also missed an important part of Adeyanju's statement, which is that rightly or wrongly, they should bring back the fuel subsidy until the refineries are working.

No, I didn't miss this - it's just one more item of the many that I criticized as nonsensical. With what money would the fuel subsidy have been continued? Surely not that of the foreign lenders who have been plugging Nigeria's financial gap until now. And if the money was supposed to have come out of the federal government's IGR, what happens to all those outstanding foreign loans it was already struggling to pay interest on? Keep in mind that these burdensome loans were actually taken out in an environment of low global interest rates, so even if any lenders were willing to roll them over, it would only be at draconian interest rates at minimum 5% higher than before (and here we are talking of rates in USD, not Naira).

As for the idea that the fuel subsidy would only stick around "until the refineries are working", that old chestnut can only be sold to those who fail to understand that the fuel subsidy is the main reason why the refineries aren't working in the first place. It's hard to keep refineries in working order when their output is being sold for less than they cost to produce - where would the income for their maintenance come from?

Adeyanju is talking nonsense on stilts, attempting to score cheap political points by promising Nigerians that there is some magical formula for reform that involves pain without gain. One would think more Nigerians would recognize such empty promises for what they are by now, but apparently the desire to believe in economic miracles is simply too ingrained.

This is just colossally stupid whining. How does Adeyanju know that Tinubu isn't planning to sell off the refineries? Has Tinubu said he wasn't willing to do so? Does Adeyanju think selling off the state-run refineries can be done at a whim, within the span of 60 days? And even if the refineries are sold off tomorrow, does this clown think private investors will require mere days to turn them into highly efficient enterprises that can produce refined outputs so efficiently that they can undercut the prices from huge refiners in the USA, Brazil and the like?

There are so many inanities packed into this buffoon's rhetoric, but sadly the utter senselessness of what he has to say doesn't really matter, given the low level of education and intelligence of the disaffected hordes who will eat this rubbish up. The harsh reality Nigerians refuse to accept is that no matter who won the election, nobody would have been able to avoid total and immediate abolition of the subsidy, as debt servicing was already eating up so much of the FG's revenue that no one would have lent the country any more money to waste on subsidies. All the Obi and Atiku supporters pretending that there was some magical middle way with "partial" abolition ( as meaningless as "partial pregnancy" ) or "palliatives" (with what money from a government already struggling to service its loans) are either shameless liars or outright stupid fantasists - their candidates would have faced the exact same dilemma, and would have been forced to the exact same measures.

OyemiA:
The pain will be unbearable if they do

The pain is already unbearable for those producing the electricity, and even with a 40% increase they will still struggle to service their debts and pay their bills. How will anyone's life get better if all the DISCOs go bankrupt?

Tianamen1:
Everyone agrees that this is a bad move, right?
pro-subsidy removal and anti-subsidy removal, pro-taxing the rich and anti-taxing the rich. We are all on the same page that this is a bad policy, right?
What should Nigeria do from this point to improve its economy? This is what we need to focus on. In clear terms, what steps are needed to be taken?
I have Ideas which have been roundly rejected by many.

cc Omohayek, grandstar, blue3k.

Others have already mentioned the main items, but it's worth repeating even so.

1. Find a new CBN governor with the know-how and track-record to inspire confidence in the international financial markets. This needs to be someone who has a demonstrable understanding of economics, and the backbone to put the position's statutory independence to use, by doing whatever it takes to bring down Nigeria's runaway inflation to low single digits, politicians and rabble-rousing unions be damned.

2. Sell off all the money-sucking government parastatals and so called "assets" which cost more to run than they bring in every year. It isn't the government's job to be engaging in activities which the private sector can do just as well, and anything government-owned in this country just turns into a vehicle for looting and handing out patronage through the creation of pretend "jobs" to relatives and on-hangers.

