デビッド

It is impossible to foresee the consequences of being clever

[email protected]

[Boris Cherny @bcherny]

You asked, we listened. Claude Desktop on Linux is here!

Download link: https://t.co/gjgHZvbKyi

[デビッド @adebayodavid]

I am not a security analyst.

I am a reader who found one chapter of a book impossible to put down and who recognised in it the logic of something I watch unfold in the news every week.

Robert Greene did not write about Nigeria. He wrote about the structure of asymmetric conflict across all of human history.

But the structure maps exactly onto what is happening here.

Understanding the logic of a strategy is the first step toward countering it effectively.

Follow for more insights from my readings...

[デビッド @adebayodavid]

I read Robert Greene's *The 33 Strategies of War*.

One chapter gave me fresh perspective on "banditry" in Nigeria - Chapter 33.

"Sow Uncertainty and Panic Through Acts of Terror - The Chain-Reaction Strategy.

Greene wrote it to explain the logic of terrorism as a military strategy; not to justify it, but to understand it.

Applied to what is happening in Nigeria, it is uncomfortably illuminating. 🧵

[デビッド @adebayodavid]

The historical pattern
Greene is a historian as much as a strategist. He documents campaign after campaign where this played out.

The British in Malaya. The French in Algeria. The Americans in Vietnam.

The pattern: superior military force wins battles consistently but loses the war eventually when it fails to address the political and human terrain beneath the conflict.

Nigeria is not unique. The strategic logic at work is centuries old.

[Dr. bugatti spaceships 🚀👩🏾‍🚀🇵🇸🇨🇩🇸🇩 @astronaia]

Unbox my PhD diploma with me 🥹💜

Pause to capture a glimpse in a moment of the almost 11 years it took me to get to this point.

There were many highs and many, many lows. Both of which I indiscriminately opened up to the world to experience with me.

[デビッド @adebayodavid]

@almaasinobi 😅

[デビッド @adebayodavid]

@winexviv Yes Alex, it makes a tonne of sense. It has been on my mind as well. We can't complain about the talent pool if we do not actively coordinate the cultivation of that pool...

[デビッド @adebayodavid]

The Intelligent Investor was written for a market very different from Lagos.

But the underlying logic: 1. buy good businesses below their value, 2. hold a margin of safety, 3. know what you own — works wherever businesses exist and markets misprice them.

The NGX misprices things regularly. The framework to exploit that has existed since 1949.

Follow for more...

[デビッド @adebayodavid]

Benjamin Graham published The Intelligent Investor in 1949.

He wrote it for American markets. But 5 of its principles apply just as sharply, arguably more sharply, to the Nigerian stock market.

Here's what they are and why they matter here. 🧵

[デビッド @adebayodavid]

Nigerian context: Inflation and real returns
This is more relevant in Nigeria than almost anywhere Graham wrote about.

Holding a stock yielding 8% dividends in a 28% inflation environment means you need 20%+ capital appreciation just to stand still in real terms.

Most Nigerian investors never calculate returns this way. The ones who do make very different decisions.