Just imagine for a moment if the Iranian president stood up at the UN, imagine if Ahmadinejad had come to the UNGA, and said: “Do I annihilate the Jewish state, and do it quickly? Do I drive Israel into hell?”
Imagine the Western and global and media response and outcry.
I spent 47 days as one of several thousand African migrants seeking to enter Europe through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea.
Story on @fijnigeria tomorrow, Thursday and on Friday.
It’s Schrödinger: the empire is in the SOH cabinet with falling plates, projecting hegemony but fully exposed, trying to suffocate Iran without blowback (impossible).
This endgame cannot be modeled. It will be opened, and Iran's hand is already on the lever.
To have this convo, we must understand 1 or 2 things is already constant.
Currency devaluation lead to erosion of purchasing power.
This is like a net negatives. You can't get value or higher benefit from the events of devaluation. What you can only do is to manage, have a steady path toward recovery.
Its like someone starting from -10 and heading to 0 before moving to +10.
The increase in FAAC can not afford the current prices. Purchasing power of both govt and individuals plummeted.
The next question you may ask is what happens if the devaluation never happens. If it never happens, the fiscal system of govt will crash indirectly. And the result will still be the same. Your black market FX rate (which is N700/$ against CBN's own N400/$) will skyrocket BEYOND cbn control. You will arrive at the same devaluation problem indirectly.
In summary, either they devalue willingly or not, the result will be erosion of Purchasing power. Thanks to decades of corruption and mismanagement.
The only way is utilising the little resources (FAAC) to move from -10 to 0 then to +10. This is where the challenge is.
Instead of moving from -10 to 0, the govt can be spending on flyovers or things that may not take us to 0 but to take us further back to -20.
So, its still accountability from govt to do more but overall, people need to know that the decision was never intended to have a better economic comfort in the immediate term. It was a necessary decision.
Either the govt do it, or the market do it for us.
It would be excessive to impose NLNG-level salary expectations on Dangote Refinery but it should be the primary Nigerian benchmark for the Refinery.
In H1 2026 alone, the Refinery had a revenue per employee of N4.66b and a net profit per employee of N611m. This translates to about N777m and N102m per employee per month respectively.
For context, the monthly PAYE tax of an NLNG Engineer will pay at least 3-4 Dangote Engineers on the same grade level. Same industry. Same midstream.
The Refinery employees work side-by-side with Indians as “expatriates” earning multiples of their salaries. They wanted to join PENGASSAN to improve their living conditions; 800+ of them were sacked on the same day.
As I said, this is partly why we are suffering on rental payment.
People turn this kind of investment into something that can recover capital in short term without considering the capital appreciation of the land/building.
You build a house N500m and expecting to recover it in less than 10years through rental payment, whilst forgetting the continuous appreciation of that house value.
Eat your cake and have it.
Bad economic environment made us all to normalise 20% profit on investment as normal or expected.
One day, when this economy recovers and your money market yield returns to 5%, 8% or so, you will realise that its dysfunction you have been enjoying.