3. Drastically reduce tariffs and abolish non-tariff trade barriers such as import/export licensing requirements. The Nigerian mindset that "imports are bad" is idiotic, as the entire point of exporting anything at all is to earn money to buy imports, just as the entire point of earning a wage is to be able to buy things with it. Cheaper imports boost the earning power of the domestic population, and are a much better "palliative" than any paltry sums the FG could afford to hand out in direct payments. Besides, lots of exports require imports of primary materials: to take one example, no Nigerians would be able to export their skills in programming without first having imported the computers on which they will practice their craft, yet the software sector has vastly more earning potential than the oil on which Nigerians have fixated on for the last 50 years.

4. Establish a proper land registry and abolish the Land Use Act, as first steps in enacting proper rights of private ownership over land (and everything under it). Without strong private property rights, the agricultural sector will continue to stagnate, as banks will not be willing to lend money to subsistence farmers with no credit histories and no collateral to offer. The lack of strong private property rights is also behind the minimal exploitation of all known mineral reserves outside of the oil sector - had oil not been discovered just before the British left, and were it not so easy to drill and extract for vast quantities of it, the oil sector too would have languished thanks to the insistence that all land ultimately belongs to the government.

5. Radically reform the power sector by simultaneously loosening the restraints on power distribution - even if that means the private sector builds out multiple competing distribution networks - and allowing the power companies to choose who their customers are, and to offer their services at rates which will be attractive enough to draw foreign investment. The current situation, under which the DISCOs must sell power below cost to "buyers" who refuse to pay their bills half the time, is a recipe for long-term collapse of the entire sector. At the very least, the DISCOs should be allowed to charge larger businesses whatever they like, and to immediately cut off the ones who refuse to pay without ceremony: the amount they DISCOs could charge would still have to be lower than the cost of running diesel generators all the time, which is the status quo today.

grandstar:
I hope you realize that Blue3k read economics, and probably abroad? He and Omohayek are square pegs in square holes when it comes to the subject. There's also 4 play but he's not very active.

From what I've seen so far, you and Blue3k are both wasting your time trying to get this person to see reason. Some people simply aren't mentally equipped to understand certain ideas, and the end result is that you are led into an endless cycle of giving ever more detailed answers only to be met with the exact same ridiculous questions as before.

The only silver lining here is that hopefully others who are reading this will finally see why the Idi Amin School of Economic Theory - aka "print more money" - is a fool's errand. I doubt that there is any person alive who could get the point across to the person you've been trying to educate.

WELLDONE4040:
I have come to understand that the problem of Nigeria is not hausa or fulani people but it is yoruba tribe, this tribe is demonic in nature. Yoruba tribe is the worse tribe u can do business with or trust. Their yes is always No and their No is always Yes. They call black white while white black. May God save me from yoruba tribe. They front hause-fulani in nigeria politics why they are the ones benefiting form it. I have come to understand that is better to dinne and wine with devil than yoruba tribe . ( pls comment and share if u are with me)

So it's the evil "Yoruba tribe" that pushed Nnamdi Kanu to go abroad looking for "guns and bullets", before coming to inaugurate the "Eastern Security Network" that later metastasized into the "unknown gunmen" who were cheered on by fellow Igbos as they began to slaughter other Igbos? It's the "demonic" Yorubas who are telling Simon Ekpa to impose "sit at homes" on all of Igboland from the comfort of Finland? It's this "Yoruba tribe" that has kept Peter Obi and other elected Igbo leaders from speaking out as their home region has degenerated into a lawless free-for-all? These Yoruba people must be really powerful to have such an effect on Igbo leaders!

Suspect33:
This banning will favour Agbados and their families

Ban their papa, after voting in criminals into positions of power, they want to run off to other countries, laye, there's no escaping this, see that Timubu brain they they say they want, they will all stay back to enjoy it

Another projecting clown - as if the vast majority of Nigerians to be found in obscure parts of the world aren't your "enterprising" kinsmen. Most "agbados" migrate to places like the UK, Canada, the USA and Australia, where their educations can be put to use. It's your own poorly educated and criminally-minded brothers who usually end up in undesirable places like India, the Philippines and Kazakhstan.

jmoore:
6.4 billion dollars = 14,400 megawatts in Egypt.

