President Tinubu’s Ikoyi Economists Are Fiddling With PowerPoint Presentations While Nigerian Economy Burns Down

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“Our Ikoyi Economists Are Fiddling With PowerPoint Presentations While Nigerian Economy Burns Down” (Ope Banwo responds to Tope Fasua)

I read with growing consternation the response of Mr. Tope Fasua, the Special Adviser on Economic Affairs to President Bola Tinubu, to my tongue-in-cheek call-out to his Ikoyi-minded friends for trying to manage our runaway economy with ‘prim and proper’ mentality when what is required is a strong dose of resolute Fadeyi responses to reset the brains of the real troublers of our rapidly deteriorating economic situation.

His long ‘Straw Man’ laden response to my well meaning WhatsApp post to my friends that went viral on its own, was published in the March 14th edition of Cable Newspaper for those who would like to read it to understand the context of my response (see see Tope Fasua’s  post here: https://www.thecable.ng/in-matters-of-economics-ikoyi-trumps-fadeyi-by-far/amp?/in-matters-of-economics-ikoyi-trumps-fadeyi-by-far

Firs, I think we should all thank Mr Fasua for honestly when he admitted in his article that “I did not live in Fadeyi or Ikoyi, but I am an economist.” This admission by man revealed the root of Mr. Tope Fasua’s outdated ivory tower based solutions to our economic problem.

The honest truth is that a man who does not live in Ikoyi or Fadeyi can never truly understand the realities on the ground for either group of people and, therefore, is not qualified to understand, much less be in a position to be recommending effective solutions to their concerns. Yet, Mr. Fasua is the economic adviser to our president. Knowing the president’s penchant for listening to his advisors, he is probably one of the first people Mr president probably calls first for ideas on how to stop the economic pains of Mama Ngozi, the pepper grinder; Aunty Ramota, the Bread seller and Yakubu the gateman

How can Mr Fasua know or understand their pains when he is not in their midst?

Since he didn’t live in Ikoyi either how could Mr Fasua understand the pains of the manufacturers whose plants and buildings have now been rented out to churches to at least earn income from their companies since churches appear to be the only growing industry right now in Nigeria.

Mr. Fasua’s startling admission further reveals that as a man who does not know what it feels like to live in fadeyi or Ikoyi, his intellectual rigor is not based on any experiential model but on stale textbooks written by long-deceased European economists, who would probably burst into tears if placed on the streets of nigerian economy of today and asked to give a prognosis or recommend solutions.

For instance, the more dollars the government borrows to pump into the economy, the higher the price of the dollar goes. No textbook in Mr. Tope Fasua’s London School of Economics ever contemplated such an ‘abnormal’ scenario. So, his default reaction, just like that of economists living in the classroom, is to deny that such a reality is possible. Yet those of us in Fadeyi, and even Ikoyi, have been dealing with this reality every day for a while now.

In fact, the economy we are grappling with today in Nigeria is proof positive that it is possibly for supply and demand to remain the same, but prices can rise anyway, further showing that applying normal economic analysis to Nigeria is nothing but intellectual onanism.

Or how can our Special Economic Adviser explain a scenario where you enter  a market and you’re told the price of yam is N2,000, but as you bring out your money to pay, the seller receives a phone call and suddenly says the price is now N3,000? Right there and then. Any certified economist still looking for answers from his textbook will only see ‘impossibility’ and then deny reality of what he just witnessed: supply and demand remaining the same but prices just shot up 🤷🏿‍♂️.

One of our great comedians, Lasisi Elenu, I think, recently demonstrated the reality of this ‘economic impossibility’ with an unforgettable skit where the price of dollars just kept going up with every phone call the Aboki Fx Man received, though both of them were still standing in same location . I think Mr Fasua should watch that skit and then give us any reference in his economic books that can explain that phenomenon.

With all that boring analysis that probably only Mr Fasuaand his Ikoyi-trained ‘ajebota’ economists can understand, all I can deduce was a confirmation that our foreign-minded economists currently advising our president are indeed out of their depth and out of touch with the reality of the current Nigerian economy.

