Ifeanyi Uddin
Premium Times
Lagos, LA, Nigeria
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Past articles by Ifeanyi:
Cashless Nigeria, an idea of immeasurable beauty?, By Uddin Ifeanyi
The signs are not good at all. The early morning queues at bank branches as customers scurry to secure access to the deposits has never made sense. Especially, when by midday the throngs disperse without customers having access to the cash they need for their quotidian needs. The cashless economy hype is simply that. The […] → Read More
Letter to the president-elect, By Uddin Ifeanyi
As with every government since we committed to a private sector-led growth platform, your predecessor struggled to eat its cake and have it. → Read More
The Nobel memorial prize in economic sciences loading…., By Uddin Ifeanyi
It was a big mistake trying to grok the Buhari government’s current policy of swapping new banknotes for old ones wearing eyeglasses handed down by traditional economic thought. The full magnitude of this error was underscored, last week, by the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) decision to include Nigeria among “jurisdictions under increased monitoring”. The […] → Read More
Still on the banknotes swap, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Command-and-control measures, as we are beginning to discover, by sucking the very lifeblood (as it were) from the economy injure the informal sector, first. In our case, this sector is a significant contributor to domestic output and the biggest employer of labour. So it matters that it remains always in fine fettle. Yet, the organised […] → Read More
Monetary policy for scofflaws, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Could we have gone about things differently? And would this have ensured a more civilised outcome? Yes. And Yes. Anyone who has ever listened to Alhaji Waidi Ayinla (“Omowura”) Yusuf Gbogbolowo on the nation’s transition from using the pound as currency to adopting the naira should get a sense of the details that the planners […] → Read More
Why are Nigerians this bad?, By Uddin Ifeanyi
There is no reason why the last couple of weeks should not go down as the most unusual in the annals of this country. Everything that could possibly go awry has done so with considerable aplomb. Painfully scissored by sundry scarcities (fuel, cash, permanent voters cards, etc.) the economy may have ground to a screeching […] → Read More
Regulation as performance art, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Globally, central banks make a song and a dance of communications and forward-guidance as central to the efficacy of their policymaking. → Read More
In defence of neoliberal economics, By Uddin Ifeanyi
You would not tell from listening to debates where the noun phrase is used that at heart, “neoliberal economics” is all about increasing private sector supply responses in any economy. Yes. It consequently argues for a smaller state, but its opponents often wield the phrase as one would an epithet directed at an unconscionable foe. […] → Read More
Reforms in avoidance of a new debt peonage, By Uddin Ifeanyi
The much slower economic growth that a debt burden this large will result in will make both servicing and repayment ever more onerous. → Read More
Between improving governments’ tax take and growing private spending, By Uddin Ifeanyi
It helps to keep in mind that whatever the government at the centre collects as tax is no longer available to the private sector to spend. → Read More
Why hitching currency redesign to CBN’s cashless policy isn’t as smart as it sounds, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Reflection on domestic money supply moved to the fore when the Central Bank appeared to argue that we had too much of it outside bank vaults. → Read More
How may we fix the patently warped Nigerian mind?, By Uddin Ifeanyi
“Nigeria is different!”. This is how our mavens explain the arduous circumstances that have been the country’s lot over the years. For this reason policymakers cannot just go across the pond and copy successful policies elsewhere for implementation here. At a point in any conversation, this excuse could pass for an argument for customising what […] → Read More
Why this economy will fail again, By Uddin Ifeanyi
According to Greek mythology, Cassandra’s tragedy was not that she deceived a besotted Apollo into giving her the gift of seeing tomorrow. It was that failing to requite the affection of one of the vainer deities in the Greek pantheon, the god then included in his gift to her the curse that her prophecies would […] → Read More
Think democracy is expensive? Try autocracy, By Uddin Ifeanyi
There are two (admittedly connected) ways of appraising the Buhari government’s eight years in office. The first, and the easiest route, is to interrogate the incumbent government’s performance against the pledges it made at the hustings, when its measure of the frustration of the electorate with the inertia that had come to define the Goodluck […] → Read More
The world’s poor in a warmer world, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Our higher stake in bringing about a less hot world invites us to take a seat at the front and centre of the climate change conversation. → Read More
What are we?, By Uddin Ifeanyi
It is easy, therefore, to assume that our policymakers do not know what they are about. If you add to the conversation our baked-in preference for affirmative action hiring over competence- and qualification-based recruitment, this conclusion acquires a certain inevitability. However, the regularity with which we seem to not know what we are doing would […] → Read More
Of cosmetic political party manifestoes, By Uddin Ifeanyi
The eight years of the Buhari administration have served up a useful lesson in elementary economics. As a people, we bear primary witness to the government’s failed struggle with the relationship between its spending and rising domestic prices. We saw key state functionaries flail away as they sought to balance the demands from government’s spending […] → Read More
Food insecurity and our public policy responses, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Do we face a serious food insecurity problem? Both the International Monetary Fund and the World Food Programme think so. → Read More
“Umoru”, ailments, lies, and abuses, on Nigeria's way to perdition, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Set against the many ills plaguing the economy, the leading candidates for office of president in next year’s elections could not have served up more disturbing metaphors. Whether it was the spectacle of the All Progressives Congress (APC) party’s candidate furiously pedalling away on an exercise bike, or the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate straining […] → Read More
We may not be as exceptional as we have come to believe, By Uddin Ifeanyi
If the newspapers are to be believed, the naira lost 2.8% of its value against the dollar (at the parallel market) in the seven days to Thursday last week. This was barely two days after the meeting of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) policy committee put up its benchmark rate by 1.50 percentage points. […] → Read More