13 Million dollars should give 30
megawatts.

But in Nigeria, they are using 50 million dollars to give 30 megawatts.

And what exactly does it matter how much a private energy vendor spends on its privately owned plants? You and that "Mr Vitalis" buffoon never cease to amaze with your lethal combination of total ignorance with political jaundice.

Stoplying:
Go and seek the help of a psychiatrist. You are delusional.

This brazenly obvious Igbo troll is no doubt the same one who created that ridiculous puppet account called "Razakkk" or something similar, under which he has spent so much effort trying to artificially fan the flames of religious conflict by insinuating there's some sort of Islamic plot to take over Yorubaland. Anyone who spends all his days and nights attempting to sow division in another man's land is clearly in need of serious professional help.

These Igbo clowns are the first to claim someone or other is obsessed with their barren little enclave of insecurity, but they have nothing better to do than start lame troll threads anyone with an IQ above 80 can recognize for what they are.

Vboot1:
Almost all new enthroned kings in Lagos are Agbero chairmen, Traditional monarchial lineage has been altered for touts. Presently in Lagos you can't become anything without bowing to one man. The Feudalistic system that has been imposed in the south west should worry Yorubas.

It's interesting that this is what you have to say, when the BBC report is actually about a racket set up by private families in Port Harcourt, with the enforcer who is the focus having the name "Nwokuha", about as non-Yoruba a name as one can get. Talk about deflection!

beekind:
Inconclusion, take a picture of a 5 year old African child and take a picture of a 5 year old Caucasian and tell me who appears more physically attractive ?

I know this is a difficult reality to swallow but being less physically attractive does not mean we are inferior, except you equate physical appearance to peoples worth and thats when we have a problem admitting the truth.

More pseudointellectual drivel. Who appointed you the final arbiter of what constitutes physical attractiveness? Why should your entirely subjective opinions be elevated above those of anyone else? Is "physical attractiveness" something out there in the world that can be "objectively" measured like the speed of light or the refractive index of a shade of glass? If you don't grasp the absurdity of baldly stating your own personal prejudices as objective facts to be accepted by everyone else, how can anyone else take you seriously?

The fact is that unlike you, I have lived amongst white people for long enough, and in close enough proximity, to realize that the vast majority are absolutely nothing to write home about. Simply having pale skin doesn't make one more "attractive", unless you grew up marinated in an environment of racial self-hatred and raging inferiority complexes. The average white person in an OECD country is obese, middle-aged, physically inactive, with saggy, wrinkled skin already showing the mottles of aging - about as far away as one can get from the beautiful young things who are showcased in movies and advertisements. That you took a walk or two down the Champs Elysees and mistook the rich and pretty people you saw there for the average French specimen only shows your lack of exposure and poor grasp of statistics, as the concentration of the affluent and the attractive in the prime shopping areas of a nation's capital is hardly accidental: you think the likes of Dior, Versace and Prada would open their doors to the poor and the ugly? Do the same experiment even here in the ritzier parts of Lagos and you'll see the same mechanics at work, but in that case I'm sure your self-hatred would prevent you from drawing similar conclusions about Lagosians being more physically attractive than the average suburb-dweller in France ...

GodWrites:
The doll test proves that white people are very attractive. This was an experiment where babies were presented with a white and black dolls, and they all went for the white dolls. In fact, the babies started crying when they saw the black dolls. They were simply horrified.

Nairaland is full of shockingly dim people! The doll test you refer to doesn't "prove" what you think it does. All it "proves" is that in America, black children internalize the same values of white superiority that their white peers do, and as both you and the OP clearly have done. If the same test were done in a society where everyone and everything said "black is better", the same test would "prove" that black people are the most attractive, at least by your own slow-witted estimation.