The whole premise of Mr. Tope Fasua’s scathing ‘Strawman’ piece, designed to distract us from the real issues, was an attempt to justify the ‘Eyije-Eyioje’ (Trial and Error) approach to managing our runaway economy that he and his London School of Economics-trained friends are advising our president. As far as many of us who don’t understand arcane economic analysis can see, we have all entered a one-chance journey into economic hell.

Frankly, all I felt after reading Tope Fasua’s over-technical and confusing Harvadian Dissertation of our economy is that the one-time presidential candidate of our nation just validated everything I had to say about the cluelessness of our economic advisors, who have insisted on applying a cultured Ikoyi or Harvard economic mindset to solve what is essentially a problem demanding a Fadeyi solution.

Flash News To Mr Tope Fasua: Our economy is not responding to normal economic policy stimuli because some known modern day carpetbaggers, avaricious bankers, forex profiteers, and financial cowboys in the country have held it ransom. They have all the money in dollars and naira to thwart any move that tries to make our economy a level playing field for all. You also need to take your head out of the sand and start advising the president very strongly that he has no hope of reseting the nigerian economic compass without first dealing with the cogs in the wheel of our progress in the fadeyi way. The only language the culture of Impunity; Cronyism; avarice and roundtripping can understand is rough tactics against a few well placed leaders in the economic cabal. Mr President needs to make a spectacular and horrific public show of a few of these people before the others would believe he meant business . By ‘horrific public show’ I am not necessarily talking about raw violence . There are so many ways to skin a cat while it appeared you are giving it a hug and Mr President definitely understands what I am talking about . He wrote the book on it and I am stunned he has not yet opened it up

Even America with all its vaunted for rule of law came out with RICCO LAW and the IRS DEEP DIVE AUDIT when everything else failed in bringing organized crime and the economic troublers of USA under control . RICCO LAW was a draconian law that allows govt to seize ANY property deemed to have been used in the commission of an offensewpwpwp act regardless of whether the owner was culpable or not

To most of us watching, many of Those who have caused our economy to flounder on the stormy seas are the same people still dining with those tasked with setting the ship aright. They still sleep well at night because nobody has given them reasons to lose sleep for their part in bringing nigerian economy to its knees.

It is true that the ethos of the Ikoyi lifestyle demands charging a suspect to court first and proving all allegations against him in a long drawn prosecution, before sanctioning him. However, palace economic advisers like Tope Fasuyi fail to realize that when an intruder is inside your house, stealing your furniture, and attempting to assault your family, you don’t wait for him to leave and then report the matter to the police, who would then take 10 years to charge him to court, and take another 10 years for the trial. No. What you do in fadeyi  is apprehend, beat him to a pulp, and call your neighbors to help you set him ablaze with a tire around his head as a fair warning to all other criminals disturbing your neighborhood.

That’s the fadeyi way to put the fear of God into troublers of their well being.

I remember when I was about 10 years old. We were sleeping in our room-and-parlor face-me-I-face-you house in Fadeyi when one of my siblings noticed one of those Lebanese refugees, ubiquitous in the late ’70s , poking his hand through the window, searching for something to steal on the cupboard. When my father was informed, he did not shout. He signaled for us (about 7 sleeping on mats in that parlor at the time) to keep quiet. He brought out a machete from inside the room and nearly severed the intruder’s protruding hand. The Lebanese refugee thief screamed in his native language, withdrew his hand, and ran like a bat out of hell. My dad shouted for Baba Bisi, my agile uncle who also lived in a room at the building, to help chase the thief. They never caught him, but Lebanese refugees never came to our Igbobi Sabe street in Fadeyi again. They knew that anyone caught, even after the fact, would answer for the attempted theft by his ‘brother’. That may sound barbaric to those who have Mopol guiding their Ikoyi houses, but that  how that’s you protect yourself in a society where you know thieves can bribe police or pay top lawyer to get them off after stealing your commonwealth and putting the future of your children in danger.

