Good day Uncle Dele. This is the first week of December. The 2019 Budget is yet to get to the NASS. They would soon proceed on Xmas holidays. It’s not even known when it would be presented! 2019 is election year. Most of them would be involved. Who are the policy makers of this administration? What is in their brains? Saw dust? When and how did we offend them? Is this still being caused by GEJ and PDP? Who did we offend in this country Uncle?”

THE two presidential candidates wasted no time releasing their proposals for governance once the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, flagged off the campaigns for the 2019 elections. Both documents were packed full with the multitude of promises for which elections worldwide are known. Most of them will be addressed as we proceed with the campaigns. On this page, however, only the economic policies and their impact on society will be discussed.

THE two presidential candidates wasted no time releasing their proposals for governance once the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, flagged off the campaigns for the 2019 elections. Both documents were packed full with the multitude of promises for which elections worldwide are known. Most of them will be addressed as we proceed with the campaigns. On this page, however, only the economic policies and their impact on society will be discussed.

The rate of change in our time is so swift that an individual of ordinary length of life will be called on to face novel situations which have no parallel in the past. The fixed man for the fixed duties, who in the old society was such a “god-send” will in the future be a public danger— Alfred North Whitehead, 1861-1947.

BUT the truth is that we  are generally having the wrong discussion. I personally don’t think we have a debt problem, but we have a serious revenue problem, which, if we do not address, will snowball into a debt problem.” Ben Akabueze, Director of Budget in the Ministry of Budget and National Planning. October 24. 2018.

But the truth is that we are generally having the wrong discussion. I personally don’t think we have a debt problem, but we have a serious revenue problem, which, if we do not address, will snowball into a debt problem.” Ben Akabueze, Director of Budget in the Ministry of Budget and National Planning. October 24. 2018.

In the early 1970s, long before I ever thought that I would become a columnist, one of my co-tenants was a writer for the BOSTON GLOBE – the largest selling paper in the Northeast states of America. He read Economics and I used to wonder how he could forecast economic changes long before they occurred. One day out of curiosity, I asked him how he did it. He then showed me a computer-based model which he uses for economic predictions. Fascinated, I asked him to teach me the method. He was too happy to oblige me. Since then, I have made refinements to the model he left with me. Now, I have my own.

THAT the people perish for  lack of good leadership has been one of the abiding verdicts of history. The Nigerian situation today is proving Horace right. In the last three months, I have found myself in several states, east, north, south and west – Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Kogi, Abia, Akwa Ibom, Kaduna, Niger, Edo,Imo, Kwara, Oyo, Ogun, and of course, Lagos. There is a common thread linking all of us in this country today, irrespective of the government and the political party in power – a sense of despair about the economy. We needed no Brookings Institute or World Poverty Watch or the British Prime Minister or Bill Gates Foundation to tell us that our dear fatherland has not only become the largest hatchery of people living in abject poverty, the situation is getting worse every minute. We have thousands of economists to do that for us. 

THAT the people perish for  lack of good leadership has been one of the abiding verdicts of history. The Nigerian situation today is proving Horace right. In the last three months, I have found myself in several states, east, north, south and west – Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Kogi, Abia, Akwa Ibom, Kaduna, Niger, Edo,Imo, Kwara, Oyo, Ogun, and of course, Lagos. There is a common thread linking all of us in this country today, irrespective of the government and the political party in power – a sense of despair about the economy. We needed no Brookings Institute or World Poverty Watch or the British Prime Minister or Bill Gates Foundation to tell us that our dear fatherland has not only become the largest hatchery of people living in abject poverty, the situation is getting worse every minute. We have thousands of economists to do that for us

A LITTLE more than two months ago, the alarm was sounded on these pages about the imminent crash of the capital market. After rising for a few days following that forecast it has been one long decline occasionally broken by one or two days of gains which were inevitably succeeded by several more days of losses wiping out the gains. On the whole close to 16 per cent has been erased from share prices since that first prediction.