Hardly anyone will disagree that Nigeria needs a fundamental tax reform. This, after all, is a country with one of the most cumbersome tax regimes in the world, where tax laws and regulations are overlapping and burdensome, where the administration and collection of taxes, and their spending, are ridden with inefficiency and corruption, and where tax […]

SHORTLY before the 2023 presidential election, I wrote a piece titled “Yoruba ronu: A Tinubu presidency would tarnish your race” (Vanguard, February 16, 2023). The premise of that thoughtful and, in my view, patriotic intervention was threefold.  First, Bola Tinubu’s miasmic past was the antithesis of the honour-signalling ‘omoluabi’ ethos that Yorubas claim define them. His […]

THERE are two views of human behaviour. One is that people are primarily motivated by self-interest – what’s in it for me? The other is that people are primarily influenced by deeply ingrained moral values – what’s right and wrong? The first view comes from the rational choice or game-theoretic school, the second belongs to what […]

The International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the World Bank have long struck a raw nationalistic nerve in Nigerians. Romantic patriotism drives the nationalistic urge to reject any perceived IMF/World Bank ‘interference’. Several years ago, as a magazine publisher, I interviewed Dr Kalu Idika Kalu, then finance minister under General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime, when he stopped over […]

Recently, Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist and senior vice-president for development economics, wrote an article in the Financial Times urging Nigerians to embrace the economic reforms of their president, Bola Tinubu. “The country’s elites must forge a political consensus in support of these reforms,” he said. Like every seasoned policy expert, Gill knows that […]

Every senator and every member of the House of Representatives who voted to create a regional ‘development’ commission in Nigeria claim it is a game-changer that will radically transform the geopolitical zone concerned. But that’s not true; rather, it is another unaccountable federal agency that will induce the squandering of public funds and do little to […]

EVER since the presidency confirmed that Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s ineffectual president, would reshuffle his utterly incompetent cabinet, speculations have been rife about who would be in and who would be out. The Guardian newspaper set the hares running with a front-page story titled: “11 ministers, senior officials may go as Tinubu reshuffles cabinet.” Then, Dr […]

EVERY nation that secured independence from its colonial rulers celebrates the freedom annually, as Nigeria did recently on its 64th Independence anniversary. However, such events transcend the symbolism. The real worth of an independence anniversary lies in whether a nation is better off today than it was at independence. On that score, several former colonies […]

Outrageous! How dare you say the United Nations should help run elections in Nigeria, a sovereign state? That’s how some will react to this intervention. But leaving aside the fact that countries often seek United Nations electoral assistance, what’s truly outrageous and utterly shameful is that Nigeria, so-called “Giant of Africa”, cannot conduct free, fair […]

LAST week, I wrote about the dire economic consequences for Nigeria as a petrostate almost solely reliant on oil and gas exports. This week, I want to address another aspect of that intervention: the climate impacts of Nigeria’s deepening commitment to burning fossil fuels. Nothing demonstrates this commitment more than the excitement over the Dangote Refinery […]

THE latest foreign trade data show that Nigeria recorded a trade balance of N6.52 trillion in the first quarter of this year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS. Expectedly, President Bola Tinubu seized on the figure as evidence that his economic reform is working. Given that the positive trade balance significantly reversed the […]

IT is the age-old chicken and egg question. Which comes first: the economy or politics? That’s the question at the heart of this intervention, and it was triggered by two recent events. The first was President Bola Tinubu’s response to the call for a new Constitution. The second was Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s speech at this […]

Yet, the truth, often ignored, is that Nigeria has, over the past nine years, suffered from catastrophic economic policies under APC-led administrations, first under Muhammadu Buhari, now under Tinubu.

Nigeria is built on a faulty economic model and badly needs experts who can design the institutions and policies needed to revive its moribund economy.

Let me be clear, this is not an anti-Dangote intervention. Far from it. Rather, it’s a piece in support of a free and competitive market, where there are many buyers and sellers and no barriers to entry or exit.