I honestly don't understand how so many of you manage to get by on a daily basis, given the utter lack of intelligence and critical thinking skills you display.

The OP is sick in the head. There's no point wasting time on rebutting such self-loathing rubbish.

Diddycsbsb:
To be Honest I saw some people calling Simon ekpa names,. If not for Simon,. They have forgotten KANU in prison.. Simon was the only person putting and pushing the force of gravity in making sure our South East Governor release Nnamdi.. Simon was the one declaring sit at home,while Nnamdi brothers and relative are drinking beer 🍺🍻 going there business and saying no sit at home.. Go to Umuahia abia state where Nnamdi came from,. They are not even obeying sit at home. There is Serious business going on in Umuahia even on Monday,. Only people from imo, ebonyi and Enugu are making sure Nnamdi is released.. . Especially Imo state. This is what will happen to Nnamdi KANU if release,. He will lay low and Simon will continue the agitation. Sometimes the founding fathers will no longer exists and the new generation will take over,. This is what will happen,. Simon will take over from Nnamdi.. And if anything happens to Simon another person will take over until Biafra is achieved.. No this and no peace.

So Simon Ekpa is a hero now? Yet tomorrow you and your ilk will turn around and start writing shameless nonsense about Tinubu being the one sponsoring Ekpa and his never-ending bouts of "sit at home", conveniently forgetting all the times you egged him and his "unknown gunmen" on.

Blaze14k:
How can they prove that he committed genocide without carrying a gun.. u think oyinbo is stupid as Africans? They must provide evidence else they have nothing against him.

I don't support his actions buh u need to understand the reality on ground

What nonsense - Hitler never killed anyone personally either, so by your reckoning he must be innocent of all blame for the untimely deaths of 55 million people! The ridiculous excuses you guys come up with to avoid taking responsibility for your own self-inflicted folly.

thatigboman:
nonsense. Who won the presidential election in lagos? There are more igbos than yorubas in lagos.

That must be why Chinedu Rhodes-Vivour is now governor of Lagos State. Oh wait ...

Mrfixiit:
Yorubas are cowards. They only know how to make noise all over

Yes, if only we had the bravery of the Igbos who allow a clown in faraway Helsinki to force them to sit at home every Monday!

BiafranPatriot:
He is speaking from a political stand point. He is not recognized as everyone knows the organization Ohaneze are for lost political jobbers. After Hope Uzodinma met Sanwolu. He sent Iwuanyawu to finish up. But Niggaz no send them. Keep celebrating people that don't have a say in IGBOland.

Anyway, I hope you are bracing up for the Tribunal Judgement, after PO legal team exposed Bamidele the useless American Attorney that bailed Tinubu .

What business does a "Biafran Patriot" have commenting on Nigerian affairs? Mind your own business and stick "patriotically" to your own country's internal issues.

blowjohn:
I kept asking myself, what does jamb stand to gain?
The real winner is frm same state, and female too and also a Christian.

And infact it's still igbos that made up the highest percentage of top 10 scores.


So is it that jamb hates the gal or what?

Assuming the real winner was even frm let's say, yoruba, Muslim, north, etc...perhaps the tribal, or religious card can be appreciated( even though that will still be foolish, since jamb has been scandal free in terms of top scorers for decades)

But u have the real winner still frm same state, still frmale, and still a Christian.

I just tire for the kind brains wey we get for this country

It doesn't seem so mysterious once you understand the real reason why this story was seized upon: it seemed to offer the perfect opportunity for a certain group to portray themselves as victims of irrational "hatred" and "jealousy". Why should they deny themselves the chance to wallow in imaginary victimhood by acknowledging the true 1st place finisher was also one of their own?

