I smile when people say we need strong institutions but NOT strong leaders. Truth: We need strong men & women (strong in the right manner -visionary big thinkers) to build strong institutions. There’s a reason why Rwanda works, why Singapore became what it is, why China rose.


Why South Africa became the “rainbow nation”. The six Founding Fathers of the American Republic - George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin - were men of strong character with large vision. The systems all these “strong”

There is just one reason why Nigeria has not been able to come close to attaining its potential, let alone attaining it. And it’s not, like many believe, corruption. It’s this: Nigeria is not a nation. It’s a territorial state. It’s a country. Without nationhood, it has no future It’s the absence of nationhood that feeds the corruption, the focus by the political class on power and primitive accumulation rather than governance and delivering public goods. It’s the absence of nationhood that creates the economic stasis, because there is no real vision.

Multiparty democracy , to be real and benefit Africa, must mean 7 things that are broadly absent presently:

1. The contest for electoral offices must be for authority to govern, with the legitimacy from the popular vote, not for power for its own sake or for self-enrichment. 2. Electoral contests must be a contest of alternative ideas, visions or philosophies about how society can make progress. Every successful democracy is based on contending IDEAS.

3. The PROCESS of elections must have integrity in order to be legitimate. This means the umpire

I respectfully disagree with President @officialABAT ‘s response to the visit to him by The Patriots, led by former @commonwealthsec Secretary-General Chief Emeka Anyaoku, during which the group (of which I am a member) pressed for a new Constitution for Nigeria as a matter of urgency, and recommending specific steps to achieve this. While PBAT received the eminent elder statesman and his colleagues with the appropriate dignity and protocols (“this is a group I cannot ignore”, Tinubu noted), the President asserted that economic reform (and the

The @nnpclimited v @AlikoDangote saga is a sad tale of how successive governments of Nigeria have failed to create a real economy that generates wealth for its citizens. Our economy works only for a very few who get rich while Nigerians continually get poorer. #Rentseeking The economic failure of Nigeria's leaders because of loyalties to vested interests and unholy ties between "business" and government is deeply unfortunate. @NigeriaGov is, and has been unable, either to stimulate through effect economic policy a set of strategic oligopolies

In the debates on national wage in Nigeria we miss the fundamental point: there is little or no productivity in the economy. If we had a truly productive economy there is no reason we can’t have the kind of minimum wage of 400 or 500K that Labour wants. But we can’t, because the level of productivity in the economy cannot support it. Remember, minimum wage is not just about government salaries. There are not more than 2, at most 3 million civil servants in Nigeria. It is even more about what is paid in the private sector, to household staff, etc.

The Naira tanking back down to the 1,400s to $1 demonstrates what some of us have been saying. Seeking a falsely “strong” currency when the fundamentals are out of whack is shadow chasing. The focus should be on the STABILITY of the exchange rate, not a populist exchange rate and premature declarations of “best performing currency”. Reports that there are now multiple exchange rates to BDCs, Customs, and NAFEX are also worrying. It’s not yet uhuru. Let us stabilize the Naira at whatever is its true market value and then pivot to the real issues:

Our relationships with others sometimes deepen or shrink in strange ways. When I was a Deputy Gov at the CBN, there was this bank MD that wanted my approval for certain things concerning his challenged bank. But he would not follow the guidelines we gave him, instead looking for shortcuts and expecting me to play along. One day my patience snapped. I terminated our conversation and showed him the door of my office. Long story short, the matter was eventually resolved after the bank met certain regulatory conditions. Today that MD (since retired) is

Nigeria’s economic distress is simply part of a 40-year downward trajectory that was broken only briefly by the Obasanjo civilian presidency and to some degree under Yar’Adua/Jonathan (up to mid-2014). Ever since, especially from 2015, we fell under completely incompetent economic management and have not recovered. The immediate future looks difficult. One wishes one could see what will create fundamental change, but alas! Throwing money that is not created wealth at problems will not solve our problems. It only makes them worse. We need to lay a

I have seen in the mainstream media and floating around on social media including Whatsapp, a report purported to be that of the CBN Special Investigator appointed by President Tinubu. I have some comments on this development.

1. The “report” has no signature appended, so we can’t assume it is the real and official report.

2. Assuming it is in fact the real report, it’s wrong for such a sensitive report to have “leaked” to the public before the President and his government have reviewed and spoken to it. This is because the “report” talks of

I have been a public commentator, nationally in Nigeria and internationally in the global media, for 35 years. As a lawyer-journalist, a UN diplomat, a consultant, a central banker, a university professor, or a one-time presidential candidate. It’s interesting, then, to see some who were mainly dormant in 2019 as we mounted the first real challenge to the political status quo in Nigeria, assume today the haughty position of “final” arbiters of who is virtuous in Nigeria & who is not, simply because they finally woke up in 2023. Let no one be confused.