Our oil is being stolen daily in Nigeria by well-placed big men using cargo ships larger than even those of our government, in broad daylight, but Mr. Fasuyi scoffs at using Fadeyi tactics to let them know their brazen theft cannot stand. Recently our security forces even claimed they never saw the vessel, capable of carrying million liters of crude oil and which had been docking in our shores for years 🤷🏿‍♂️

Most of our bankers don’t lend people money to regular people or conduct proper banking transactions that we can see but still declare billions in profits every year, just by speculating on our currency. They collect money from the CBN and then round-trip it using their bureau de change and the likes of Shehu, the forex trader, in Eko Hotel. The government knows this, but our Harvard economists in striped suits are a diving our president that we must wait until they are arrested and prosecuted instead of simply shutting down the den of oppressors (what exactly is a hotel doing being the haven for illegal forex traders dealing in cash in a supposedly cashless economy?). Every once in a while they will parade a broke yakubu, who is just an errand boy for the big boys and tell us they just captured a black market forex dealer😎

We all see daily as illegal mine operators operate mines in broad daylight under the nose of our police and government, and my brother is busy talking about economic indices of 4% and other technical stuff that nobody can understand. When they want to insult us, they will round up 100 half naked drone workers and tell us ‘we have captured illegal miners’ while the owners of those mines are being given national awards

It is now clear that Nigeria will continue to dig itself into the gully of more pain and suffering as long as our president listens to economists who assure him that things are getting better when even some Ikoyi residents are paying thousands of dollars to japa from the sinking economy.

Frankly, it is my opinion that anyone seriously arguing that the economic policies of this government are working should be watched closely as either out-of-touch eggheads or, worse, paid agents of disinformation. Mr Tope Fasua probably feels honor bound to defend the ‘Eyije-Eyioje’ approach to fixing our economy since the hot and cold policies were probably based on his advise with active support of our economic Siamese duo of Wale Edun and Dr Cardoos .

Personally, and I did not mean this as a disrespect, I just think he should leave his sterile ivory tower in Asp Rock and spend some time in Fadeyi or Ikoyi so that his economic hypothesis can be grounded in some experiential reality. Right now, he just sounds like a theory textbook with no real life application case studies. In order words, I am challenging Mr Fasua to give us examples of real human beings his policies have helped to make their lives better

I think most Nigerians, who are not economists, can now understand why we are in the mess we are in when a full-chested trained and certified economist who once aspired to be the president of Nigeria did not feel embarrassed to gloat in his piece that “the Naira exchange rate is only N1,500 to $1 now instead of the N2,000 to $1 being claimed by some evil people.”

In other words, Tope Fasua did not see anything wrong with running down the exchange rate of an economy by over 50% in less than 9 months, with no corresponding increase in local production to take advantage of the ruinous and precipitous decline in our collective purchasing power.

Instead, he chose to bury his head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich by saying there are no ‘reports to suggest that raising interest rates has not improved the economy. Ha!

Mr. Fasua sir, you won’t need anyone to give you an embossed report with ribbons to know that your strategy in raising interest rates is not working if you bothered to step out of your cocoon to go into the shops, ANY SHOP, to buy rice or bread or even bottled water.

In his eagerness to justify the ‘Eyije-Eyioje’ (Trial and Error) approach of our economic ministers, did our self-confessed Ikoyi economic champion forget that President BAT inherited an economy where $1 exchanged for N720?

In Mr. Tope Fasua’s very technical ‘sound and fury’ analysis that ultimately signified nothing, he seemed to be saying Ikoyi economists are winning the war even when the price of virtually every commodity that mattered to the common man has TRIPLED in 9 months.

How can any economist, much less who that once asked us to trust him with the whole country as our president, look Nigerians in the face and argue that their failed Keynesian approach to our economy is working when many Nigerians have literally been reduced to eating from dustbins, as we recently saw in some very disturbing videos?

We watched people get trampled to death as they struggled to get ‘cheaper’ rice from customs selling seized rice from smugglers.

In my very sincere and honest opinion, if indeed the reasoning displayed by Mr. Tope Fasuyi is indicative of the  prevailing thinking in government and in the Ikoyi clubs frequented by our economic czars, then it is proof positive that our leaders have yet to realize they are out of their depth and need to change their approach or resign en masse to let Mr. President try out a new set of thinkers.