The sick mindset behind this is the same one we saw with the recent outcry over the demolition of unsafe buildings in Lagos, even as Soludo had (responsibly) been doing the very same thing in Anambra for months beforehand. We saw it again with the cries of "Yoruba tribalism" by people who gave 95% of their votes to the mediocre Peter Obi, even as the supposedly "tribalistic" Yorubas in Lagos handed Obi victory in the state during the Presidential elections. They are outright obsessed with playing the victim card at every opportunity, no matter how glaring the evidence against it.

Kenneth4u205:
JAMB forced her to say that as the only condition to reverse the 3 years ban on her. Even me I will testify that TINUBU is not a drug lord if that is the only option given to me . JAMB remain a scam

Good job with the conspiracy theory! Why not blame Tinubu, "Yoruba Muslims" and "the Lagos-Ibadan media" while you're at it? That's par for the course with the likes of you, after all.

The funniest thing of all is that there is no evidence whatsoever that Tinubu is a "drug lord", while the evidence of this girl's fraud is open and shut, so what explains your double standard other than runaway tribalism? If receiving money from drug traffickers were enough to make one a "drug lord", then it's likely that millions across Igboland are "drug lords" just like Tinubu, given how many of the convicted Igbo traffickers across Asia had postured as "big men" doling out gifts in their villages before being caught and convicted. Are the hundreds who personally benefited from Obinwanne Okeke's "generosity" also fraudsters in your book? I'm sure you'll find some pathetic rationalization to escape the logical conclusion of your own propaganda ...

nairalanda1:
So why are you implying I somehow support excessive government spending?

I'm getting tired of being accused of supporting corruption because of my opinions.

Sadly, you're unlikely to get many responses that don't engage in ad-hominems, because the great majority on here lack the education, the intelligence and the objectivity required to appreciate the sorts of arguments you're making. One can't reason with people who "reason" backwards from their emotions to their premises - their response to any evidence or argument which they can't counter will inevitably be character assassination, accusing you of somehow standing to benefit from the stance you've taken. They simply can't process the notion that the world does not owe them a living, and that circumstances sometimes require making painful choices.

Brendaniel:
If Tinubu and Obi came to you to manage your father's company and your father is looking up to you to pick a honest person, who would you pick in the 2 ?

Tinubu, as while both are corrupt, Obi proved incompetent even in his corruption, allowing himself to be caught red-handed thrice, unlike Tinubu. In addition, the evidence is there for all to see that Tinubu knows how to run a government effectively, and also how to nurture talent, neither of which Obi demonstrated when he had the chance.

https://saharareporters.com/2012/07/06/anambra-celebration-mediocrity

The only reason you see anything special whatsoever in Obi is because he's your kinsman. If you weren't blinded by tribalism you'd realize there's no contest between him and Tinubu.

grandstar:
Thank you for the enlightenment.
.
So, who determines economic pol8cy?

The President can make economic proposals and use the megaphone afforded by the office to pressure the legislators to work to realize those proposals, and the President can also appoint the ministers who will implement whatever proposals are passed into law, but ultimately it is the legislature that actually passes bills, including the financial ones. The speaker of the House and the leader of the Senate are therefore key players here, and even if Peter Obi had somehow managed to pull of the miracle of actually winning the election, the fact that both of these two positions would remain in APC hands would have doomed him to a single utterly failed term anyway, as they would deliberately have frustrated any proposals he would have put forward. An Obi "mandate" would just have meant 4 years of total paralysis and mutual finger-pointing, with the only real "benefit" being the ego satisfaction it would have given to many Igbos finally seeing "their son" in Aso Rock.

At the end of the day, the President is - at least in theory - only a chief executive, responsible for implementing the legislation passed by the people's representatives. Under a system of division of powers, a President's power to deliver on promises of change goes only as far as the power to get majorities in both houses of the NASS to go along with the promises. Here is where Tinubu truly stands out from Atiku and Obi: say what you will about how exactly Tinubu has managed to obtain so much leverage over the APC reps and senators, but the fact is that he does have it, and when he wants something, he knows how to get enough of them to agree to it. Atiku couldn't even manage that much with Wike and the disaffected governors within the PDP, while Obi's case would have been hopeless as I've explained above.

