Thread by @sbmintelligence

1/ The country’s profile got bleaker this week for a host of reasons - impetuous regulatory behaviour, refugees left out in the cold, a needless rise in public recurrent spending and an unshackled rogue police squad.

2/ Nothing illustrates #Nigeria’s dysfunction as much as the minimum wage palaver. The ₦27,000 ($75) or even ₦30,000 ($83) is not much – those that earn it will hover around the poverty line.

3/ The issue is that even such a wage is beyond the capacity of @AsoRock to pay, and for many small businesses as well, this will represent a massive upswing in cost. There is a disconnect between value creation by the workforce, and how much they earn.

4/ On their part, the labour unions are in a tough spot. @AsoRock has acceded to them a bit so ideally they should take the fight to the states, but history shows that it is far easier to fight the centre, and they have only one trump card – a general strike.

5/ Pulling it off requires a sustained effort and the cooperation of the population, which is notoriously difficult to get from populations in 36 states that have very diverse interests and needs.

6/ Unfortunately for the unions as well, Nigerians now have as little faith in them as in the the government itself so a strike will likely fail and this could render the final blow to organised labour in #Nigeria.

7/ It is difficult to sustain a long strike in a country where the vast majority earn day wages. #Nigeria needs earnings to be tied to objectively measured value and productivity, or we will continue this dance which benefits few people.

8/ On the settlement reached between @cenbank and @MTNNG, the regulator’s behaviour during the entire duration of the matter left a lot to be desired.

9/ The public humiliation of one of #Nigeria’s largest employers in a sector of the economy that helped prop middling GDP growth was needless, irresponsible and put a damper on investor sentiment towards the country.

10/ It is hard to escape the glaring fact that the final settlement sum that absolved @MTNNG from any wrongdoing is 0.65% of the original claim by @cenbank, at the cost of almost 20% of the company’s market value.

11/ When we do the opportunity cost - lost tax revenue compared to this paltry sum @AsoRock eventually got, we get a fuller sense of how pointless the govt’s actions were.

12/ More importantly, the entire saga wrecked wider economic damage - a @BusinessDayNG report in September said at least 3 big deals involving foreign investors were put on hold, with a few Nigerian companies encountering difficulty raising foreign capital.

13/ To @MTNNG's credit, it remains committed to #Nigeria, its biggest market, and is aggressively planning to expand into mobile financial services.

14/ @AsoRock, cash strapped as it is, cannot do much directly to provide the millions of job this dire economy needs. What it can do is create the best possible environment for private businesses to thrive.

15/ When the head of the financial regulator triumphantly speak about one of its biggest faux pas of 2018, investors, money managers and entrepreneurs in #Lagos, #London and #Joburg hear a different message - this place is not ready to do business.

16/ The #Rann crisis is a continuing effect of increasing #ISWAP activity in the northern part of #Borno, worsening an already precarious humanitarian emergency.

17/ As of this moment, Northern #Borno continues to be neither in the full control of @AsoRock or territory that either #ISWAP, or #BokoHaram, can claim to control.

18/ However, its status as no-man's-land plays more to the benefit of the insurgents, as it will enable them to keep pushing towards #Maiduguri which has been their target for years.

19/ As more locals move towards #Maiduguri, the increased population will put more strain on the city's resources, and further the risk of the insurgents sending in fifth columnists to attack the city from within.

20/ And finally on the reorganisation of #SARS, let us forget the framing. The real news is this: the new IGP decentralises #FSARS, returns it to the states commands.

21/ Far from an effort to “correct abnormalities” as @policeNG’s talking points imply, what the IGP has really done by decentralising #FSARS is to simply turn back the hands of the clock.

22/ It was the unruly conduct of #SARS under direct control of state CPs making places like Rumukpo #Rivers, Awkuzu #Anambra and Iyanganku #Oyo, infamous dens of @policeNG brutality, torture and in some cases, extrajudicial killings, that birthed #EndSARS.

23/ While the effort at @policeNG reform stalled under Adamu’s predecessor, he caved to pressure and subsumed all the units under federal control to provide some oversight, a development which led to a decline in #SARS atrocities.

24/ The latest move represents a giant step in the wrong direction and yet another example of authorities offering placeholders in place of concrete change in order to satiate an angry public.