The real sad thing about our Ikoyi economists defending the ‘eyije-eyioje’ approach to our problems is they didn’t even realize they are out of their depth.

To misquote Dorothy from the timeless Wizard of Oz novel, “We are NOT in Ikoyi anymore!” Our economy is not responding to normal economic theories because it has been hijacked by a very visible and well-known oppressive cabal. To get ourselves back on the road to recovery, these obstacles have to be dealt with brutally to dissuade them or slow them down. The only language an economic bully will ever understand is an equally determined bureaucratic bully.

I am glad that Mr. Fasua mentioned Prof. Kingsley Moghalu, who is not just a well-trained economist but also a lawyer with global experience in managing runaway economies that refused to yield to normal Keynesian rules. Prof. Moghalu, along with CBN governor Sanusi, once realized that they had to suspend the Ikoyi approach for a short season in order to send a Fadeyi lesson to those bankers putting customers’ money at risk. They woke up one morning after doing their due diligence and took out 5 carpetbaggers masquerading as bankers. They did not charge them to court (that came later for those of them who wanted to shout). They simply looked for a rarely used enabling power within CBN statute and took out the bad actors. While their motives would be forever debated the same way we still debate the motives of the 5 Majors who organized the first military coup, the fact remains that that singular Fadeyi move forced the banks to come to their senses for several years, do proper capitalization and follow the rules, before corruption fought back and took out Sanusi himself.

This current economic management team KNOWS, or should know, that our bankers are near the top of the rot in our system. They know they are the ones hoarding dollars and giving access only to their partners in round-tripping, but so far, none of them have been held accountable. No high profile illegal miner has been roughed up with serious jail terms and no big time oil stealer have been brought low, even with ordinary ‘name and shame’ fadeyi tactics.

Yet, our government expect them to stop doing what is in the interest of their growing riches.🤷🏿‍♂️ Instead, like Tope Fasua, our government advisers  simply checked their economic textbooks and decided to borrow more dollars and pump those borrowed billions of dollars into the economy in a misguided attempt to cause a crash in the exchange rate (after all, Ikoyi economic lecturers and their textbooks taught them that when you increase the supply of an item, then the price of it will fall). However, the price of dollars actually increased on the SAME DAY. 😂

They made serious attempts to distribute food reserves, including seized food items by customs, to the people in expectation of the price of foodstuff crashing, according to their economic textbooks. Unfortunately, not only did the price of food items not crash, it kept rising as the ‘owners of our economy’ simply bought up everything and then marked it up to sell to the regular people the food was meant to help. The government knew who these economic gluttons are, but our Big Daddy is being advised by his Harvard-trained Ikoyi economists that we cannot open up the Fadeyi playbook to deal with the clear and present danger to our collective well-being as a nation.

I don’t know if Fadeyi strategies will ultimately trump Ikoyi’s approach in an economy gone mad. All I do know is that before this season is over, the Big Masquerade himself, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, may have to weigh in, and my bet is he will not come in on the side of the Ikoyi Boys. He will probably serve them up as burnt offering to the angry mob in a self survival attempt to maintain his hold on power

In my observation of The Big BAT over the years, I am sure he himself is a Fadeyi-minded economist, a political survivor, and a canny operative who can read the tea leaves better than any politician alive. At some point, he will realize these Ikoyi economists will be the ruin of him and his administration and get rid of them if they don’t develop some street smarts soon. When he does, he will be coming out guns blazing with some amazing Fadeyi moves that will put his Ikoyi generals to shame.

The Big Bat may have lived in Ikoyi for years, but he is a confirmed dyed-in-the-wool Fadeyi thinker. For now, he is still fulfilling all righteousness, but I believe he will soon run out of patience because he did not declare the ‘EmiLokan’ Gambit just to watch some guys in Seville row striped suits rubbish his legacy by doing PowerPoint presentations and spouting economic razzle-dazzle theories while his legacy burns down on the streets.