Brendaniel:
Thanks to the Religious north and tribal west.

And of course it's the southeast, where 90% are not only Christian but Catholic, and where 95% voted for a mediocre, pathological liar of a candidate who just happened to be from their region, which is particularly innocent of religious and tribalistic bigotry ... Maybe you should actually read the Bible for once and learn about the warning to cast out the log from your own eye before looking for splinters in others, brazen hypocrite that you are.

grandstar:
Omohayek, blue3k, what's your take on this?

By the way, I suspect the man in the article below is the man penciled down.

Do you think he is qualified based on his qualifications? He also worked in the World Bank which to me is good exposure.

https://naijabiography.com/biography/wale-edun-biography/

As usual, the person you respond to has no clue what he's talking about. The most important financial appointment is the governor of the CBN, not the minister of finance. A finance minister's role is to source the funds to pay for the budget allocated by the NASS in its role as the legislative branch, not to determine economic policy. The role is therefore more a matter of balancing revenue-raising and borrowing. A minister of finance can certainly suggest to the NASS that certain items be prioritised over others, or that particular government entities be sold, etc., but that is merely a suggestion, which the NASS can ignore as it sees fit. What the role really needs is a person with backbone to push back against all the white-elephant and pork-barrel proposals that other ministers and legislators will insist on. This matters because Nigeria's debt-to-revenue ratio is so high that the only way to "finance" such proposals will be to print money, which will further fuel inflation.

The real question about any candidate's fitness for the role is whether that person has any experience with the financial markets, and knows how to raise capital on them at the lowest possible rate (and when the rates being demanded are too high to justify borrowing). Wale Edun not only has a Masters in Economics, he was also Commissioner for Finance for Lagos State from 1999-2007, so he clearly has experience raising funds through international bond markets. In addition, that Edun served right under Tinubu for 8 years suggests that he is close enough to Tinubu to reasonably expect Tinubu's backing when he starts saying "No" to the various pet projects of other ministers, APC senators, etc.

adioolayi:
No let these people bobo us...

I don't think there is any foreign manufacturer in Nigeria that will not gladly pay proposed increase (if true..that's 40% increase allegedly) ... PROVIDED THAT THE ELECTRICITY IS STABLE..

Because, even with the increase, electricity in Nigeria will still be one of the cheapest around the world.

You get it. So many commenters on here are so obsessed with pushing their favored narratives that they completely misunderstand what is going on here - the members of MAN are trying to blackmail the government into keeping in place price-controls that were already bankrupting the GENCOs and DISCOs before Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices skyrocketing, and that's before even taking into account how Nigeria's long-standing problems with inflation mean regular price "increases" are necessary for the power companies just to earn the same amount in USD terms to handle their operating costs (including cost of funding).

Anybody trying to blame Tinubu or even Buhari for this latest bout of special pleading by MAN is an utter economic illiterate. Not everything revolves around some imaginary "mandate" supposedly "stolen" by a "druggie" ...

Why post this half-digested rubbish by some Punch hack, when the actual World Bank report is freely available?

https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/nigeria/publication/nigeria-development-update-ndu

Note that the summary of the report is much more optimistic than this horribly slanted, garbled and overly long excuse for an article. Here's what it actually says.

The recent removal of the petrol subsidy and the foreign exchange (FX) management reforms are critical steps to address long-standing macroeconomic imbalances and have the potential to establish a solid foundation for sustainable and inclusive growth.

Nigeria can seize this window of opportunity to further implement a comprehensive reform package that encompasses a range of complementary fiscal, monetary, trade, and structural policy measures to maximize the collective impact on growth, job creation, and poverty reduction.

