2018 has been an interesting year for the Nigerian economy. At the start of the year we continued our recovery from a difficult period. The foreign exchange shortages which were the bane of the previous three years were all but forgotten. The crippling fuel scarcities appeared to have been dealt with. Year on year Inflation…

Finance is a fundamental part of most productive economies. It is, to an extent, the lifeblood of an economy, allowing entrepreneurs and businesses take risks to expand their operations or implement new ideas. This importance of finance is true everywhere in the world and is also true in Nigeria. For instance, businesses often list access to finance as one of the key determining factors for their survival.

At risk of sounding repetitive, Nigeria is now the official poverty capital of the world. Official according to the world poverty clock although the government is still waiting for official confirmation from our statisticians to know for sure. This poverty is expected to continue for a while as many are projecting that sub-Saharan Africa in…

The budget office released the 2017 budget implementation report a few weeks ago. It contained, as expected, some numbers on the federal government’s finances. Safe to say the numbers do not look good.

It is election season and it is safe to say that policy making has taken the back seat with electioneering now the core focus of elected officials. It is also the season when politicians make election promises, sometimes based on deep reflection of the issues but sometimes just out of thin air. Regardless of the…

In case you have been out of the loop recently, you may have missed out on the saga involving the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), MTN, and a couple of banks.

The history of off-shore banking is a very interesting one. Some claim that the ideas go all the way back to Channel Islands of France in the early 1800s. For others, it started once Switzerland became officially “neutral” in 1815.

In the last few months, or years depending on who you ask, Lagosians have been complaining about the menace of trucks parked on the roads.

The Federal Government via the Minister of Aviation announced the official name and branding for what is to be a new airline last week. Tagged Nigeria Air, the minister said the airline will be the new flag carrier for Nigeria with plans to start operations by December of this year and operate 30 aircrafts within…

The return of what may be the last tranche of the Abacha loot and the decision of the federal government to distribute that loot directly to 302,000 poor households kicked off a bit of furore last week. Some question the legality of the decision based on the argument that the federal government cannot unilaterally appropriate those funds.

In the last decade or so, research in economics has moved towards randomized controlled trials (RCTs). In simple English, these are experiments in which policies are carefully structured and implemented in a way that the impact can be properly measured.

In the run up to the 2015 elections, the former governor of the Central Bank, Prof. Charles Soludo, published what turned out to be a prophetic article.