The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in the United States, and the jitters over possible banking contagion they have generated have brought my mind back to work we did in the Lamido Sanusi-led @cenbank to establish financial stability in Nigeria after the global financial crisis. As Deputy Governor in charge of Financial Stability it was my task to supervise the execution of our many successful reforms. We took the position that no bank would fail, and no depositor would lose one kobo of their deposits. The CBN injected more than $4

The constitutional amendments just signed into law by President @MBuhari offer a hopeful example of the benefits of constitutional #restructuring of Nigeria, of which I have been a strong and unapologetic advocate. Giving states powers to establish railways and to generate, transmit/distribute electricity will help the economy of our country greatly. I hope states can smartly take advantage of this salutary development. But this is only a beginning really. At issue: should we negotiate a completely new constitution for Nigeria agreed by its peoples?

The terrible suffering & economic loss Nigerians have experienced as a result of the faulty IMPLEMENTATION of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Naira redesign policy, the entry of the judiciary into central banking functions, all show clearly how our institutions— and Nigeria — fail when institutions that are meant to be operationally independent become politicized.Currency functions are a core part of any central bank’s mandate. To that extent I had no problem with the policy. Except for two vital issues. First, the 90-deadline, which I warned was too short

Builders- Nigerians who built important institutions in our country that molded generations of leaders. They are many. We don’t give them enough credit. Professor Kenneth Dike, pre-eminent historian, the first Nigerian Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan. He became Biafra’s Ambassador to Ivory Coast during the Nigerian Civil War and then Professor of African History @Harvard . Dike molded the first and second generations of Nigerian professionals, top civil servants and businessmen who studied at Ibadan. He brought a home-grown

What is so special about Abeokuta in Ogun State? The town has produced almost exclusively Nigeria’s political leaders from the Southwest region: Olusegun Obasanjo, MKO Abiola, Ernest Shonekan, not to mention the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti &his famous parents Adetokunbo Ademola, the first indigenous Chief Justice of Nigeria, Dr. Moses Majekodunmi, former Sole Administrator of the Western Region in 1962, the Williams brothers Rotimi (Timi the Law) Williams SAN and Akintola Williams, doyen of the accountancy profession in Nigeria.

My take on the election outcome:
1. Without prejudice to whoever would have won, @inecnigeria ‘s performance was woeful. The institution and election management in Nigeria need a complete overhaul. Elections must be made logistically efficient and transparent. 2. The 28% turnout, being even lower that the 34% of the 2019 election, is deeply disappointing. This phenomenon needs a separate interrogation to understand why it happened when 87 million voters collected their PVCs.
Such voter turnout levels undermine the meaning of democracy.

What I saw, past, present and future, that made me decide to exit partisan politics in Nigeria completely: We aren’t ready for real democracy. Too much poverty &the financial corruption it enables. Too many evil, powerful vested interests. Weak institutions. Illiterate electorate Disappointed that @inecnigeria , despite all assurances they gave us, has disappointed again. “Tactical disenfranchisement”. Police colluding with thugs. Delayed uploading of results to BVAS. Whether it’s just operational incapacity, human factor, or more, the result is the same.

From the standpoint of economic transformation, presidential candidate @PeterObi has a strong, even if controversial point: that the economy cannot be driven just by (physical) infrastructure. The foundation of economic transformation is human development (social infrastructure). Unless and until we understand this, our economy cannot make real progress. It is the mass education and skilling of millions, access to healthcare, potable drinking water (not the business of pure water and water tankers) that lays the foundation to moving millions from poverty

As I ate smoked salmon made in Chile last night as part of my dinner, my mind went to what Nigeria’s economy could have been, and still can become: a value-added, export led economy that breaks the “resource curse”. Chile, previously copper-dependent, earned $90 billion from such exports last year. Chile is one of the very few countries of the world to have successfully broken the resource curse and diversified its economy away from dependence on natural resources. This is no easy feat. The resource curse, which afflicts Nigeria, operates in this way:

I fully agree with those who say oil has been a curse to Nigeria. Many of those question the ultimate value of the reported Kolmani oil find in Northern Nigeria. But I am also practical enough to know three things. First, some countries like Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Norway were smart enough to use oil to build their economies, but diversified into other means of wealth creation and also built up savings (reserves/Soveregn Wealth Funds) for the rainy day that have served them well.Secondly, the real secret of the wealth of nations does NOT lie in natural