To shield the poor and most vulnerable from increases in living costs, temporary and targeted cash transfers should be considered, as part of a new social compact to sustainably redirect resources towards addressing Nigeria’s most urgent development priorities

In other words, contrary to the spin of the Punch article, the World Bank (rightly) views the reforms as overwhelmingly positive steps, only suggesting that their impact could be softened through targeted aid for the very poorest - which is not the same thing as the "palliatives" ( aka large-scale subsidies and jumbo salary boosts for public employees ) that the loudest voices are always going on about.

How fortunate for propagandists that the average Nairalander can't be bothered to read beyond the headlines of articles, let alone try to dig out the original source said articles may be spinning heavily in one direction or another.

It's funny how the people seizing on this sensible initiative to spew their bigoted venom happen to hail from the region in Nigeria most in the grip of a runaway methamphetamine epidemic. It's your own siblings, children and neighbors who have the most to gain from the non-judgmental attitude to treating drug-addicts being recommended by Tinubu. But then again, given how vehemently so many of you defend and apologize for IPOB slash ESN slash "Unknown gunmen" whose primary victims are your own kinsmen, I guess this attitude shouldn't surprise me - please keep cutting off your nose to spite your face.

nairalanda1:
Lol

Keep up the lying to yourself. It is you it affects ,not me.

Lol. I can't help this one see

Save your energy - this one's yet another of the many Nairalanders who think "reasoning" backwards from their desired conclusions to their premises constitutes the height of reasoning. There's no convincing people who don't understand (let alone respect) the rules of basic logic.

grandstar:
The Naira has come under a lot of pressure after the CBN unified the exchange rates by floating the currency. Market watchers expected the Naira to eventually strengthen in value but the opposite as happened.

At a point, the new official rate was higher than the black market and BDC rates.

I would like your opinion on this: would payment of remittances in Naira reduce the pressure on the Naira? With a floated Naira, the receiver would receive a market determined rate for his Naira.

This is nothing new. It was the norm until 2020 if my memory serves me well. With about an average of $2bn in remittances flowing in monthly, this should reduce the pressure the Naira. The recipients have no need for the dollars they receive and it is changed into Naira either at a BDC or at the black market

I even preferred the old system where the money flowed directly into my Naira bank account hassle free.

The 3 things which will determine whether or not the Naira strengthens in the short-to-medium term are

1. Who Tinubu appoints as the next CBN governor. This is by far the most important factor. If Tinubu appoints someone the international financial markets consider credible, someone with both the necessary qualifications and a proven track record, this will give investors confidence that Tinubu is committed to monetary stability. Without that confidence they will be wary of bringing their funds into the country, given Nigeria's long track record of erratic policy-making.

2. Who Tinubu appoints as finance minister. Investors want to see that the finance minister and the CBN governor won't be fighting against each other, with the finance minister pursuing inflationary spending policies the CBN governor then has to combat with extreme measures. A credible finance minister will be someone who understands how precarious Nigeria's finances are, and is ready to say "No" even when there are powerful political pressures to hand out freebies to bribe the electorate ( aka "palliatives" ). This individual will need to come up with ways to raise revenues without killing the economy, and to cut spending in a sustainable way. Needless to say, few Nigerian politicians possess the necessary combination of intellect and backbone to do the job well.

3. Whether Tinubu commits to substantial privatization and deregulation. Tinubu needs to show that he is serious about decreasing the cost of governance, and selling-off loss-making parastatals is a great way to do this. Besides the boost to investor confidence this will provide, if the sales are conducted with transparency and openness, the resulting share sales will directly contribute to an inflow of forex.

The root cause of Nigeria's ever-depreciating currency is runaway inflation, which in turn is due to government after government living beyond its means, and trying to bridge the gap borrowing can't cover by simply printing money. The Naira will never appreciate until that basic problem is fixed. If you have two currencies, and currency A has 2% inflation while B has 22% inflation, it's no surprise that B declines by 20% against A - otherwise it would be possible to make risk-free profits by arbitraging any difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_rate_parity

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