Members of the Presidential Advisory Council, PEAC, have my sympathies despite my serious disagreements with two of the appointees in the past. At any rate, it is a new situation and their success or failure will have lasting impact on all of us alive today and million more unborn for years to come. If a reader sensing espirit de corps in my anxiety for their individual and collective reputations, let me quickly admit guilt. They are my colleagues – practitioners of what one jealous critic had called the “dismal science”. He was furious at the common pronouncements by economists – “on the one hand..and on the other hand….”. “Why can’t you fellows talk of just one hand”, he exploded. So, I start with our usual caveat when making tough recommendations to our principals.

The Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, and Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU have my sympathies – even as they amuse me. When the President signed the new Minimum Wage Bill passed by the 8th National Assembly, NASS, into law during the last days of the assembly, he also ordered “immediate implementation”. NLC and ASUU officials were ecstatic. Soon, the gatemen and messengers will be receiving minimum of N30,000 per month and all will be well. I laughed. But, more than that, I told them that there would be no “immediate implementation” of the bill. It would require a few months and a lot of negotiations before anybody will lay their hands on the wage increase promised.“To be quite candid, if one was not aware that President Buhari did not take into account how the Nigerian Presidential system works, his orders would have been taken differently.“After Buhari made his unscheduled departure from office in August 1985, he went into political and social hibernation.

Everybody agrees in OPEC that we need to stabilise the market. We cannot allow price just to plummet.” Timipre Sylva, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources.

The first part of this series ended abruptly last week on account of space constraints. Pardon me if the last paragraph is repeated fully. Otherwise what follows might not make sense.

The Minister of Power,  Mr  Sale  Mamman was reported to have given that assurance the previous day after inspecting a  215-megawatts Kaduna power plant.  Whether or not the Minister expects to  be taken seriously is not clear.

By Dele Sobowale The first part of this series ended abruptly last week on account of space constraints. Pardon me if the last paragraph is repeated fully. Otherwise what follows might not make sense. FIRST, the farm workers who in the 1940s to 1970, made Nigeria the leading exporter of palm oil, groundnut, cocoa, timber, […]

EVEN the village idiot now knows that Nigeria is an unhappy country falling every day. Suddenly, no economic index is favourable. Unemployment is high and getting worse. Exchange rate has remained stubbornly high; prices of goods are rising; external reserves are dwindling; Excess Crude Account, ECA, is being steadily depleted and debts are at the highest level since Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala got us out of the debt trap in 2004. 

In every community, there is a class of people profoundly more dangerous to the rest. I don’t mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably, the most dangerous people seek power— Saul Bellow

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.

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.

Buhari made that statement during a visit by his self-centred fan club – Buhari Media Organisation, BMO. For those in that bandwagon, the President can do no wrong because they seldom can think of the consequences of his mistakes. The Nigerian 2019 Presidential elections ended in February. Buhari had four months to select his cabinet. Instead of doing that, he is giving the same excuse he gave in 2015 when he waited until October to appoint Ministers. Two sad repercussions of that delay were experienced predictably.