WHEN in 2016 the forecast of a continuous decline in stock prices was made, a friend asked me when it will end and a recovery gets underway. The answers provided were simple. The bad news for investors, whether in the capital market or elsewhere, will continue as long as Nigeria has a Federal Government whose leaders don’t understand how modern economies work.

WE must, therefore, not shrink from accusing our friends or praising our enemies, nor need we be afraid of praising or blaming the same people at different times since it is impossible that men who are engaged in public affairs should always be right and unlikely that they should always be in the wrong. We must, therefore, detach ourselves from the actors in our story and apply to them only such statements and judgments as their conduct deserves – Polybius, 200-118 BC.

The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON, which acquired about 13,800 non-performing loans from banks in 2010 eventually had N5trillion debt to recover from the debtors nationwide. Some notorious deadbeats are indebted to more than one bank. The N5 trillion involved is more than double the loans the Federal Government will be incurring this year to support the 2019 budget.

AS July comes to an end, Nigeria is getting set to repeat a recent unpleasant history. When in 2015 President Buhari failed to appoint ministers until October, he was warned on these pages about the economic consequences. A recession followed in 2016.

Nigeria has two armies. The first army, called “a nation within a nation”, is the one headed by General Buratai. The second army includes 190 million Fellow Nigerians; not in any uniform, but responding to the universal need for food. Just as the first army can be wiped out if the enemy cuts off their transport of food, the second army can also be demolished by mass starvation occasioned by acute food scarcity. Right now the two armies in Nigeria are endangered by inevitable very severe food shortage in the country this year.